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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA | 
 AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 "^^^^
 
 *^ 
 
 I
 
 THE 
 
 WHOLE WORKS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D. 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORE. 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 
 THE HOLY JESUS.
 
 THE 
 
 WHOLE WORKS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. JEREMY TAYLOR, D.D. 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF DOWN, CONNOR, AND DROMORE ; 
 
 WITH 
 
 A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR, 
 
 AND 
 
 A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF HIS WRITINGS, 
 
 BV THE 
 
 RIGHT REV. REGINALD HEBER, D.D. 
 
 LATE LORD BISHOP OF CALCUTTA. 
 
 THIRD EDITION OF THE COLLECTED WORKS. 
 IN FIFTEEN VOLUMES. 
 
 VOL. II. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS ; J. RICHARD- 
 SON J HATCHARD AND SON; J., G., AND F. RIVINGTON ; J. BOHN ; HAMIL- 
 TON, ADAMS, AND CO. ; DUNCAN AND MALCOLM J S1MPKIN, MARSHALL, AND 
 
 co.; E. HODGSON; B. FELLOWES ; H. BOHN; c. DOLMAN; H. BICKERS; 
 j. H. PARKER, OXFORD; j. AND j. j. DEIGHTON, CAMBRIDGE; G. AND j. 
 ROBINSON, LIVERPOOL; AND w. STRONG, BRISTOL. 
 
 M.DCCC.XXXIX.
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTEO BY JAMES MOVES, CASTLE STREET, 
 LEICESTER SQUARE.
 
 BR75- 
 Tcl\ 
 
 v. a 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 THE LIFE OF OUR BLESSED LORD AND SAVIOUR 
 JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 DEDICATION ix 
 
 The Preface xvii 
 
 An Exhortation to the Imitation of the Life of Christ lix 
 
 The Prayer Ixxii 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 The History of the Conception of Jesus 1 
 
 AD SECTION I.] Considerations upon the Annunciation of the Blessed 
 
 Mary, and the Conception of the Holy Jesus . 4 
 
 The Prayer 9 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 The bearing of Jesus in the Womb of the Blessed Virgin 9 
 
 AD SECTION II.] Considerations concerning the Circumstances of the 
 
 Interval between the Conception and Nativity 12 
 
 The Prayer 18 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 The Nativity of our Blessed Saviour Jesus 19 
 
 AD SECTION III.] Considerations upon the Birth of our Blessed Saviour 
 
 Jesus 22 
 
 The Prayer 29 
 
 DISCOURSE I. Of nursing Children, in Imitation of the Blessed Virgin- 
 Mother 30 
 
 The Prayer 42 

 
 VI CONTENTS. 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Of the great and glorious Accidents, happening about the Birth of Jesus '43 
 AD SECTION IV.] Considerations upon the Apparition of the Angels to 
 
 the Shepherds 50 
 
 The Prayer 55 
 
 Considerations of the Epiphany of the Blessed Jesus by a Star, and the 
 
 Adoration of Jesus by the Eastern Magi 55 
 
 The Prayer 63 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 Of the Circumcision of Jesus, and his Presentation in the Temple .... 63 
 AD SECTION V.] Considerations upon the Circumcision of the holy 
 
 Child Jesus 66 
 
 The Prayer 73 
 
 DISCOURSE II. Of the Virtue of Obedience 74 
 
 A Prayer for the Grace of Holy Obedience . . . . 98 
 
 Considerations upon the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple 99 
 
 The Prayer 104 
 
 DISCOURSE III. Of Meditation 105 
 
 The Prayer 123 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 Of the Death of the Holy Innocents, or the Babes of Bethlehem, and 
 the Flight of Jesus into Egypt 124 
 
 AD SECTION VI.] Considerations upon the Death of the Innocents, 
 and the Flight of the Holy Jesus into Egypt 130 
 
 The Prayer 140 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 Of the younger Years of Jesus, and his Disputation with the Doctors in 
 the Temple 141 
 
 AD SECTION VII.] Considerations upon the Disputation of Jesus with 
 the Doctors in the Temple 144 
 
 The Prayer 148 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 Of the Preaching of John the Baptist, preparative to the Manifestation 
 
 of Jesus 148 
 
 AD SECTION VIII.] Considerations upon the Preaching of John the 
 
 Baptist 151 
 
 The Prayer 158 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. Of Mortification and Corporal Austerities 159 
 
 The Prayer 182
 
 CONTENTS. Vll 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Of Jesus being baptized, and going into the Wilderness to be tempted . . 183 
 AD SECTION IX.] Considerations upon the Baptizing, Fasting, and 
 
 Temptation of the Holy Jesus by the Devil 188 
 
 The Prayer 200 
 
 DISCOURSE V. Of Temptation 201 
 
 The Prayer 233 
 
 DISCOURSE VI. Of Baptism. Parti 234 
 
 Of baptizing Infants. Part II 258 
 
 The Prayer 296 
 
 APPENDIX AD SECTION IX .J Christ's Prayer at his Baptism 297 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND DEATH OF THE 
 HOLY JESUS. 
 
 DEDICATION 303 
 
 SECTION X. 
 
 Of the first Manifestation of Jesus, by the Testimony of John, and a 
 
 Miracle 305 
 
 AD SECTION X.] Considerations touching the Vocation of five Dis- 
 ciples, and of the first Miracle of Jesus, done at Cana, in Galilee . . 309 
 
 The Prayer 317 
 
 DISCOURSE VIL Of Faith 318 
 
 The Prayer 332 
 
 SECTION XI. 
 
 Of Christ's going to Jerusalem to the Passover, the first time after his 
 Manifestation, and what followed, till the Expiration of the Office 
 
 of John the Baptist 334 
 
 AD SECTION XL] Considerations upon the first Journey of the Holy 
 Jesus to Jerusalem, when he whipped the Merchants out of the 
 
 Temple 333 
 
 The Prayer 342 
 
 DISCOURSE VIII. Of the Religion of Holy Places 343 
 
 The Prayer 360 
 
 SECTION XII. 
 
 Of Jesus's Departure into Galilee ; his Manner of Life, Miracles, and 
 Preaching ; his calling of Disciples ; and what happened until the 
 Second Passover . 361
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 AD SECTION XII.] Considerations upon the Intercourse happening 
 
 between the Holy Jesus and the Woman of Samaria 372 
 
 The Prayer 381 
 
 AD SECTION XIII.] Considerations upon Christ's First Preaching, and 
 
 the Accidents happening about that Time 382 
 
 The Prayer 390 
 
 DISCOURSE IX. Of Repentance 391 
 
 The Prayer 441 
 
 Upon Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and of the Eight Beatitudes .... 442 
 The Prayer 464
 
 TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 AND MOST TRULY NOBLE LORD, 
 
 CHRISTOPHER LORD HATTON, 
 
 BARON HATTON, OF KIRBY, &c. 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 WHEN interest divides the Church, and the calen- 
 tures of men breathe out in problems and unactive 
 discourses, each part, in pursuance of its own 
 portion, follows that proposition, which complies 
 with and bends in all the flexures of its temporal 
 ends : and while all strive for truth, they hug their 
 own opinions dressed up in her imagery, and they 
 dispute for ever ; and either the question is inde- 
 terminable, or, which is worse, men will never be 
 convinced. For such is the nature of disputings, 
 that they begin commonly in mistakes, they pro- 
 ceed with zeal and fancy, and end not at all but 
 in schisms and uncharitable names, and too often 
 dip their feet in blood. In the mean time, he that 
 gets the better of his adversary, oftentimes gets no 
 good to himself; because, although he hath fast 
 
 VOL. II. B
 
 X DEDICATION. 
 
 hold upon the right side of the problem, he may be 
 an ill man in the midst of his triumphant disputa- 
 tions. And therefore it was not here, that God 
 would have man's felicity to grow ; for our con- 
 dition had been extremely miserable, if our final 
 state had been placed upon an uncertain hill, and 
 the way to it had been upon the waters, upon 
 which no spirit but that of contradiction and dis- 
 cord did ever move : for the man should have 
 tended to an end of an uncertain dwelling, and 
 walked to it by ways not discernible, and arrived 
 thither by chance ; which, becauSe it is irregular, 
 would have discomposed the pleasures of a Christian 
 hope, as the very disputing hath already destroyed 
 charity, and disunited the continuity of faith ; 
 and in the consequent there would be no virtue, 
 and no felicity. But God, who never loved that 
 man should be too ambitiously busy in imitating his 
 wisdom, (and man lost paradise for it,) is most 
 desirous we should imitate his goodness, and tran- 
 scribe copies of those excellent emanations from 
 his holiness, whereby as he communicates himself 
 to us in mercies, so he propounds himself imitable 
 by us in graces. And in order to this, God hath 
 described our way plain, certain, and determined ; 
 and although he was pleased to leave us unde- 
 termined in the questions of exterior communion, 
 yet he put it past all question, that we are bound to 
 be charitable. He hath placed the question of the
 
 DEDICATION. XI 
 
 state of separation in the dark, in hidden and 
 undiscerned regions ; but he hath opened the win- 
 dows of heaven, and given great light to us, teaching 
 how we are to demean ourselves in the state of 
 conjunction. Concerning the salvation of heathens 
 he was not pleased to give us account ; but he hath 
 clearly described the duty of Christians, and tells 
 upon what terms alone we shall be saved. And 
 although the not inquiring into the ways of God 
 and the strict rules of practice have been instru- 
 mental to the preserving them free from the ser- 
 pentine enfoldings and labyrinths of dispute, yet 
 God also, with a great design of mercy, hath writ 
 his commandments in so large characters, and en- 
 graven them in such tables, that no man can want 
 the records, nor yet skill to read the hand-writing 
 upon this wall, if he understands what he under- 
 stands, that is, what is placed in his own spirit. 
 For God was therefore desirous that human nature 
 should be perfected with moral, not intellectual 
 excellencies ; because these only are of use and 
 compliance with our present state and conjunction. 
 If God had given to eagles an appetite to swim, 
 or to the elephant strong desires to fly, he would 
 have ordered that an abode in the sea and the air 
 respectively should have been proportionable to 
 their manner of living; for so God hath done to 
 man, fitting him with such excellencies, which are 
 useful to him in his ways and progress to per-
 
 Xli DEDICATION. 
 
 fection. A man hath great use and need of justice, 
 and all the instances of morality serve his natural 
 and political ends ; he cannot live without them, 
 and be happy: but the filling the rooms of the 
 understanding with airy and ineffective notions, is 
 just such an excellency, as it is in a man to imitate 
 the voice of birds; at his very best the nightingale 
 shall excel him, and it is of no use to that end, 
 which God designed him in the first intentions of 
 creation. 
 
 In pursuance of this consideration, I have chosen 
 to serve the purposes of religion by doing assistance 
 to that part of theology, which is wholly practical ; 
 that which makes us wiser, therefore, because it 
 makes us better. And truly, my Lord, it is enough 
 to weary the spirit of a disputer, that he shall argue 
 till he hath lost his voice, and his time, and some- 
 times the question too ; and yet no man shall be of 
 his mind more than was before. How few turn 
 Lutherans, or Calvinists, or Roman Catholics, from 
 the religion either of their country or interest ! 
 Possibly two or three weak or interested, fantastic 
 and easy, prejudicate and effeminate understandings, 
 pass from church to church, upon grounds as weak 
 as those for which formerly they did dissent ; and 
 the same arguments are good or bad, as exterior 
 accidents or interior appetites shall determine. I 
 deny not but, for great causes, some opinions are to 
 be quitted: but when I consider how few do for-
 
 DEDICATION. Xlll 
 
 sake any, and when any do, oftentimes they choose 
 the wrong side, and they that take the righter, do 
 it so by contingency, and the advantage also is so 
 little, I believe that the triumphant persons have 
 but small reason to please themselves in gaining 
 proselytes, since their purchase is so small, and as 
 inconsiderable to their triumph, as it is unprofitable 
 to them, who change for the worse or for the better 
 upon unworthy motives. In all this there is nothing 
 certain, nothing noble. But he that follows the 
 work of God, that is, labours to gain souls, not to a 
 sect and a subdivision, but to the Christian religion, 
 that is, to the faith and obedience of the Lord Jesus, 
 hath a promise to be assisted and rewarded : and all 
 those that go to heaven, are the purchase of such 
 undertakings, the fruit of such culture and labours ; 
 for it is only a holy life that lands us there. 
 
 And now, my Lord, I have told you my reasons, 
 I shall not be ashamed to say, that I am weary and 
 toiled with rowing up and down in the seas of 
 questions, which the interests of Christendom have 
 commenced, and in many propositions, of which 
 I am heartily persuaded I am not certain that I am 
 not deceived ; and I find that men are most con- 
 fident of those articles, which they can so little 
 prove, that they never made questions of _ them : 
 but I am most certain, that by living in the religion 
 and fear of God, in obedience to the King, in the 
 charities and duties of communion with my spiritual
 
 XIV DEDICATION. 
 
 guides, in justice and love with all the world in 
 their several proportions, I shall not fail of that end, 
 which is perfective of human nature, and which will 
 never be obtained by disputing. 
 
 Here, therefore, when I had fixed my thoughts, 
 upon sad apprehensions that God was removing our 
 candlestick, (for why should he not, when men 
 themselves put the light out, and pull the stars from 
 their orbs, so hastening the day of God's judg- 
 ment?) I was desirous to put a portion of the holy 
 fire into a repository, which might help to re- 
 enkindle the incense, when it shall please God 
 religion shall return, and all his servants sing, " In 
 convertendo captivitatem Sion," with a voice of 
 eucharist. 
 
 But now, my Lord, although the results and issues 
 of my retirements and study do naturally run to- 
 wards you, and carry no excuse for their forward- 
 ness, but the confidence that your goodness rejects 
 no emanation of a great affection ; yet in this ad- 
 dress I am apt to promise to myself a fair interpret- 
 ation, because I bring you an instrument and 
 auxiliaries to that devotion, whereby we believe 
 you are dear to God, and know that you are to 
 good men. And if these little sparks of holy fire, 
 which I have heaped together, do not give life to 
 your prepared and already enkindled spirit, yet 
 they will sometimes help to entertain a thought, to 
 actuate a passion, to employ and hallow a fancy,
 
 DEDICATION. XV 
 
 and put the body of your piety into fermentation, 
 by presenting you with the circumstances and parts 
 of such meditations, which are symbolical to those 
 of your daily office, and which are the passe-temps 
 of your severest hours. My Lord, I am not so vain 
 to think, that in the matter of devotion, and the 
 rules of justice and religion, (which is the business 
 of your life,) I can add any thing to your heap of 
 excellent things : but I have known and felt comfort 
 by reading, or hearing from other persons, what I 
 knew myself; and it was unactive upon my spirit, 
 till it was made vigorous and effective from without. 
 And in this sense I thought I might not be useless 
 and impertinent. 
 
 My Lord, I designed to be instrumental to the 
 salvation of all persons, that shall read my book : 
 but unless (because souls are equal in their sub- 
 stance, and equally redeemed) we are obliged to 
 wish the salvation of all men, with the greatest, 
 that is, with equal desires, I did intend, in the 
 highest manner I could, to express how much I am 
 to pay to you, by doing the offices of that duty, 
 which, although you less need, yet I was most 
 bound to pay, even the duties and charities of 
 religion ; having this design, that when posterity 
 (for certainly they will learn to distinguish things 
 and persons) shall see your honoured name em- 
 ployed to separate and rescue these papers from 
 contempt, they may with the more confidence
 
 XVI DEDICATION. 
 
 expect in them something fit to be offered to such 
 a personage. My Lord, I have my end, if I serve 
 God and you, and the needs and interests of souls ; 
 but shall think my return full of reward, if you 
 shall give me pardon, and put me into your litanies, 
 and account me in the number of your relatives 
 and servants ; for indeed, my Lord, I am most 
 heartily 
 
 Your Lordship's most affectionate 
 
 And most obliged Servant, 
 
 JER. TAYLOR.
 
 THE PREFACE. 
 
 CHRISTIAN religion hath so many exterior advantages to 
 its reputation and advancement, from the Author and from 
 the Ministers, from the fountain of its origination and the 
 channels of conveyance (God being the Author, the Word 
 Incarnate being the great Doctor and Preacher of it, his 
 life and death being its consignation, the Holy Spirit being 
 the great argument and demonstration of it, and the Apostles 
 the organs and conduits of its dissemination,) that it were_ 
 glorious beyond all opposition and disparagement, though 
 we should not consider the excellency of its matter, and the 
 certainty of its probation, and the efficacy of its power, and 
 the perfection and rare accomplishment of its design. But 
 I consider that Christianity is therefore very little understood, 
 because it is reproached upon that pretence, which its very 
 being and design does infinitely confute. It is esteemed to 
 be a religion contrary in its principles or in its precepts to 
 that wisdom 3 whereby the world is governed, and common- 
 wealths increase, and greatness is acquired, and kings go to 
 war, and our ends of interest are served and promoted ; and 
 that it is an institution so wholly in order to another world, 
 that it does not at all communicate with this, neither in its 
 end nor in its discourses, neither in the policy nor in the 
 philosophy ; and therefore, as the doctrine of the cross was 
 entertained at first in scorn by the Greeks, in offence and 
 indignation by the Jews, so is the whole system and col- 
 lective body of Christian philosophy esteemed imprudent by 
 
 Fatis accede deisque, 
 
 Et cole felices, miseros fuge. Sidera terra 
 Ut distant, et flamma mari, sic utile recto. 
 Sceptrorum vis tota pent, si pendere justa 
 Incipit ; evertitque arces respectus Lonesti. 
 Libertas scelerum est, quae regna invisa tuetur, 
 Sublatusque modus gladiis. Facere omnia saeve 
 Non impune licet, nisi dum facis. Exeat aula 
 Qui volet esse pius : virtus et sitnima potestas 
 Non coeunt. Semper metuet quern srcva pudebunt. 
 
 Lncan, lib. viii. 486.
 
 XV111 PREFACE. 
 
 the politics of the world, and flat and irrational by some men 
 of excellent wit and sublime discourse ; who, because the 
 permissions and dictates of natural, true, and essential reason, 
 are, at no hand, to be contradicted by any superinduced 
 discipline, think that whatsoever seems contrary to their 
 reason is also violent to our nature, and offers indeed a good 
 to us, but by ways unnatural and unreasonable. And I 
 think they are very great strangers to the present affairs and 
 persuasions of the world, who know not that Christianity is 
 very much undervalued upon this principle, men insensibly 
 becoming unchristian, because they are persuaded, that 
 much of the greatness of the world is contradicted by the 
 religion. But certainly no mistake can be greater: for the 
 holy Jesus by his doctrine did instruct the understandings of 
 men, made their appetites more obedient, their reason better 
 principled and argumentative with less deception, their wills 
 apter for noble choices, their governments more prudent, 
 their present felicities greater, their hopes more excellent, 
 and that duration, which was intended to them by their 
 Creator, he made manifest to be a state of glory : and all 
 this was to be done and obtained respectively by the ways 
 of reason and nature, such as God gave to man then, when 
 at first he designed him to a noble and an immortal con- 
 dition ; the Christian law being, for the substance of it, 
 nothing but the restitution 6 and perfection of the law of 
 nature. And this I shall represent in all the parts of its 
 natural progression ; and I intend it not only as a preface to 
 the following books but for an introduction and invitation 
 to the whole religion. 
 
 2. For God, when he made the first emanations of his 
 eternal being, and created man as the end of all his pro- 
 ductions here below, designed him to an end such as himself 
 was pleased to choose for him, and gave him abilities 
 proportionable to attain that end. God gave man a reason- 
 able and an intelligent nature ; c and to this noble nature he 
 
 b 'Ovx 'lovtai'fffii!, tu% atiff!( ns trivet, (scil. ante diluvium) XX', us il-rtit, 
 ri mi xtrrif iuT/>'/.iTii/t[Ai>n It ry g*ri cty'ia. rev Qiau xaSaXix? xxAj<r/a, d-jf ai>X,r>t 
 tlfa., xeti txrrtooi TaXii a.*ox.a.).u$$CiffcL. Epiph. Panar. lib. i. Tom. I. num. 5. 
 
 Nihil autem magis congruit cum hominis natura quam Cbristi philosophia, 
 quae pene iiihil aliud agit quam ut naturam collapsam suse restituat innocentiae. 
 Erasm. in xi. cop. Matt. 
 
 c Ratio Dei Deus est humanis rebus consulens, quse causa est hominibus
 
 PREFACE. XIX 
 
 designed as noble an end : he intended man should live well 
 
 O 
 
 and happily, in proportion to his appetites, and in the reason- 
 able doing and enjoying those good things which God 
 made him naturally to desire. For, since God gave him 
 proper and peculiar appetites with proportion to their own 
 objects, and gave him reason and abilities not only to per- 
 ceive the sapidness and relish of those objects, but also to 
 make reflex acts upon such perceptions, and to perceive 
 that he did perceive, which was a rare instrument of pleasure 
 and pain respectively ; it is but reasonable to think, that 
 God, who created him in mercy, did not only proportion a 
 being to his nature, but did also provide satisfaction for all 
 those appetites and desires which himself had created and 
 put into him. For, if he had not, then the being of a man 
 had been nothing but a state of perpetual affliction, and the 
 creation of men had been the greatest unmercifulness in the 
 world ; disproportionate objects being mere instances of 
 affliction, and those unsatisfied appetites nothing else but 
 instruments of torment. 
 
 3. Therefore, that this intendment of God and nature 
 should be effected, that is, that man should become happy, 
 it is naturally necessary that all his regular appetites 
 should have an object appointed them, in the fruition of 
 which felicity must consist : because nothing is felicity but 
 when what was reasonably or orderly desired is possessed ; 
 for the having what is not desired, or the wanting of what 
 we desired, or the desiring what we should not, are the 
 several constituent parts of infelicity; and it can have no 
 other constitution. 
 
 4. Now the first appetite man had in order to his great 
 end was, to be as perfect as he could, that is, to be as like 
 the best thing he knew as his nature and condition would 
 permit. d And although by Adam's fancy and affection to 
 his wife, and by God's appointing fruit for him, we see the 
 lower appetites were first provided for ; yet the first appetite 
 which man had, as he distinguishes from lower creatures, 
 was to be like God, (for by that the devil tempted him) ; and 
 
 bene beateque vivendi, si non concessum sibi munus a summo Deo negligant 
 Chalcid. ad Timae. 16. 
 
 "E rais Qvffii Si? T /3tXT;j, i ivSi^iroM, viragxiit ^SXX' 
 libi^ofjiiiui TO /3X<n-Tv, .4rist. de Ctrlo.
 
 XX PREFACE. 
 
 in order to that he had naturally sufficient instruments and 
 abilities. For although by being abused with the devil's 
 sophistry he chose an incompetent instrument, yet because 
 it is naturally certain, that love is the greatest assimilation of 
 the object and the faculty, Adam by loving God might very 
 well approach nearer him according as he could. And it 
 was natural to Adam to love God, who was his Father, his 
 Creator, the fountain of all good to him, and of excellency 
 in himself; and whatsoever is understood to be such, it is 
 as natural for us to love, and we do it for the same reasons, 
 for which we love any thing else ; and we cannot love for 
 any other reason, but for one or both these in their proportion 
 apprehended. 
 
 5. But, because God is not only excellent and good, but, 
 by being supreme Lord, hath power to give us what laws he 
 pleases, obedience to his laws therefore becomes naturally, 
 but consequently, necessary, when God decrees them ; be- 
 cause he does make himself an enemy to all rebels and 
 disobedient sons, by affixing penalties to the transgressors : 
 and therefore disobedience is naturally inconsistent, not only 
 with love to ourselves, because it brings afflictions upon us, 
 but with love to our supreme Lawgiver : it is contrary to the 
 natural love we bear to God so understood, because it makes 
 him our enemy, whom naturally and reasonably we cannot 
 but love ; and therefore also opposite to the first appetite of 
 man, which is to be like God, in order to which we have 
 naturally no instrument but love, and the consequents of 
 love. 
 
 6. And this is not at all to be contradicted by a pretence 
 that a man does not naturally know there is a God ; because 
 by the same instrument by which we know that the world 
 began, or that there was a first man, by the same we know 
 that there is a God, and that he also knew it too, and 
 conversed with that God, and received laws from him. For 
 if we discourse of man, and the law of nature, and the first 
 appetites, and the first reasons abstractedly, and in their own 
 complexions, and without all their relations and provisions, 
 we discourse jejunely, and falsely, and unprofitably. For as 
 man did not come by chance, nor by himself, but from the 
 universal Cause, so we know that this universal Cause did do 
 all that was necessary for him, in order to the end he appointed
 
 PREFACE. XXI 
 
 him. And therefore to begin the history of a man's reason, 
 and the philosophy of his nature, it is not necessary for us to 
 place him there, where without the consideration of a God, e 
 or society, or law, or order, he is to be placed, that is, in the 
 state of a thing rather than a person ; but God by revelations 
 and scriptures having helped us with propositions and parts 
 of story relating man's first and real condition, from thence 
 we can take the surest account, and make the most perfect 
 derivation of propositions. 
 
 7. From this first appetite of man to be like God, and the 
 first natural instrument of it, love, descend all the first obli- 
 gations of religion ; in which there are some parts more 
 immediately and naturally expressive, others by superin- 
 duction and positive command. Natural religion I call such 
 actions, which either are proper to the nature of the thing we 
 worship, (such as are giving praises to him, and speaking 
 excellent things of him, and praying to him for such things 
 as we need, and a readiness to obey him in whatsoever he 
 commands,) or else such as are expressions proportionate to 
 our natures that make them ; that is, giving to God the 
 best things we have, and by which we can declare our 
 esteem of his honour and excellency ; assigning some portion 
 of our time, of our estate, the labours of our persons, the 
 increase of our store, first fruits, sacrifices, oblations, and 
 tithes ; f which therefore God rewards, because he hath 
 allowed to our natures no other instruments of doing him 
 
 O 
 
 honour, but by giving to him in some manner, which we 
 believe honourable and apt, the best thing we have. 
 
 8. The next appetite a man hath is (o beget one like 
 himself, God having implanted that appetite into man for 
 the propagation of mankind, and given it as his first blessing 
 and permission : " It is not good for man to be alone ;" and 
 " Increase and multiply." And Artemidorus* had some- 
 thing of this doctrine, when he reckons these two laws of 
 nature, " Deum colere, mulieribus vinci," " to worship God, 
 and to be overcome by women," in proportion to his two first 
 
 e Ou ya^ IfTtf tup?* -nil lixetiofuvm aXX) fi, mftf XXjv yitffit, r> T) ix rtv 
 AIOJ, XKI rrit Ix rfi; xoi*r,s Quff'.us- it<nu&i yu, $i7 vrati TO ruavnv iv iZ 1 "' "/">*- 
 %jptff TI \p7v -ri^i <iya.$uv xxi KO.XUI Chrysip. de Diis, 3. 
 
 2<rsvd;v,xa/ 3-t/s/y, xat avriigxiffd-ai xttTa TO, -jrxToia., ixuffraii rearvxu xa0a/>us, xeu 
 firi i-riffia uou.'tiui, ftr^t a'icsXwj, u-v>\ yXir^gw;, ftttSt vTta 1via.ft.iv. F.pict. C. xxxviii. 
 
 * De Somn. Sign.
 
 XX11 PREFACE. 
 
 appetites of nature, " to be like God, and to have another like 
 himself." This appetite God only made regular by his first 
 provisions of satisfaction. He gave to man a woman for a 
 wife, for the companion of his sorrows, for the instrument of 
 multiplication ; and yet provided him but of one, and inti- 
 mated he should have no more : which we do not only know 
 by an after revelation, the holy Jesus having declared it to 
 have been God's purpose ; but Adam himself understood it, 
 as appears by his first discourses at the entertainment of his 
 new bride. h And although there were permissions afterward 
 of polygamy, yet there might have been a greater pretence 
 of necessity at first, because of enlarging and multiplying 
 fountains rather than channels ; and three or four at first 
 would have enlarged mankind by greater proportion than 
 many more afterwards ; little distances near the centre make 
 greater and larger figures, than when they part near the 
 fringes of the circle ; and therefore those after permissions 
 were to avoid a greater evil, not a hallowing of the license, 
 but a reproach of their infirmity. And certainly the multi- 
 plication of wives is contariant to that design of love and 
 endearment, which God intended at first between man and 
 wife. 
 
 Columbia mille, 
 
 Non illis generis nexus, non pignora curse, 
 Sed numero languet pietas ' 
 
 And amongst them that have many wives, k the relation 
 and necessitude is trifling and loose, and they are all equally 
 contemptible ; because the mind entertains no loves or union 
 where the object is multiplied, and the act unfixed and 
 distracted. So that this having a great commodity in order 
 to man's great end, that is, of living well and happily, seems 
 to be intended by God in the nature of things and instru- 
 ments natural and reasonable towards man's end ; and there- 
 fore to be a law, if not natural, yet at least positive and 
 superinduced at first, in order to man's proper end. How- 
 ever, by the provision which God made for satisfaction of 
 
 b Gen. ii. 24. ' Claudian. Bell. Gildon. 441. 
 
 k Sallust. Jugurth. c. Ixxx. 
 
 avil "yaf xXv, 
 
 vett yvia.tx.uiy avSj' iV fit iocs '-" 
 
 "AXX* /{ yit/av /JXta-avrtf \via.'iai X.V-XOH 
 
 ^Ttfytvffiv, ofTi{ p.* xaxaf oixt'y &Xu Einip. Androm. 179.
 
 PREFACE. XX111 
 
 this appetite of nature, all those actions, which deflect and 
 err from the order of this end, are unnatural and inordinate, 
 and not permitted by the concession of God, nor the order of 
 the thing ; hut such actions only, which naturally produce 
 the end of this provision and satisfaction, are natural, regular, 
 and good. 
 
 9. But by this means man grew into a society and a 
 family, and having productions of his own kind, which he 
 naturally desired, and therefore loved, he was consequently 
 obliged to assist them in order to their end, that they might 
 become like him, that is, perfect men, and brought up to the 
 same state : and they also by being at first impotent, and for 
 ever after beneficiaries 1 and obliged persons, are for the 
 present subject to their parents, and for ever after bound to 
 duty ; because there is nothing which they can do, that can 
 directly produce so great a benefit to the parents as they 
 have to the children. From hence naturally descend all 
 those mutual obligations between parents and children, which 
 are instruments of protection and benefit on the one side, 
 and duty and obedience on the other ; and all these to be 
 expressed according as either of their necessities shall re- 
 quire, or any stipulation or contract shall appoint, or shall 
 be superinduced by any positive laws of God or man. 
 
 10. In natural descent of the generations of man this 
 one first family was multiplied so much, that for conveniency 
 they were forced to divide their dwellings; and this they did 
 by families especially, the great father being the major-domo 
 to all his minors. And this division of dwellings, although 
 it kept the same form and power in the several families, 
 which were in the original, yet it introduced some new 
 necessities, which, although they varied in the instance, yet 
 were to be determined by such instruments of reason, which 
 were given to us at first upon foresight of the public neces- 
 sities of the world. And when the families came to be 
 divided, that their common parent being extinct, no master 
 of a family had power over another master ; the rights of 
 such men and their natural power became equal, because 
 there was nothing to distinguish them, and because they 
 
 1 Nihil enim est liberis proprium, quod non parentum sit prius, qui aut 
 de suodederant, aut acquirendi praebuerant causas. Phito.
 
 XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 might do equal injury, and invade each other's possessions, 
 and disturb their peace, and surprise their liberty. And so 
 also was their power of doing benefit equal, though not the 
 same in kind. But God, who made man a sociable creature, 
 because he knew it was " not good for him to be alone," so 
 dispensed the abilities and possibilities of doing good, that 
 in something or other every man might need or be benefited 
 by every man. Therefore, that they might pursue the end 
 of nature, and their own appetites of living well and happily, 
 they were forced to consent to such contracts, which might 
 secure and supply to every one those good things, without 
 which we could not live happily. Both the appetites, the 
 irascible and the concupiscible, fear of evil, and desire of 
 benefit, were the sufficient endearments of contracts, of 
 societies and republics. And upon this stock were decreed 
 and hallowed all those propositions, without which bodies 
 politic and societies of men cannot be happy." And in the 
 transaction of these, many accidents daily happening, it 
 grew still reasonable, that is, necessary to the end of living 
 happily, but all those after obligations should be observed 
 with a proportion of the same faith and endearment which 
 bound the first contracts. For though the natural law be 
 always the same, yet some parts of it are primely necessary, 
 others by supposition and accident ; and both are of the 
 same necessity, that is, equally necessary in the several 
 cases. Thus, to obey a king is as necessary and naturally 
 reasonable as to obey a father, that is, supposing there be 
 a king, as it is certain naturally a man cannot be, but a 
 father must be supposed. If it be made necessary that 
 I promise, it is also necessary that I perform it ; for else 
 I shall return to that inconvenience, which I sought to avoid 
 when I made the promise ; and though the instance be very 
 far removed from the first necessities and accidents of our 
 prime being and production, yet the reason still pursues us, 
 and natural reason reaches up to the very last minutes, and 
 orders the most remote particulars of our well-being. 
 
 11. Thus, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to kill, 
 are very reasonable prosecutions of the great end of nature, 
 
 m Animus inveniet liberalitatis materiam, etiam inter angustias pauper- 
 tatis. Senec. de Benefic. c. i. 
 
 n Commoda praeterea patrias tibi prima pntarp Litciliut.
 
 PREFACE. XXV 
 
 of living well and happily ; but when a man is said to steal, 
 when to be a murderer, when to be incestuous, the natural 
 law doth not teach in all cases ; but when the superinduced 
 constitution hath determined the particular law, by natural 
 reason we are obliged to observe it : because, though the 
 civil power makes the instance, and determines the par- 
 ticular; yet right reason makes the sanction, and passes the 
 obligation. The law of nature makes the major proposition; 
 but the civil constitution, or any superinduced law, makes 
 the assumption in a practical syllogism. To kill is not 
 murder ; but to kill such persons, whom I ought not. It was 
 not murder among the Jews, to kill a manslayer, before he 
 entered a city of refuge ; to kill the same man after his entry, 
 was. Among the Romans, to kill an adulteress or a 
 ravisher in the act, was lawful ; with us, it is murder. Murder, 
 and incest, and theft, always were unlawful ; but the same 
 actions were not always the same crimes. And it is just 
 with these, as with disobedience, which was ever criminal; 
 but the same thing was not estimated to be disobedience ; 
 nor indeed could any thing be so, till the sanction of a 
 superior had given the instance of obedience. So for theft : 
 to catch fish in rivers, or deer, or pigeons, when they were 
 esteemed ferae naturae, of a wild condition, and so prim6 
 occupantis, was lawful; just as to take or kill badgers or 
 foxes, and beavers and lions : but when the laws had appro- 
 priated rivers, and divided shores, and imparked deer, and 
 housed pigeons, it became theft to take them without leave. 
 To despoil the Egyptians was not theft, when God, who is 
 the Lord of all possessions, had bidden the Israelites ; but to 
 do so now, were the breach of the natural law, and of a 
 divine commandment. For the natural law, I said, is eternal 
 in the sanction, but variable in the instance and the ex- 
 pression. And indeed the laws of nature are very few ; they 
 were but two at first, and but two at last, when the great 
 change was made from families to kingdoms. The first is, 
 to do duty to God ; the second is, to do to ourselves and our 
 neighbours, that is, to our neighbours as to ourselves, all 
 those actions, which naturally, reasonably, or by institution 
 or emergent necessity, are in order to a happy life. Our 
 
 A. Gellius, lib. x. 23. 
 VOL. II. C
 
 XXVI PREFACE. 
 
 blessed Saviour reduces all the law to these two : 1. Love 
 the Lord with all thy heart : 2. Love thy neighbour as 
 thyself. In which I observe, in verification of my former 
 discourse, 1 ' that love is the first natural bond of duty to God, 
 and so also it is to our neighbour. And, therefore, all inter- 
 course with our neighbour was founded in, and derived from, 
 the two greatest endearments of love in the world. A man 
 came to have a neighbour, by being a husband and a father. 
 12. So that still there are but two great natural laws, 
 binding us in our relations to God and man ; we remaining 
 essentially, and, by the very design of creation, obliged to 
 God in all, and to our neighbours in the proportions of 
 equality, as thyself; that is, that he be permitted and pro- 
 moted, in the order to his living well and happily, as thou 
 art : for love being there not an affection, but the duty that 
 results from the first natural bands of love, which began 
 neighbourhood, signifies justice, equality, and such reason- 
 able proceedings, which are in order to our common end of a 
 happy life ; and is the same with that other, " Whatsoever 
 ye would that men should do to you, do you to them :" and 
 that is certainly the greatest and most effective love ; because 
 it best promotes that excellent end, which God designed for 
 our natural perfection. All other particulars are but prose- 
 cutions of these two, that is, of the order of nature : save 
 only that there is a third law, which is a part of love too ; it 
 is self-love ; and, therefore, is rather supposed, than at the first 
 expressed, because a man is reasonably to be presumed to 
 have in him a sufficient stock of self-love, to serve the ends 
 of his nature and creation ; and that is, that man demean and 
 use his own body in that decorum, which is most orderly 
 and proportionate to his perfective end of a happy life ; 
 which Christian religion calls sobriety ; and it is a prohi- 
 bition of those uncharitable, self-destroying sins of drunken- 
 ness, gluttony, and inordinate and unreasonable manners of 
 lust, destructive of nature's intendments, or at least no ways 
 promoting them. For it is naturally lawful to satisfy any of 
 these desires, when the desire does not carry the satisfaction 
 beyond the design of nature, that is, to the violation of 
 health, or that happy living, which consists in observing 
 
 P Num. 4.
 
 PREFACE. XXVll 
 
 those contracts, winch mankind thought necessary to be 
 made, in order to the same great end ; unless where God 
 hath superinduced a restraint, making an instance of sobriety 
 to become an act of religion, or to pass into an expression of 
 duty to him : but then it is not a natural, but a religious 
 sobriety, and may be instanced in fasting or abstinence from 
 some kinds of meat, or some times or manners of conjuga- 
 tion. These are the three natural laws, described in the 
 Christian doctrine; that we live, 1. godly; 2. soberly; 
 3. righteously. And the particulars of the first are ordinarily 
 to be determined by God immediately, or his vicegerents, 
 and by reason observing and complying with the accidents of 
 the world, and dispositions of things and persons ; the second, 
 by the natural order of nature, by sense, and by experience ; 
 and the third, by human contracts and civil laws. 
 
 13. The result of the preceding discourse is this. Man, 
 who was designed by God to a happy life, was fitted with 
 sufficient means to attain that end, so that he might, if he 
 would, be happy ; but he was a free agent, and so might 
 choose. And it is possible, that man may fail of his end, and 
 be made miserable, by God, by himself, or by his neighbour ; 
 or, by the same persons, he may be made happy in the same 
 proportions, as they relate to him. If God be angry or 
 disobeyed, he becomes our enemy, and so we fail : if our 
 neighbour be injured or impeded in the direct order to his 
 happy living, he hath equal right against us, as we against 
 him, and so we fail that way: and if I be intemperate, I 
 grow sick and worsted in some faculty, and so I am. unhappy 
 in myself. But if I obey God, and do right to my neigh- 
 bour, and confine myself within the order and design of 
 nature; I am secured in all ends of blessing, in which I can 
 be assisted by these three, that is, by all my relatives ; there 
 being no end of man designed bv God in order to his 
 
 
 
 happiness, to which these are not proper and sufficient 
 instruments. Man can have no other relations, no other 
 discourses, no other regular appetites, but what are served 
 and satisfied by religion, by sobriety, and by justice. There 
 is nothing, whereby we can relate to any person, who can 
 hurt us, or do us benefit, but is provided for in these three. 
 These, therefore, are all ; and these are sufficient. 
 
 14. But now it is to be inquired, how these become laws
 
 XXV111 PREFACE. 
 
 obliging us to sin, if we transgress, even before any positive 
 law of God be superinduced : for else, how can it be a 
 natural law, that is, a law obliging all nations and all persons, 
 even such who have had no intercourse with God by way of 
 special revelation, and have lost all memory of tradition? 
 For either such persons, whatsoever they do, shall obtain 
 that end, which God designed for them in their nature, that 
 is, a happy life according to the duration of an immortal 
 nature ; or else they shall perish for prevaricating of these 
 laws. And yet, if they were no laws to them, and decreed 
 and made sacred by sanction, promulgation, and appendant 
 penalties, they could not so oblige them, as to become the 
 rule of virtue or vice. 
 
 15. When God gave us natural reason, that is, sufficient 
 ability to do all that should be necessary to live well and 
 happily, he also knew that some appetites might be irregular, 
 just as some stomachs would be sick, and some eyes blind ; 
 and a man, being a voluntary agent, might choose an evil 
 with as little reason, as the angels of darkness did, that is, 
 they might do unreasonably, because they would do so ; and 
 then a man's understanding should serve him but as an 
 instrument of mischief, and his will carry him on to it with 
 a blind and impotent desire ; and then the beauteous order of 
 creatures would be discomposed by unreasonable, and un- 
 considering, or evil persons. And, therefore, it was most 
 necessary, that man should have his appetites confined within 
 the designs of nature, and the order to his end; for a will, 
 without the restraint of a superior power or a perfect un- 
 derstanding, is like a knife in a child's hand, as apt for 
 mischief as for use. Therefore, it pleased God to bind man, 
 by the signature of laws, to observe those great natural 
 reasons, without which man could not arrive at the great end 
 of God's designing; that is, he could not live well and 
 happily. God, therefore, made it the first law to love him ; 
 and, which is all one, to worship him, to speak honour of 
 him, and to express it in all our ways, the chief whereof is 
 obedience. And this we find in the instance of that positive 
 precept, which God gave to Adam, and which was nothing 
 but a particular of the great general. But in this there is 
 little scruple, because it is not imaginable, that God would, 
 in any period of time, not take care that himself be honoured,
 
 PREFACE. XXIX 
 
 his glory being tjie very end, why he made man ; and there- 
 fore it must be certain, that this did, at the very first, pass 
 into a law. 
 
 16. But concerning this and other things, which are 
 usually called natural laws, I consider, that the things them- 
 selves were such, that the doing them was therefore declared 
 to be a law, because the not doing them did certainly bring 
 a punishment proportionable to the crime, that is, a just 
 deficiency from the end of creation , from a good and happy 
 life : 2. and also a punishment of a guilty conscience : which 
 I do not understand to be a fear of hell, or of any super- 
 vening penalty, unless the conscience be accidentally in- 
 structed into such fears by experience or revelation ; but 
 it is a " malum in genere rationis," a disease or evil of the 
 reasonable faculty ; that as there is a rare content in the 
 discourses of reason, there is a satisfaction, an acquiescency, 
 like that of creatures in their proper place, and definite 
 actions, and competent perfections ; so, in prevaricating the 
 natural law there is a dissatisfaction, a disease, a removing 
 out of the place, an unquietness of spirit, even when there is 
 no monitor or observer. " Adeo facinora atque flagitia sua 
 ipsi quoque in supplicium verterant. Neque frustra praestan- 
 tissimus [Plato] sapientiae firmare solitus est, si recludantur 
 tyrannorum mentes, posse aspici laniatus et ictus, quando ut 
 corpora verberibus, ita saevitia, libidine, malis consultis ani- 
 mus dilaceretur," said Tacitus q out of Plato, r whose words 
 are ; 'AXXa croXXax/j rov fAtydXov jSaff/Xswj sKi\aj36fAivof, % aXXoy 
 OTOvoZv fiaffi'h.su; jj duvdffrou, xartTfav ouSev uy/gg <jv rj ^uj/jjf, 
 aXXa dia/AZfAaffriyufAtvqv xa/ ovhuv fjMSrqv, vxb eV/ogx/wv xa/ d&x/'aj. 
 It is naturally certain, that the cruelty of tyrants torments 
 themselves, and is a hook in their nostrils, and a scourge to 
 their spirit; 5 and the pungency of forbidden lust is truly a 
 thorn in the flesh, full of anguish and secret vexation. 
 
 Quid, demens, manifesta negas 1 En pectus inustae 
 Deformant maculas, vitiisque inolevit imago, 
 
 said Claudian* of Rufinus. And it is certain to us, and 
 
 ' Annal. vi. 6. " In Gorgia, 61. 
 
 Lucian. in Catapl. Rhadamanthus, 'O-rofx at TI; vpui <rov ieyarrircii 
 rttaz. TO /3/sv, xzS-' ixafTov dura* dfa*r> trr'ty/tara. 'frl vris "^"^S figilpigii. Bipont. 
 t. iii. p. 205. f Claudian. de Rufin. lib. ii. 504.
 
 XXX PREFACE. 
 
 verified by the experience and observation of all wise nations, 
 though not naturally demonstrable, that this secret punish- 
 ment is sharpened and promoted in degrees by the hand of 
 Heaven, the finger of the same hand that writ the law in our 
 understandings. 
 
 17. But the prevarications of the natural law have also 
 their portion of a special punishment, besides the scourge of 
 an unquiet spirit. The man that disturbs his neighbour's 
 rest, meets with disturbances himself: and since I have natu- 
 rally no more power over my neighbour, than he hath over me, 
 (unless he descended naturally from me,) he hath an equal 
 privilege to defend himself, and to secure his quiet by dis- 
 turbing the order of my happy living, as I do his. And this 
 equal permission is certainly so great a sanction and sig- 
 nature of the law of justice, that, in the just proportion of 
 my receding from the reasonable prosecution of my end, in 
 the same proportion and degree my own infelicity is become 
 certain ; and this in several degrees up to the loss of all, 
 that is, of life itself: for where no further duration or differ- 
 ing state is known, there jjeath is ordinarily esteemed the 
 greatest infelicity ; where something beyond it is known, 
 there also it is known that such prevarication makes that 
 further duration to be unhappy. So that an affront is natu- 
 rally punished by an affront, the loss of a tooth with the loss 
 of a tooth, of an eye with an eye, the violent taking away of 
 another man's goods by the losing my own. For I am liable 
 to as great an evil as I infer, and naturally he is not unjust 
 that inflicts it. And he that is drunk, is a fool or a madman 
 for the time ; and that is his punishment, and declares the 
 law and the sin : and so in proportions to the transgressions 
 of sobriety. But when the first of the natural laws is vio- 
 lated, that is, God is disobeyed or dishonoured, or when the 
 greatest of natural evils is done to our neighbour, then death 
 became the penalty : to the first, in the first period of the 
 world ; to the second, at the restitution of the world, that is, 
 at the beginning of the second period. He that did attempt 
 to kill, from the beginning of ages might have been resisted 
 and killed, if the assaulted could not else be safe; but he 
 that killed actually, as Cain did, could not be killed himself, 
 till the law was made in Noah's time ; because there was no 
 person living, that had equal power on him, and had been
 
 PREFACE. XXXl 
 
 naturally injured. While the thing was doing, the assailant 
 and the assailed had equal power; but when it was done, 
 and one was killed, he that had the power or right of killing 
 his murderer, is now dead, and his power is extinguished 
 with the man. But after the flood, the power was put into 
 the hand of some trusted person, who was to take the 
 forfeiture. And thus, I conceive, these natural reasons, in 
 order to their proper end, became laws, and bound fast by 
 the band of annexed and consequent penalties. " Metum 
 prorsus et noxiam conscientiae pro foedere haberi," said 
 Tacitus ; u and that fully explains my sense. 
 
 18. And thus death was brought into the world ; not by 
 every prevarication of any of the laws, by any instance of 
 unreasonableness : for in proportion to the evil of the action 
 would be the evil of the suffering, which in all cases would 
 not arrive at death ; as every injury, every intemperance, 
 should not have been capital. But some things were made 
 evil by a superinduced prohibition, as eating one kind of 
 fruit ; some things were evil by inordination : the first was 
 morally evil, the second was evil naturally. Now the first 
 sort brought in death by a prime sanction; the second, by 
 degrees and variety of accident. For every disobedience 
 and transgression of that law, which God made as the 
 instance of our doing him honour and obedience, is an 
 integral violation of all the band between him and us ; it 
 does not grow in degrees, according to the instance and 
 subject matter ; for it is as great a disobedience to eat, when 
 he hath forbidden us, as to offer to climb to heaven with an 
 ambitious tower. And therefore it is but reasonable for us 
 to fear, and just in him to make us at once suffer death, 
 which is the greatest of natural evils, for disobeying him : 
 to which death we may arrive by degrees, in doing actions 
 against the reasonableness of sobriety and justice, but cannot 
 arrive by degrees of disobedience to God, or irreligion ; 
 because every such act deserves the worst of things, but the 
 other naturally deserves no greater evil than the proportion 
 of their own inordination, till God, by a superinduced law, 
 hath made them also to become acts of disobedience as well 
 as inordination, that is, morally evil, as well as naturally ; 
 
 Ann. vi. 4.
 
 XXX11 PREFACE. 
 
 for " by the law," saith St. Paul, " sin became exceedingly 
 sinful ;" w that is, had a new degree of obliquity added to it. 
 But this was not at first. For therefore saith St. Paul, 
 "Before," or "until the law, sin was in the world; but 
 sin is not imputed, when there is no law:" x meaning, that 
 those sins, which were forbidden by Moses's law, were actu- 
 ally in the manners of men and the customs of the world ; 
 but they were not imputed, that is, to such personal punish- 
 ments and consequent evils, which afterwards those sins did 
 introduce ; because those sins, which were only evil by inor- 
 dination, and discomposure of the order of man's end of 
 living happily, were made unlawful upon no other stock, but 
 that God would have man to live happily ; and therefore 
 gave him reason, to effect that end ; and if a man became 
 unreasonable, and did things contrary to his end, it was 
 impossible for him to be happy; that is, he should be 
 miserable in proportion. But in that degree and manner of 
 evil they were imputed ; and that was sanction enough to 
 raise natural reason up to the constitution of a law. 
 
 19. Thirdly the law of nature, being thus decreed and 
 made obligatory, was a sufficient instrument of making man 
 happy, that is, in producing the end of his creation. But as 
 Adam had evil discourses and irregular appetites, before he 
 fell, (for they made him fall,) and as the angels, who had no 
 original sin, yet they chose evil at the first, when it was 
 wholly arbitrary in them to do so or otherwise ; so did man. 
 " God made man upright, but he sought out many in- 
 ventions.'' Some men were ambitious, and by incompetent 
 means would make their brethren to be their servants ; some 
 were covetous, and would usurp that, which, by an earlier 
 distinction, had passed into private possession : and then 
 they made new principles, and new discourses, such which 
 were reasonable in order to their private indirect ends, but 
 not to the public benefit, and therefore would prove un- 
 reasonable and mischievous to themselves at last. 
 
 20. And when once they broke the order of creation, it 
 is easy to understand, by what necessities of consequence 
 they ran into many sins and irrational proceedings.* JEli&n 
 
 w Rom. vii. 13. * Rom. v. 13. 
 
 1 fn rSi iStui 'i&'yaiaru.i, dixit Porphyrius.
 
 PREFACE. XXXlll 
 
 tells of a nation, who had a law binding them to beat their 
 parents to death with clubs, when they lived to a decrepit 
 and unprofitable age. The Persian Magi mingled with their 
 mothers and all their nearest relatives. And by a law of the 
 Venetians, says Bodinus, 2 a son in banishment was re- 
 deemed from the sentence, if he killed his banished father. 
 And in Homer's time, there were a sort of pirates, 8 who pro- 
 fessed robbing, and did account it honourable. But the 
 great prevarications of the laws of nature were in the first 
 commandment ; when the tradition concerning God was 
 derived by a long line, and there were no visible remon- 
 strances of an extraordinary power, they were quickly 
 brought to believe, that he whom they saw not, was not at 
 all, especially being prompted to it by pride, tyranny, and a 
 loose imperious spirit. 6 Others fell to low opinions con- 
 cerning God, and made such as they list of their own ; and 
 they were like to be strange gods, which were of man's 
 making. When man, either maliciously or carelessly, became 
 unreasonable in the things that concerned God, God was 
 pleased to " give him over to a reprobate mind," that is, an 
 unreasonable understanding, and false principles concerning 
 himself and his neighbour, that his sin against the natural 
 law might become its own punishment, by discomposing his 
 natural happiness. Atheism and idolatry brought in all un- 
 natural lusts, and many unreasonable injustices. And this 
 we learn from St. Paul : " As they did not like to retain 
 God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate 
 mind, to do those things which are not convenient ;" d that is, 
 incongruities towards the end of their creation ; and so they 
 became " full of unrighteousness, lust, covetousness, malice, 
 envy, strife, and murder, disobedient to parents, breakers of 
 covenants, unnatural in their affections," and in their pas- 
 sions ; and all this was the consequent of breaking the first 
 natural law. " They changed the truth of God into a lie ; 
 for this cause God gave them up unto vile affections."" 
 
 De Rep. lib. i. c. 4. 
 
 * Oi! aS|o> raga raif xa.\a.it>~t <ra Z.r,frivnv, aXX* iS|9 Scholiast, in Horn. 
 Odyss. r. Vide etiam A. Gel. lib. li. c. 18. 
 
 b "Ofeiet-ro uxaSugrov vvivp.a.Tos i(j,xiQ<><>yft.ivei, / UTO $au).tif dtargtiffif x,ai l3-&> 
 <fa.vl.ut xeti vofi.u* -rotr/oat S<a^otsjvrf rag fi/fiKccs mo/a; airu>.tffa<i. Just. Mart. Dial. 
 Try ph. 
 
 c Rom. i. 25, 26, &c. * Ver. 28, &c. Ver. 25, 26.
 
 XXXIV PREFACE. 
 
 "21 . Now God, who takes more care for the good of man, 
 than man does for his own, did not only imprint these laws 
 in the hearts and understandings of man, but did also take 
 care to make this light shine clear enough to walk by, by 
 adopting some instances of the natural laws into religion. 
 Thus the law against murder became a part of religion in the 
 time of Noah : and some other things were then added con- 
 
 o 
 
 cerning worshipping God, against idolatry, and against un- 
 natural and impure mixtures. Sometimes God superadded 
 judgments, as to the 23,000 Assyrians for fornication. For 
 although these punishments were not threatened to the crime 
 in the sanction and expression of any definite law, and it 
 could not naturally arrive to it by its inordination ; yet it 
 was as agreeable to the Divine justice to inflict it, as to 
 inflict the pains of hell upon evil livers, who yet had not any 
 revelation of such intolerable danger : for it was sufficient, 
 that God had made such crimes to be against their very 
 nature ; and they who will do violence to their nature, to do 
 themselves hurt, and to displease God, deserve to lose the 
 title to all those good things, which God was pleased to 
 design for man's final condition. And because it grew 
 habitual, customary, and of innocent reputation, it pleased 
 God to call this precept out of the darkness, whither their 
 evil customs and false discourses had put it ; and by such an 
 extra-regular, but very signal punishment, to remind them, 
 that the natural permissions of concubinate were only con- 
 fined to the ends of mankind, and were hallowed only by the 
 faith and the design of marriage. And this was signified by 
 St. Paul, in these words : " They that sin without the law, 
 shall also perish without the law;"' that is, by such judg- 
 ments, which God hath inflicted on evil livers in several 
 periods of the world, irregularly indeed, not signified in kind, 
 but yet sent into the world with designs of a great mercy ; 
 that the ignorances, and prevarications, and partial abolitions 
 of the natural law, might be cured and restored, and by 
 the dispersion of prejudices the state of natural reason be 
 redintegrate. 
 
 22. Whatsoever was besides this, was accidental and 
 emergent ; such as were the discourses of wise men, which 
 God raised up in several countries and ages, as Job, and 
 
 ' Rom. ii. 12.
 
 PREFACE. XXXV 
 
 Eliphaz, and Bildad, and those of the families of the 
 patriarchs dispersed into several countries ; and constant 
 tradition in some noble and more eminent descents. And 
 yet all this was so little and imperfect, not in itself, but in 
 respect of the thick cloud man had drawn before his 
 understanding, that darkness covered the face of the earth 
 in a great proportion. Almost all the world were idolaters ; 
 and when they had broken the first of the natural laws, the 
 breach of the other was not only naturally consequent, but 
 also, by Divine judgment, it descended infallibly. And yet 
 God, pitying mankind, did not only still continue the former 
 remedies, and added blessings, " giving them fruitful seasons, 
 and filling their hearts with food and gladness," so leaving 
 the nations without excuse ; but also made a very noble 
 change in the world : for having chosen an excellent family, 
 the fathers of which lived exactly according to the natural 
 law, and w r ith observation of those few superadded precepts, 
 in which God did specificate their prime duty, having 
 swelled that family to a great nation, and given them pos- 
 session of an excellent land, which God took from seven 
 nations, because they were egregious violators of the natural 
 law, he was pleased to make a very great restitution and 
 declaration of the natural law, in many instances of religion 
 and justice, which he framed into positive precepts, and 
 adopted them into the family of the first original instances, 
 making them as necessary in the particulars, as they were in 
 the primary obligation ; but the instances were such, whereof 
 some did relate only to the present constitution of the com- 
 monwealth ; others to such universal contracts, which obliged 
 all the world, by reason of the equal necessity of all mankind 
 to admit them. And these himself writ on tables of stone, 
 and dressed up their nation into a body politic by an 
 excellent system of politic laws, and adorned it with a rare 
 religion, and left this nation as a piece of leaven in a mass of 
 dough, not only to do honour to God, and happiness to 
 themselves, by those instruments, which he had now very 
 much explicated, but also to transmit the same reasonable 
 propositions into other nations : and he therefore multiplied 
 them to a great necessity of a dispersion, that they might 
 serve the ends of God and of the natural law, by their 
 ambulatory life and their numerous disseminations. And
 
 XXXVI PREFACE. 
 
 this was it, which St. Paul affirms, " The law was added 
 because of transgression :" g meaning, that because men did 
 transgress the natural, God brought Moses's law into the 
 world, to be as a strand to the inundation of impiety. And 
 thus the world stood, till the fulness of time was come : for 
 so we are taught by the apostle, " The law was added 
 because of transgression :" but the date of this was to expire 
 at a certain period, it was added to serve but " till the seed 
 should come, to whom the promise was made." 
 
 23. For, because Moses's law was but an imperfect ex- 
 plication of the natural ; there being divers parts of the three 
 laws of nature not at all explicated by that covenant, not the 
 religion of prayers, not the reasonableness of temperance 
 and sobriety in opinion and diet ; and in the more noble 
 instances of humanity and doing benefit, it was so short, that, 
 as St. Paul says, " The law could not make the comers 
 thereunto perfect ;" and, which was most of all considerable, 
 it was confined to a nation ; and the other parts of mankind 
 had made so little use of the records of that nation, that all 
 the world was placed " in darkness, and sate in the shadow 
 of death :" therefore it was, that in great mercy God sent his 
 Son, " a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his 
 people Israel :" to instruct those, and consummate these ; 
 that the imperfection of the one, and the mere darkness of 
 the other, might be illustrated by the Sun of Righteousness. 
 And this was by restoring the light of nature, which they by 
 evil customs, and false principles, and evil laws, had obscured ; 
 by restoring man to the liberty of his spirit, by freeing him 
 from the slavery of sin, under which they were so lost and 
 oppressed, that all their discourses and conclusions, some of 
 their moral philosophy, and all their habitual practices, were 
 but servants of sin, and made to co-operate to that end, not 
 which God intended as perfective of human nature, but which 
 the devil and vicious persons superinduced, to serve little 
 ends and irregular, and to destroy the greater. 
 
 24. For certain it is, Christianity is nothing else but the 
 most perfect design that ever was, to make a man be happy 
 in his whole capacity : and as the law was to the Jews, so 
 was philosophy to the Gentiles, a school master to bring them 
 
 I Gal. iii. 19.
 
 PREFACE. XXXV11 
 
 to Christ, to teach them the rudiments of happiness, and the 
 first and lowest things of reason ; that when Christ was come, 
 all mankind might become perfect ; that is, be made regular 
 in their appetites, wise in their understandings, assisted in 
 their duties, directed to, and instructed in, their great ends. 
 And this is that, which the apostle calls " being perfect men 
 in Christ Jesus ; " perfect in all the intendments of nature, 
 and in all the designs of God. And this was brought to pass 
 by discovering, and restoring, and improving the law of 
 nature, and by turning it all into religion. 
 
 25. For the natural law being a sufficient and a propor- 
 tionate instrument and means to bring a man to the end 
 designed in his creation, and this law being eternal and 
 unalterable (for it ought to be as lasting and as unchangeable 
 as the nature itself, so long as it was capable of a law), it was 
 not imaginable, that the body of any law should make a new 
 morality, new rules, and general proportions, either of justice, 
 or religion, or temperance, or felicity ; the essential parts of 
 all these consisting in natural proportions and means toward 
 the consummation of man's last end, which was first intended, 
 and is always the same. It is, as it' there were a new truth in 
 an essential and a necessary proposition. For although the 
 instances may vary, there can be no new justice, no new 
 temperance, no new relations, proper and natural relations 
 and intercourses, between God and us : but what always were 
 in praises and prayers, in adoration and honour, and in the 
 symbolical expressions of God's glory and our needs. 
 
 26. Hence it comes, that that which is the most obvious 
 and notorious appellative of the law of nature, that it is "a 
 law written in our hearts," was also recounted as one of the 
 glories and excellencies of Christianity. Plutarch, saying 
 that " Kings ought to be governed by laws," explains him- 
 self, that this law must be " a word, not written in books and 
 tables, but dwelling in the mind, a living rule, the interior 
 guide of their manners, and monitors of their life." h And 
 this was the same, which St. Paul expresses to be the guide 
 of the Gentiles, that is, of all men naturally. " The Gentiles, 
 which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in 
 
 Oux iv /3//3X/a/f "i\ta yiy^xf^fiivts, at/Ss \i i/X<f, XX* ift,-^v^as at \a,u<rS t-oyos, KII 
 fvvuxut, xoti {4r,difori rri ^irxijy iwv ior,ftoy xriSiftatittf.
 
 XXXV111 PREFACE. 
 
 the law ; which shews the work of the law written in their 
 hearts."' And that we may see it was the law of nature, 
 that returned in the sanctions of Christianity, God declares, 
 that, in the constitution of this law, he would take no oilier 
 course than at first, that is, he would write them in the hearts 
 of men: indeed with a new style, with a quill taken from 
 the wings of the holy Dove ; the Spirit of God was to be the 
 great engraver and the scribe of the new covenant, but the 
 hearts of men should be the tables. " For this is the cove- 
 nant, that I will make with them after those days, saith the 
 Lord ; I will put my laws into their hearts, and into their 
 minds will I write them : and their sins and their iniquities 
 will I remember no more :" k that is, I will provide a means 
 to expiate all the iniquities of man, and restore him to the 
 condition of his first creation, putting him into the same 
 order towards felicity, which I first designed to him, and that 
 also by the same instruments. Now I consider, that the 
 Spirit of God took very great care, that all the records of the 
 law of Jesus should be carefully kept and transmitted to 
 posterity in books and sermons ; which, being an act of pro- 
 vidence and mercy, was a provision, lest they should be lost 
 or mistaken, as they were formerly, when God writ some of 
 them in tables of stone for the use of the sons of Israel, and 
 all of them in the first tables of nature with the finger of 
 creation, as now he did in the new creature, by the finger of 
 the Spirit. But then, writing them in the tables of our minds 
 besides the other, can mean nothing but placing them there, 
 where they were before, and from whence we blotted them 
 by the mixtures of impure principles and discourses. But I 
 descend to particular and more minute considerations. 
 
 27. The laws of nature either are bands of religion, justice, 
 or sobriety. Now I consider concerning religion, that when- 
 ever God hath made any particular precepts to a family, as 
 to Abraham's; or to a single person, as to the man of Judah 
 prophesying against the altar of Bethel ; or to a nation, as 
 to the Jews at Sinai; or to all mankind, as to the world 
 descending from Noah ; it was nothing else but a trial or an 
 instance of our obedience, a particular prosecution of the 
 law of nature, whereby we are obliged to do honour to God, 
 
 1 Rom. ii. 14. * Heb. x. 16, 17.
 
 PREFACE. XXXIX 
 
 which was to be done by such expressions, which are natural 
 intercourses between God and us, or such as he hath made 
 to be so. Now in Christianity we are wholly left to that 
 manner of prosecuting this first natural law, which is natural 
 and proportionable to the nature of the thing, which the holy 
 Jesus calls " worshipping God in spirit and truth : " in spirit, 
 that is, with our souls heartily and devoutly, so as to exclude 
 hypocrisy and indifferency ; and in truth, that is, without a 
 lie, without vain imaginations and phantastic resemblances 
 of him, which were introduced by the evil customs of the 
 Gentiles, and without such false guises and absurd inde- 
 cencies, which, as they are contrary to man's reason, so are 
 they contrary to the glory and reputation of God ; ' such as 
 was that universal custom of all nations, of sacrificing in 
 man's blood, and offering festival-lusts and impurities in the 
 solemnities of their religion ; for, these being against the 
 purpose and design of God, and against right reason, are a 
 lie, and enemies to the truth of a natural and proper religion. 
 The holy Jesus only commanded us to pray often, and to 
 praise God, to speak honour of his name, not to use it lightly 
 and vainly, to believe him, to revere the instruments and 
 ministers of religion, to ask for what we need, to put our 
 trust in God, to worship him, to obey him, and to love him ; 
 for all these are but the expressions of love. And this is all 
 Christ spake concerning the first natural law, the law of 
 religion. For concerning the ceremonies or sacraments, which 
 he instituted, they are but few, and they become matter of 
 duty but by accident ; as being instruments and rites of con- 
 signing those effects and mercies, which God sent to the 
 world by the means of this law, and relate rather to the 
 contract and stipulation, which Christ made for us, than to 
 the natural order between duty and felicity. 
 
 28. Now all these are nothing but what we are taught by 
 natural reason, that is, what God enabled us to understand, 
 to be fit instruments of intercourse between God and us, and 
 what was practised and taught by sober men in all ages and 
 all nations, whose records we have received, as I shall remark 
 at the margent of the several precepts. For to make these 
 appear certainly and naturally necessary, there was no more 
 
 1 Polyd. Virg. de Invent, lib. v. c. 8.
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 requisite, but that man should know there was a God, that 
 is, an eternal Being, which gave him all that he had or was ; 
 and to know what himself was, that is, indigent and neces- 
 sitous of himself, needing help of all the creatures, exposed 
 to accidents and calamity, and defensible no ways but by the 
 same hand that made him ; creation and conservation, in the 
 philosophy of all the world, being but the same act, con- 
 tinuing and flowing on him from an instant to duration as a 
 line from its mathematical point. And for this God took 
 sufficient care; for he conversed with man, in the very first, 
 in such clear, and certain, and perceptible transaction, that a 
 man could as certainly know that God was, as that man was. 
 And in all ages of the world he hath not left himself without 
 witness, but gave such testimonies of himself that were 
 sufficient; for they did actually persuade all nations, bar- 
 barous and civil, into the belief of a God. m And it is but a 
 nicety to consider, whether or no that proposition can be 
 naturally demonstrated. For it was sufficient to all God's 
 purposes and to all man's, that the proposition was actually 
 believed ; the instances were therefore sufficient to make 
 faith, because they did it. And a man may remove himself 
 so far from all the degrees of aptness to believe a proposition, 
 that nothing shall make them join. For if there were a sect 
 of witty men, that durst not believe their senses, because 
 they thought them fallible, it is no wonder, if some men 
 should think every reason reprovable. But in such cases 
 demonstration is a relative term, and signifies every probation, 
 greater or lesser, which does actually make faith in any 
 proposition ; and in this God hath never been deficient, but 
 hath to all men, that believe him, given sufficient to confirm 
 them; to those few, that believed not, sufficient to reprove 
 them. 
 
 29. Now in all these actions of religion, which are naturally 
 consequent to this belief, there is no scruple, but in the 
 instance of faith, which is presented to be an infused grace, 
 an hnmission from God, and that for its object it hath 
 principles supernatural, that is, naturally incredible; and 
 therefore, faith is supposed a grace above the greatest strength 
 
 m Maxim. Tyr. Dissert. Inura. E>.X Xtyw, xal o 
 
 tii) xai i QaXttTTios, xtti e ffoof, xcti o areQo:. P. 6. til. JJav.
 
 PREFACE. Xl 
 
 of reason. But in this I consider, that, if we look into all 
 the sermons of Christ," we shall not easily find any doctrine, 
 that, in any sense, troubles natural philosophy, but only that 
 of the resurrection : (for I do not think those mystical ex- 
 pressions of plain truths, such as are, " being born again, 
 eating the flesh of the Son of Man, being in the Father, and 
 the Father in him," to be exceptions in this assertion.) And 
 although some Gentiles did believe and deliver that article, 
 and particularly Chrysippus, and the Thracians, (as Mela and 
 Solinus report of them ;) yet they could not naturally dis- 
 course themselves into it, but had it from the imperfect 
 report and opinion of some Jews, that dwelt among them : 
 and it was certainly a revelation or a proposition sent into 
 the world by God. But then the believing it is so far from 
 being above or against nature, that there is nothing in the 
 world more reasonable, than to believe any thing, which God 
 tells us, or which is told us by a man sent from God, with 
 mighty demonstration of his power and veracity. Naturally 
 our bodies cannot rise, that is, there is no natural agent or 
 natural cause sufficient to produce that effect ; but this is an 
 effect of a Divine power : and he hath but a little stock of 
 natural reason, who cannot conclude, that the same power, 
 which made us out of nothing, can also restore us to the 
 same condition, as well and easily, from dust and ashes 
 certainly, as from mere nothing. And in this, and in all the 
 like cases, faith is a submission of the understanding to the 
 word of God, and is nothing else but a confessing, that God 
 is truth, and that he is omnipotent ; that is, he can do what 
 he will, and he will, when he hath once said it. And we are 
 now as ignorant of the essence and nature of forms, and of 
 that, which substantially distinguishes man from man, or an 
 angel from an angel, as we were of the greatest article of our 
 religion, before it was revealed ; and we shall remain ignorant 
 for ever of many natural things, unless they be revealed ; 
 and unless we know all the secrets of philosophy, the mys- 
 teries of nature, and the rules and propositions of all things 
 and all creatures, we are fools, if we say, that what we call 
 an article of faith, I mean, truly such, is against natural 
 reason. It may be indeed as much against our natural 
 
 Apud Lactant. lib. vii. c. 23. 
 VOL. II. D
 
 Xlii PREFACE. 
 
 reasonings, as those reasonings are against truth. But if we 
 remember, how great an ignorance dwells upon us all, it will 
 be found the most reasonable thing in the world only to 
 inquire, whether God hath revealed any such proposition ? 
 and then not to say, It is against natural reason, and there- 
 fore an article of faith ; but I am told a truth, which I knew 
 not till now, and so my reason is become instructed into a 
 new proposition. And although Christ hath given us no new 
 moral precepts, but such which were essentially and naturally 
 reasonable, in order to the end of man's creation ; yet we may 
 easily suppose him to teach us many a new truth, which we 
 knew not, and to explicate to us many particulars of that 
 estate, which God designed for. man in his first production, 
 but yet did not then declare to him ; and to furnish him with 
 new revelations, and to signify the greatness of the designed 
 end, to become so many arguments of endearment to secure 
 his duty, that is, indeed, to secure his happiness by the 
 infallible using the instruments of attaining it. 
 
 30. This is all I am to say concerning the precepts of 
 religion Jesus taught us : he took off those many super- 
 induced rites, which God enjoined to the Jews, and reduced 
 us to the natural religion ; that is, to such expressions of duty 
 which all wise men and nations used ; save only, that he took 
 away the rite of sacrificing beasts, because it was now 
 determined in the great sacrifice of himself, which sufficiently 
 and eternally reconciled all the world to God. All the other 
 things, as prayers, and adoration, and eucharist, and faith in 
 God, are of a natural order and an unalterable expression : 
 and, in the nature of the thing, there is no other way of 
 address to God than these, no other expression of his glories 
 and our needs ; both which must for ever be signified. 
 
 31. Secondly; concerning the second natural precept, 
 Christian religion hath also added nothing beyond the first 
 obligation, but explained it all : " Whatsoever ye would men 
 should do to you, do ye so to them ;"P that is the eternal rule 
 of justice; and that binds contracts, keeps promises, affirms 
 truth, makes subjects obedient, and princes just; it gives 
 
 Just. Mart. Resp. ad Orthodox, ad qu. 83. Tertul. adv. Marcion. ii. 2. 
 Maimon. Moreh Nevochim, lib. iii. c. 52. 
 
 P HKC sententia saepissime a Severe Imperatore prolata. "O /jurin, pr^ti} 
 xowtis, Tob. iv. 16. Dixit Mimus, " Ab alio exspectes, alteri quod feceris."
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 security to marts and banks, and introduces an equality of 
 condition upon all the world, save only when an inequality is 
 necessary, that is, in the relations of government, for the 
 preservation of the common q rights of equal titles and pos- 
 sessions, that there be some common term endued with 
 power, who is to be the father of all men by an equal pro- 
 vision, that every man's rights be secured by that fear, which 
 naturally we shall bear to him, who can, and will, punish all 
 unreasonable and unjust violations of property. And con- 
 cerning this also, the holy Jesus hath added an express 
 precept of paying tribute, and all Caesar's dues, to Caesar : 
 in all other particulars, it is necessary that the instances and 
 minutes of justice be appointed by the laws and customs of 
 the several kingdoms and republics. And therefore it was, 
 that Christianity so well combined with the government of 
 heathen princes ; r because, whatsoever was naturally just, or 
 declared so by the political power, their religion bound them 
 to observe, making obedience to be a double duty, a duty 
 both of justice and religion : and the societies of Christians 
 growing up from conventicles to assemblies, from assemblies 
 to societies, introduced no change in the government; but 
 by little and little turned the commonwealth into a church, 
 till the world being Christian, and justice also being religion, 
 obedience to princes, observation of laws, honesty in con- 
 tracts, faithfulness in promises, gratitude to benefactors, 
 simplicity in discourse, and ingenuity in all pretences and 
 transactions, became the characterisms of Christian men, and 
 the word of a Christian the greatest solemnity of stipulation 
 in the world. 
 
 32. But concerning the general, I consider, that, in two 
 very great instances, it was remonstrated, that Christianity 
 was the greatest prosecution of natural justice and equality 
 in the whole world. The one was in an election of an 
 apostle into the place of Judas : when there were two equal 
 candidates of the same pretension and capacity, the question 
 was determined by lots, which naturally was the arbitration 
 in questions, whose parts were wholly indifferent ; and as it 
 
 i Singulorum interest, si universi regantur. 
 r Nee natura potest justo secernere iniquum, 
 Pividit ut bona diversis, fugienda petendis. HOT. lib. i. Sat. 3.
 
 xliv 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 was used in all times, so it is to this day used with us in 
 many places, where, lest there be a disagreement concerning 
 the manner of tithing some creatures, and to prevent unequal 
 arts and unjust practices, they are tithed by lot, and their 
 fortuitous passing through the door of their fold. The other 
 is in the cenobitic life of the first Christians and apostles : 
 they had all things in common, which was that state of 
 nature, in which men lived charitably and without injustice, 
 before the distinction of dominions and private rights. But 
 from this manner of life they were soon driven, by the public 
 necessity and constitution of affairs. 
 
 33. Thirdly; whatsoever else is in the Christian law, con- 
 cerns the natural precept of sobriety, in which there is some 
 variety and some difficulty. In the matter of carnality, the 
 holy Jesus did clearly reduce us to the first institution of 
 marriage in Paradise, allowing no other mixture, but what 
 was first intended in the creation and first sacramental union : 
 and in the instance he so permitted us to the natural law, 
 that he was pleased to mention no instance of forbidden lust, 
 but in general and comprehensive terms of adultery and 
 fornication : in the other, which are still more unnatural, as 
 their names are concealed and hidden in shame and secrecy, 
 we are to have no instructor, but the modesty and order of 
 nature. 
 
 34. As an instance of this law of sobriety, Christ super- 
 added the whole doctrine of humility, which Moses did not, 
 and which seemed almost to be extinguished in the world ; 
 and it is called by St. Paul, " sapere ad sobrietatem," the 
 reasonableness or wisdom of sobriety. And it is all the 
 reason in the world, that a man should think of himself but 
 just as he is. He is deceived that thinks otherwise, and is a 
 fool. And when we consider, that pride makes wars, and 
 causes affronts, and no man loves a proud man, and he loves 
 no man but himself and his flatterers, we shall understand, 
 that the precept of humility is an excellent art, and a happy 
 instrument towards human felicity. And it is no way con- 
 tradicted by a natural desire of honour ; it only appoints just 
 and reasonable ways of obtaining it. We are not forbidden 
 to receive honour ; but to seek it for designs of pride and 
 complacency, or to make it rest in our hearts. But when 
 the hand of virtue receives the honour, and transmits it to
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 God from our own head, the desires of nature are sufficiently 
 satisfied, and nothing of religion contradicted. And it is 
 certain by all the experience of the world, that in every state 
 and order of men, he, that is most humble in proportion to 
 that state, is (if all things else be symbolical) the most 
 honoured person. For it is very observable, that when God 
 designed man to a good and happy life, as the natural end of 
 his creation, to verify this, God was pleased to give him 
 objects sufficient and apt to satisfy every appetite ; I say, to 
 satisfy it naturally, not to satisfy those extravagances, which 
 might be accidental, and procured by the irregularity either 
 of will or understanding; 3 not to answer him in all that his 
 desires could extend to, but to satisfy the necessity of every 
 appetite ; all the desires that God made, not all that man 
 should make. For we see, even in those appetites which are 
 common to men and beasts, all the needs of nature, and all 
 the ends of creation, are served, by the taking such pro- 
 portions of their objects, which are ordinate to their end, and 
 which in man we call temperance, (not as much as they 
 naturally can;) such as are mixtures of sexes merely for 
 production of their kind, eating and drinking for needs and 
 hunger. And yet God permitted our appetites to be able to 
 extend beyond the limits of the mere natural design, that 
 God, by restraining them, and putting the fetters of laws upon 
 them, might turn natural desires into sobriety, and sobriety 
 into religion, they becoming servants of the commandment. 
 And now we must not call all those swellings of appetites 
 natural inclination, nor the satisfaction of such tumours and 
 excrescences any part of natural felicities : but that, which 
 does just co-operate to those ends, which perfect human 
 nature in order to its proper end. For the appetites of meat, 
 and drink, and pleasures, are but intermedial and instru- 
 mental to the end, and are not made for themselves, but first 
 for the end, and then to serve God in the instances of 
 obedience. And just so is the natural desire of honour 
 intended to be a spur to virtue, (for to virtue only it is 
 naturally consequent, or to natural and political superiority :) 
 
 8 Vina sitim sedant, natis Venus alma creandis 
 
 Serviat : hos fines transiliise nocet. Virg. 
 
 'O p,\v rag i/ftgfioXas ^IUKUV rut rdiuv, n x.aS" iitriefso^ecs 2e f^ixiieifii, xai 
 01' aura.!, xai fitdit 5/ kVej cnrofrccitov, ctxoXaffTOf. Arist, Ethic, lib. vii. c. 7, 
 p. 294. ed. Wilfc.
 
 Xlvi PREFACE. 
 
 but to desire it beyond, or besides, the limit, is the swelling 
 and the disease of the desire. And we can take no rule for 
 its perfect value, but by the strict limits of the natural end, 
 or the superinduced end of religion in positive restraints. 
 
 35. According to this discourse we may best understand, 
 that even the severest precepts of the Christian law are very 
 consonant to nature and the first laws of mankind. Such is 
 the precept of self-denial, which is nothing else but a con- 
 fining the appetites within the limits of nature : for there 
 they are permitted, (except when some greater purpose is to 
 be served, than the present answering the particular desire,) 
 and whatsoever is beyond it, is not in the natural order to 
 felicity ; it is no better than an itch, which must be scratched 
 and satisfied, but it is unnatural. But, for martyrdom itself, 
 quitting our goods, losing lands, or any temporal interest, 
 they are now become as reasonable in the present consti- 
 tution of the world, as taking unpleasant potions, and 
 suffering a member to be cauterized, in sickness or disease. 
 And we see, that death is naturally a less evil than a continual 
 torment, and by some not so resented as a great disgrace ; 
 and some persons have chosen it for sanctuary and remedy : 
 and therefore, much rather shall it be accounted prudent and 
 reasonable, and agreeable to the most perfect desires of 
 nature, to exchange a house for a hundred, a friend for a 
 patron, a short affliction for a lasting joy, and a temporal 
 death for an eternal life. For so the question is stated to us 
 by Him that understands it best. True it is, that the suffering 
 of losses, afflictions, and death, is naturally an evil, and 
 therefore no part of a natural precept, or prime injunction. 
 But when, God having commanded instances of religion, man 
 will not suffer us to obey God, or will not suffer us to live, 
 then the question is, Which is most agreeable to the most 
 perfect and reasonable desires of nature, to obey God, or to 
 obey man ; to fear God, or to fear man ; to preserve our 
 bodies, or to preserve our souls ; to secure a few years of 
 uncertain and troublesome duration , or an eternity of a very 
 glorious condition ? Some men, reasonably enough, choose to 
 die for considerations lower than that of a happy eternity ; 
 therefore death is not such an evil, but that it may, in some 
 cases, be desired and reasonably chosen, and, in some, be 
 recompensed at the highest rate of a natural value : and if
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 by accident we happen into an estate, in which of necessity 
 one evil or another must be suffered, certainly nothing is 
 more naturally reasonable and eligible than to choose the 
 least evil ; and when there are two good things propounded 
 to our choice, both which cannot be possessed, nothing is 
 more certainly the object of a prudent choice than the 
 greater good. And therefore, when once we understand the 
 question of suffering, and self-denial, and martyrdom to this 
 sense, as all Christians do, and all wise men do, and all sects 
 of men do in their several persuasions, it is but remembering, 
 that to live happily after this life is more intended to us by 
 God, and is more perfective of human nature, than to live 
 here with all the prosperity which this state affords ; and it 
 will evidently follow, that when violent men will not let us 
 enter into that condition by the ways of nature and prime 
 intendment, that is, of natural religion, justice, and sobriety, 
 it is made, in that case, and upon that supposition, certainly, 
 naturally, and infallibly reasonable, to secure the perfective 
 and principal design of our felicity, though it be by such 
 instruments, which are as unpleasant to our senses, as are the 
 instruments of our restitution to health ; since both one and 
 the other, in the present conjunction and state of affairs, are 
 most proportionable to reason, because they are so to the 
 present necessity; not primarily intended to us by God, but 
 superinduced by evil accidents and the violence of men. And 
 we not only find, that Socrates suffered death in attestation of 
 a God, though he flattered and discoursed himself into the 
 belief of an immortal reward, " de industria consultae sequa- 
 nimitatis, non de fiducia compertae veritatis," as Tertullian 
 says of him ; -but we also find, that all men, that believed the 
 immortality of the soul firmly and unmovably, made no 
 scruple of exchanging their life for the preservation of virtue, 
 with the interest of their great hope, for honour sometimes, 
 and oftentimes for their country. 
 
 36. Thus the holy Jesus perfected and restored the 
 natural law, and drew it into a system of propositions, and 
 made them to become of the family of religion. For God is 
 so zealous to have man attain to the end to which he first 
 designed him, that those things, which he hath put in the 
 natural order to attain that end, he hath bound fast upon us, 
 not only by the order of things, by which it was that he, that
 
 xlviii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 prevaricated, did naturally fall short of felicity, but also by 
 bands of religion; he hath now made himself a party and an 
 enemy to those that will not be happy. Of old, religion was 
 but one of the natural laws, and the instances of religion 
 were distinct from the discourses of philosophy. Now, all the 
 law of nature is adopted into religion, and by our love and 
 duty to God we are tied to do all that is reason ; and the 
 parts of our religion are but pursuances of the natural 
 relation between God and us : and beyond all this, our 
 natural condition is, in all senses, improved by the consequents 
 and adherences of this religion. For although nature and 
 grace are opposite, that is, nature depraved by evil habits, 
 by ignorance, and ungodly customs, is contrary to grace, that 
 is, to nature restored by the Gospel, engaged to regular 
 living by new revelations, and assisted by the Spirit ; yet it 
 is observable, that the law of nature and the law of grace 
 are never opposed. " There is a law of our members," 1 saith 
 St. Paul ; that is, an evil necessity introduced into our ap- 
 petites, by perpetual evil customs, examples and traditions of 
 vanity ; and there is a law of sin, that answers to this : and 
 they differ only as inclination and habit, vicious desires and 
 vicious practices. But then contrary to these are, first, " a 
 law of my mind," u which is the law of nature and right 
 reason, and then the law of grace, that is, of Jesus Christ, 
 who perfected and restored the first law, and by assistances 
 reduced it into a law of holy living : and these two differ as 
 the other ; the one is in order to the other, as imperfection 
 and growing degrees and capacities are to perfection and 
 consummation. The law of the mind had been so rased and 
 obliterate, and we, by some means or other, so disabled from 
 observing it exactly, that until it was turned into the law of 
 grace, (which is a law of pardoning infirmities, and assisting 
 us in our choices and elections,) we were in a state of de- 
 ficiency from the perfective state of man, to which God 
 intended us. 
 
 37. Now, although God always designed man to the 
 same state, which he hath now revealed by Jesus Christ, yet 
 he told him not of it ; and his permissions and licenses were 
 then greater, and the law itself lay closer folded up in the 
 
 Rom. vii. 23. Ibid.
 
 PREFACE. Xlix 
 
 compact body of necessary propositions, in order to so much 
 of his end, as was known, or could be supposed. But now, 
 according to the extension of the revelation, the law itself is 
 made wider, that is, more explicit ; and natural reason is 
 thrust forward into discourses of charity and benefit, and we 
 tied to do very much good to others, and tied to co-operate 
 to each other's felicity. 
 
 38. That the law of charity is a law of nature, needs no 
 other argument but the consideration of the first constitution 
 of man. The first instances of justice or intercourse of man 
 with a second or third person, were to such persons, towards 
 whom he had the greatest endearments of affection in the 
 world, a wife and children ; and justice and charity, at first, 
 was the same thing. And it hath obtained in ages far 
 removed from the first, and charity is called righteousness : x 
 " He hath dispersed and given to the poor ; his righteousness 
 remaineth for ever." y And it is certain Adam could not in 
 any instance be unjust, but he must in the same also be 
 uncharitable ; the band of his first justice being the ties of 
 love, and all having commenced in love. And our blessed 
 Lord, restoring all to the intention of the first perfection, 
 expresses it to the same sense, as I formerly observed ; justice 
 to our neighbour, is loving him as ourselves. For, since 
 justice obliges us to do as we would be done to, as the 
 irascible faculty restrains us from doing evil for fear of 
 receiving evil, so the concupiscible obliges us to charity, that 
 ourselves may receive good. 
 
 39. I shall say nothing concerning the reasonableness of 
 this precept, but that it concurs rarely with the first reason- 
 able appetite of man, of being like God. " Deus est mortali 
 juvare mortalem, atque hsec est ad aeternitateui via," said 
 Pliny ; and, " It is more blessed to give than to receive," 
 said our blessed Saviour ; and therefore the commandment 
 of charity, in all its parts, is a design not only to reconcile 
 the most miserable person to some participations and sense of 
 felicity, but to make the charitable man happy; and whether 
 this be not very agreeable to the desires of an intelligent 
 nature, needs no further inquiry. And Aristotle, asking the 
 question, Whether a man had more need of friends in 
 
 * '0 M^uirtt !t/igyr/xof vi$vxi.M. Anton, lib. ix. * Psal. cxii. 9.
 
 1 PREFACE. 
 
 prosperity or adversity? makes the case equal: "o 
 
 arv^ovvrts diovrai svixougiag' 01 6s Ivrvyvuvns ffvfj,tuv, ou; tux 
 " When they are in want, they need assistance ; when they 
 are prosperous, they need partners of their felicity, that, by 
 communicating their joy to them, it may reflect and double 
 upon their spirits." And certain it is, there is no greater 
 felicity in the world, than in the content that results from the 
 emanations of charity. And this is that which St. John 2 
 calls "the old commandment," and "the new commandment." 
 It was of old, for it was from the beginning,* even in nature, 
 and to the offices of which our very bodies had an organ and 
 a seat ; for therefore nature gave to a man bowels and the 
 passion of yearning ; but it grew up into religion by parts, 
 and was made perfect, and, in that degree, appropriate to the 
 law of Jesus Christ. For so the holy Jesus became our 
 lawgiver, and added many new precepts over and above 
 what were in the law of Moses, but not more than was in the 
 law of nature. The reason of both is, what I have all this 
 while discoursed of: Christ made a more perfect restitution 
 of the law of nature than Moses did, and so it became the 
 second Adam to consummate that, which began to be less 
 perfect, from the prevarication of the first Adam. 
 
 40. A particular of the precept of charity is forgiving 
 injuries ; and besides that it hath many superinduced benefits, 
 by way of blessing and reward, it relies also upon this 
 natural reason, that a pure and a simple revenge does no 
 way restore man towards the felicity which the injury did 
 interrupt. For revenge is a doing a simple evil, and does not, 
 in its formality, imply reparation ; for the mere repeating of 
 our own right is permitted to them that will do it by charitable 
 instruments; and to secure myself or the public against the 
 future, by positive inflictions upon the injurious, (if I be not 
 
 1 1 John, ii. 7, 8. 
 
 "AxSga S" utyiXiiv, u.$ ui 
 
 *E%ai rt Kaii ^utaiTo, xaXX/a-TOf -rival. Sofhocl, OEdip. Tt/r. 314. 
 
 Hoc reges habent 
 
 Magnificum et ing'ens, nulla quod rapiat dies ; 
 
 Prodesae miseris, suppliers fido lare 
 
 Protegere Senec. Ned. 222. Scftr. 
 
 Mollissima corda 
 
 Humano generi dare se natura fatetur, 
 
 Quae lacrymas dedit ; haec iiostri pars optima sensus. 
 
 Juren. Sat. 15. 131.
 
 PREFACE. 11 
 
 judge myself,) is also within the moderation of an unblamable 
 defence, (unless some accidents or circumstances vary the 
 case ;) but forgiving injuries is a separating the malice from 
 the wrong, the transient act from the permanent effect; 
 and it is certain, the act which is passed cannot be rescinded; 
 the effect may ; and if it cannot, it does no way alleviate the 
 evil of the accident, that I draw him that caused it into as 
 great a misery ; since every evil, happening in the world, is 
 the proper object of pity, which is in some sense afflictive ; 
 and therefore, unless we become unnatural and without 
 bowels, it is most unreasonable that we should increase our 
 own afflictions by introducing a new misery, and making a 
 new object of pity. All the ends of human felicity are 
 secured without revenge, for, without it, we are permitted to 
 restore ourselves ; and therefore it is against natural reason 
 to do an evil, that no way co-operates towards the proper 
 and perfective end of human nature. And he is a miserable 
 person, whose good is the evil of his neighbour; 5 and he 
 that revenges, in many cases does worse than he that did 
 the injury; in all cases, as bad. For if the first injury was 
 an injustice to serve an end of an advantage and real benefit ; 
 then my revenge, which is abstracted, and of a consideration 
 separate and distinct from the reparation, is worse ; for I do 
 him evil, without doing myself any real good ; which he did 
 not, for he received advantage by it. But if the first injury 
 was matter of mere malice without advantage, yet it is no 
 worse than revenge, for that is just so ; and there is as much 
 fantastic pleasure in doing a spite, as in doing revenge : they 
 are both but like the pleasures of eating coals, and toads, 
 and vipers. And certain it is, if a man, upon his private 
 stock, could be permitted to revenge, the evil would be 
 
 b 'O rtftugut Tiv ve^av'jeaoip.irtf aSixangos- Maiim. Tyrius in Dissert, an 
 referenda sit Jnjuria, p. 26, ed. Dav. 
 
 " Aircora TO, *T \<rn piaxaoiturioa, 
 Ka/ tout i%e>ra /taAAov ivtgairav iro\v. 
 Tov ovav ojafv ^trri jeau'ra, <ravTO*i. 
 Tovra xaxoy 3<" UV-TOV ovSii yiyiireu. 
 'HfttiS Ss, %&>/>}; TUH a,va.yxa.'iuv XOLXUI, 
 'Avrat iea.t? auruv trioa -jroofrai/i^aftiv. 
 AvvrovjAif, at Trapy TI;' At eJVjj xaxu;, 
 
 '' an fSfi ris invtrvm, ff^o&oj*. 
 
 av yXai/1; Kta.xoa.yr,, ^sSaix-etftlv. 
 
 Menand. p. 244, ed. Clerc.
 
 Hi PREFACE. 
 
 immortal. And it is rarely well discoursed by Tyndarus in 
 Euripides : "If the angry wife shall kill her husband, the 
 son shall revenge his father's death, and kill his mother, and 
 then the brother shall kill his mother's murderer, and he 
 also will meet with an avenger for killing his brother." 
 
 rie^ag 3?j TO?" xaxZv vgfjfirjGtrai f 
 
 "What end shall there be to such" inhuman and "sad 
 accidents?" If in this there be injustice, it is against 
 natural reason ; and, if it be evil, and disorders the felicity 
 and security of society, it is also against natural reason : but 
 if it be just, it is a strange justice that is made up of so many 
 inhumanities. 
 
 41. And now, if any man pretends especially to reason, to 
 the ordinate desires and perfections of nature, and the sober 
 discourses of philosophy, here is in Christianity, and no 
 where else, enough to satisfy and inform his reason, to 
 perfect his nature, and to reduce to act all the propositions 
 of an intelligent and wise spirit. And the Holy Ghost is 
 promised and given in our religion, to be an eternal band 
 to keep our reason from returning to the darknesses of the 
 old creation, and to promote the ends of our natural and 
 proper felicity. For it is not a vain thing, that St. Paul 
 reckons helps, and governments, and healings, to be fruits 
 of the Spirit. For, since the two greatest blessings of the 
 world, personal and political, consist, that in health, this 
 in government ; d and the ends of human felicity are served 
 in nothing greater for the present interval, than in these 
 two ; Christ did not only enjoin rare prescriptions of health, 
 such as are fasting, temperance, chastity, and sobriety, 
 and all the great endearments of government, (and, unless 
 they be sacredly observed, man is infinitely miserable ;) but 
 also hath given his Spirit, that is, extraordinary aids to the 
 promoting these two, and facilitating the work of nature ; 
 that (as St. Paul says at the end of a discourse to this 
 very purpose) " the excellency of the power may be of God, 
 and not of us." e 
 
 c Eurip. Orest. 504. Pors. 
 
 d Nihil est illi principi Deo, qui omnem huuc mundum regit, quod quidem 
 iu terris fiat, acceptius, quam concilia ccetusque hominum jure sociati, quae 
 civitates appellantur. Cicer. Somn. Scipion. sec. 3, ed. Tooly. 
 
 e 2 Cor. iv. 7.
 
 PREFACE. ll 
 
 42. I shall add nothing but this single consideration : 
 God said to the children of Israel, "Ye are a royal priest- 
 hood," 1 ^ a kingdom of priests : which was therefore true, 
 because God reigned by the priests, and the priests' lips 
 did then preserve knowledge, and the people were to receive 
 the law from their mouths ; for God having, by laws of 
 his own, established religion and the republic, did govern 
 by the rule of the law, and the ministry of the priests. The 
 priests said, " Thus saith the Lord ;" and the people obeyed. 
 And these very words are spoken to the Christian church : 
 " Ye are a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar 
 people, that ye should shew forth the praises of Him that 
 .hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light." 
 That is, God reigns over all Christendom, just as he did 
 over the Jews. He hath now so given to them and restored 
 respectively all those reasonable laws, which are in order 
 to all good ends, personal, economical, and political, that 
 if men will suffer Christian religion to do its last intention, 
 if men will live according to it, -there needs no other 
 coercion of laws or power of the sword. The laws of God, 
 revealed by Christ, are sufficient to make all societies of 
 men happy ; and over all good men God reigns by his 
 ministers, by the preaching of the word. And this was 
 most evident in the three first asres of the Church, in which 
 
 O * 
 
 all Christian societies were, for all their proper intercourses, 
 perfectly guided, not by the authority and compulsion, but 
 by the sermons of their spiritual guides ; insomuch that 
 St. Paul sharply reprehends the Corinthians, that " brother 
 goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers ;" 
 as if he had said, " Ye will not suffer Christ to be your Judge, 
 and his law to be your rule :" which indeed was a great 
 fault among them, not only because they had so excellent 
 a law, so clearly described, (or, where they might doubt, 
 they had infallible interpreters,) so reasonable and profitable, 
 so evidently concurring to their mutual felicity ; but also 
 because God did design Jesus to be their King, to reign 
 over them by spiritual regiment, as himself did over the 
 Jews, till they chose a king. And when the emperors 
 
 ' 1 Pet. ii. 9.
 
 V PREFACE. 
 
 became Christian, the case was no otherwise altered, but 
 that the princes themselves, submitting to Christ's yoke, 
 were (as all other Christians are), for their proportion, to be 
 governed by the royal priesthood, that is, by the word 
 preached by apostolical persons, the political interest 
 remaining as before, save that, by being submitted to the 
 laws of Christ, it received this advantage, that all justice 
 was turned to be religion, and became necessary, and bound 
 upon the conscience by Divinity. And when it happens, 
 that a kingdom is converted to Christianity, the common- 
 wealth is made a church, and Gentile priests are Christian 
 bishops, and the subjects of the kingdom are servants of 
 Christ, the religion of the nation is turned Christian, and 
 the law of the nation made a part of the religion ; there is 
 no change of government, but that Christ is made King, 
 and the temporal power is his substitute, and is to promote 
 the interest of obedience to him, as before he did to Christ's 
 enemy ; Christ having left his ministers as lieger ambas- 
 sadors, to signify and publish the laws of Jesus, to pray 
 all, in Christ's stead, to be reconciled to God ; so that, over 
 the obedient, Christ wholly reigns by his ministers publishing 
 his laws ; over the disobedient, by the prince also putting 
 those laws in execution. And in this sense it is, that St. Paul 
 says, " Bonis lex non est posita ;" "To such (who live 
 after the Spirit) there is no law ;" that is, there needs no 
 coercion. But now, if we reject God from reigning over 
 us, and say, like the people in the Gospel, " Nolumus 
 hunc regnare," " We will not have him to reign over us," 
 by the ministry of his word, by the empire of the royal 
 priesthood, then we return to the condition of heathens, 
 and persons sitting in darkness ; then God hath armed the 
 temporal power with a sword to cut us off. If we obey 
 not God, speaking by his ministers, that is, if we live not 
 according to the excellent laws of Christianity, that is, 
 holily, soberly, and justly in all our relations, he hath placed 
 three swords against us ; the sword of the Spirit, against 
 the unholy and irreligious ; the sword of natural and super- 
 vening infelicities, upon the intemperate and unsober ; and 
 the sword of kings, against the unjust ; to remonstrate the 
 excellency of Christianity, and how certainly it leads to
 
 PREFACE. lv 
 
 all the felicity of man ; because every transgression of this 
 law, according to its proportion, makes men unhappy and 
 unfortunate. 
 
 43. \\hat effect this discourse may have, I know not ; 
 I intended it to do honour to Christianity, and to represent 
 it to be the best religion in the world, and the conjugation 
 of all excellent things, that were in any religion, or in any 
 philosophy, or in any discourses. For " whatsoever was 
 honest, whatsoever was noble, whatsoever was wise, what- 
 soever was of good report, if there be any praise, if there 
 be any virtue, " g it is in Christianity: for even to follow all 
 these instances of excellency, is a precept of Christianity. 
 And methinks, they, that pretend to reason, cannot more 
 reasonably endear themselves to the reputation of reason, 
 than by endearing their reason to Christianity ; the con- 
 clusions and belief of which is the most reasonable and 
 perfect, the most excellent design, and complying with the 
 noblest and most proper ends of man. And if this gate 
 may suffice to invite such persons into the recesses of the 
 religion, then I shall tell them, that I have dressed it in the 
 ensuing books with some variety : and as the nature of the 
 religion is, some parts whereof are apt to satisfy our 
 discourse, some to move our affections, and yet all of this 
 to relate to practice ; so is the design of the following pages. 
 For some men are wholly made up of passion, and their 
 very religion is but passion, put into the family and society 
 of holy purposes; and, for those, I have prepared considera- 
 tions upon the special parts of the life of the holy Jesus : 
 and yet there also are some things, mingled in the least 
 severe and most affectionate parts, which may help to 
 answer a question, and appease a scruple, and may give 
 rule for determination of many cases of conscience. For 
 I have so ordered the considerations, that they spend not 
 themselves in mere affections and ineffective passions, but 
 they are made doctrinal and little repositories of duty. 
 But because of the variety of men's spirits and of men's 
 necessities, it was necessary I should interpose some 
 practical discourses more severe : for it is but a sad thought 
 to consider, that piety and books of devotion are counted
 
 v PREFACE. 
 
 but entertainment for little understandings and softer spirits ; 
 and although there is much fault in such imperious minds, 
 that they will not distinguish the weakness of the writers 
 from the reasonableness and wisdom of the religion ; yet 
 I cannot but think the books themselves are, in a large 
 degree, the occasion of so great indevotion ; because they 
 are (some few excepted) represented naked in the conclusions 
 of spiritual life, without or art or learning, and made apt for 
 persons who can do nothing but believe and love ; not for 
 them that can consider and love. And it is not well that, 
 since nothing is more reasonable and excellent in all per- 
 fections spiritual than the doctrines of the Spirit, or holy 
 life ; yet nothing is offered to us so unlearnedly as this is, 
 so miserable and empty of all its own intellectual perfections. 
 If I could, I would have had it otherwise in the present 
 books ; for, since the understanding is not an idle faculty 
 in a spiritual life, but hugely operative to all excellent and 
 reasonable choices, it were very fit that this faculty were 
 also entertained by such discourses which God intended 
 as instruments of hallowing it, as he intended it towards 
 the sanctification of the whole man. For want of it, busy 
 and active men entertain themselves with notions infinitely 
 unsatisfying and unprofitable : but, in the mean time, they 
 are not so wise ; for, concerning those that study unprofit- 
 able notions, and neglect not only that which is wisest, 
 but that also which is of most real advantage, I cannot 
 but think, as Aristotle did of Thales and Anaxagoras, that 
 "They may be learned, but they are not wise ; or wise, 
 but not prudent, when they are ignorant of such things 
 as are profitable to them : for, suppose they know the 
 wonders of nature, and the subtilties of metaphysics, and 
 operations mathematical; yet they cannot be prudent, who 
 spend themselves wholly upon unprofitable and ineffective 
 contemplations." 11 He is truly wise that knows best to 
 promote the best end, that which he is bound to desire ; 
 and is happy if he obtains, and miserable if he misses ; and 
 that is the end of a happy eternity, which is obtained by 
 
 %<ra.i Tkuffii cLyvtouira,; TO, ffuptpie/nf etvToTf xai tri^tTra fAiv, *' la,vfj.a.ffra. t 
 atXifct, KO.I Saipeiiit tiiiieu avrtvs Qaffif a.^y/\irra. J', an ttt to, iii^afna, a,ya.6 
 tH. Arix. lib. vi. Eth. cap. 7, p. 244, ed. Wilk.
 
 PREFACE. Ivii 
 
 the only means of living according to the purposes of God, 
 and the prime intentions of nature ; natural and prime reason 
 being now all one with the Christian religion. But then 
 I shall only observe, that this part of wisdom and the 
 excellency of its secret and deep reason, is not to be 
 discerned but by experience; the propositions of this 
 philosophy being (as in many other) empirical and best 
 found out by observation of real and material events. So 
 that I may say of spiritual learning, as Quintilian said of 
 some of Plato's books : " Nam Plato, cum in aliis quibusdam, 
 turn prsecipu in Timaeo, ne intelligi quidem, nisi ab iis qui 
 hanc quoque partem discipline [musicae] diligenter perce- 
 perint, potest." The secrets of the kingdom of heaven are 
 not understood truly and thoroughly but by the sons of 
 the kingdom ; and by them too, in several degrees, and to 
 various purposes : but to evil persons the whole system 
 of this wisdom is insipid and flat, dull as the foot of a rock, 
 and unlearned as the elements of our mother tongue. But 
 so are mathematics to a Scythian boor, and music to a 
 camel. 
 
 44. But I consider, that the wisest persons, and those 
 who know how to value and entertain the more noble 
 faculties of their soul, and their precious hours, take more 
 pleasure in reading the productions of those old wise spirits, 
 who preserved natural reason and religion in the midst of 
 heathen darkness, (such as are Homer, Euripides, Orpheus, 
 Pindar, and Anacreon, ^Eschylus and Menander, and all 
 the Greek poets ; Plutarch and Polybius, Xenophon, and 
 all those other excellent persons of both faculties, (whose 
 choicest dictates are collected by Stobseus,) Plato and his 
 scholars, Aristotle, and after him Porphyry, and all his 
 other disciples, Pythagoras and his, especially Hierocles ; 
 all the old academics and stoics within the Roman schools : 
 more pleasure, I say, in reading these, than the triflings of 
 many of the later schoolmen, who promoted a petty interest 
 of a family, or an unlearned opinion, with great earnestness; 
 but added nothing to Christianity but trouble, scruple, and 
 vexation. And from hence I hope, that they may the rather 
 be invited to love and consider the rare documents of 
 Christianity, which certainly is the great treasure-house 
 of those excellent, moral, and perfective discourses, which, 
 
 VOL. n. B
 
 Iviii PREFACE. 
 
 with much pains and greater pleasure, we find respersed 
 and thinly scattered in all the Greek and Roman poets, 
 historians, and philosophers. 
 
 But because I have observed, that there are some prin- 
 ciples entertained into the persuasions of men, which are the 
 seeds of evil life, such as are the doctrine of late repent- 
 ance, the mistakes of the definition of the sins of infirmity, 
 the evil understanding the consequents and nature of original 
 sin, the sufficiency of contrition in order to pardon, the 
 efficacy of the rites of Christianity without the necessity of 
 moral adherencies, the nature of faith, and many other ; I 
 was diligent to remark such doctrines, and to pare off the 
 mistakes so far, that they hinder not piety, and yet, as near 
 as I could, without engaging in any question, in which the 
 very life of Christianity is not concerned. 
 
 Haec sum profatus baud ambagibus 
 Implicita, sed quae, regulis aequi et boni 
 Suffulta, rudibus pariter et doctis patent. ' 
 
 My great purpose, is to advance the necessity, and to 
 declare the manner and parts, of a good life ; k and to invite 
 some persons to the consideration of all the parts of it, by 
 intermixing something of pleasure with the use : others, by 
 such parts which will better entertain their spirits, than a 
 romance. I have followed the design of Scripture, and have 
 given milk for babes, and for stronger men stronger meat ; 
 and in all I have despised my own reputation, by so striving 
 to make it useful, that I was less careful to make it strict in 
 retired senses, and embossed with unnecessary, but graceful 
 ornaments. I pray God, this may go forth into a blessing to 
 all that shall use it, and reflect blessings upon me all the 
 way, that my spark may grow greater by kindling my 
 brother's taper, and God may be glorified in us both. If the 
 reader shall receive no benefit, yet I intended him one, and I 
 have laboured in order to it ; and I shall receive a great 
 recompense for that intention, if he shall please to say this 
 prayer for me, " That while I have preached to others, I 
 may not become a cast-away." 
 
 1 Polynic. apud Eurip. Phoen. 504. Pors. 
 
 " H faaouira, foa.yu.st.7iia: ol Qiaoix; Ivixd if Tit, uff-rio ai aX/.ar ou ya.o "y ti^uun 
 r'l ifnv r, u.oirv, future ,(&, aXX' /' iyt&ai yivuu.&a,.Ariit. Ethic, lib. ii. C. 2.
 
 AN EXHORTATION 
 
 TO THE IMITATION OF 
 
 THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 HOWEVER the person of Jesus Christ was depressed with a 
 load of humble accidents, and shadowed with the darknesses 
 of poverty and sad contingencies, so that the Jews, and the 
 contemporary ages of the Gentiles, and the apostles them- 
 selves, could not at first discern the brightest essence of 
 divinity ; yet as a beauty, artificially covered with a thin 
 cloud of Cyprus, transmits its excellency to the eye, made 
 more greedy and apprehensive by that imperfect and weak 
 restraint ; so was the sanctity and holiness of the life of 
 Jesus glorious in its drknesses, and found confessors and 
 admirers even in the midst of those despites, which were 
 done him upon the contrariant designs of malice and con- 
 tradictory ambition. Thus the wife of Pilate called him, 
 " That just person ;" Pilate pronounced him " guiltless ;" 
 Judas said he was " innocent;" the Devil himself called him 
 " the Holy one of God." For however it might concern 
 any man's mistaken ends, to mislike the purpose of his 
 preaching and spiritual kingdom, and those doctrines, which 
 were destructive of their complacencies and carnal securities; 
 yet they could not deny but that he was a man of God, of 
 exemplar sanctity, of an angelical chastity, of a life sweet, 
 affable, and complying with human conversation, and as 
 obedient to government as the most humble children of the 
 kingdom. And yet he was Lord of all the world. 
 
 2. And certainly very much of this was with a design, 
 that he might shine to all the generations and ages of the 
 world, and become a guiding star, and a pillar of fire to us in 
 our journey. For we, who believe that Jesus was perfect 
 God and perfect man, do also believe, that one minute of his 
 intolerable passion, and every action of his, might have been
 
 IX AN EXHORTATION TO THE 
 
 satisfactory, and enough for the expiation and reconcilement 
 of ten thousand worlds ; and God might, upon a less effusion 
 of blood, and a shorter life of merit, if he had pleased, have 
 accepted human nature to pardon and favour ; but that the 
 holy Jesus hath added so many excellent instances of holi- 
 ness, and so many degrees of passion, and so many kinds of 
 virtues, is, that he might become an example to us, and 
 reconcile our wills to him, as well as our persons to his 
 heavenly Father. 
 
 3. And indeed it will prove but a sad consideration, that one 
 drop of blood might be enough to obtain our pardon, and the 
 treasures of his blood running out till the fountain itself was 
 dry, shall not be enough to procure our conformity to him ; 
 that the smallest minute of his expense shall be enough to 
 justify us, and the whole magazine shall not procure our 
 sanctification ; that at a smaller expense God might pardon 
 us, and at a greater we will not imitate him : for therefore 
 *' Christ hath suffered for us," saiththe apostle, " leaving an 
 example to us, that we might follow his steps."* The least 
 of our wills cost Christ as much as the greatest of our sins. 
 And therefore he calls himself " the Way, the Truth, and the 
 Life ;" that as he redeems our souls from death to life, by 
 becoming life to our persons ; so he is the truth to our under- 
 standings, and the way to our will and affections, enlighten- 
 ing that, and leading these in the paths of a happy eternity. 
 
 4. When the king of Moab was pressed hard by the 
 sons of Isaac, b the Israelites and Edomites, he took the 
 king of Edom's eldest son, or, as some think, his own son, 
 the heir of his kingdom, and offered him as a holocaust 
 upon the wall ; and the Edomites presently raised the siege 
 at Kir-haraseth, and went to their own country. The same 
 and much more, was God's design, who took not his enemy's 
 but his own Son, his only begotten Son, and God himself, 
 and offered him up in sacrifice, to make us leave our per- 
 petual fightings against Heaven ; and if we still persist,, we 
 are hardened beyond the wildnesses of the Arabs and 
 Edomites, and neither are receptive of the impresses of pity 
 nor humanity, who neither have compassion to the suffering 
 of Jesus, nor compliance with the designs of God, nor con- 
 
 1 Pet. ii. 21. b 2 Kings, iii. 27.
 
 IMITATION OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. Ixi 
 
 formity to the holiness and obedience of our Guide. In a 
 dark night, if an ignis fatuus do but precede us, the glaring 
 of its lesser flames does so aruuse our eyes, that we follow it 
 into rivers and precipices, as if the ray of that false light 
 were designed on purpose o be our path to tread in : and 
 therefore not to follow the glories of the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness, who indeed leads us over rocks and difficult places, 
 but secures us against the danger, and guides us into safety, 
 is both the greatest indecency and unthankfulness in the 
 world. 
 
 5. In the great council of eternity, when God set down 
 the laws, and knit fast the eternal bands, of predestination, he 
 made it one of his great purposes to make his Son like us, c 
 that we also might be like his holy Son ; he, by taking our 
 nature; we, by imitating his holiness : " God hath predesti- 
 nated us to be conformable to the image of his Son," d saith 
 the apostle. For the first in every kind is in nature pro- 
 pounded as the pattern of the rest; and as the sun, the 
 prince of all the bodies of light, and the fire of all warm 
 substances, is the principal, the rule and the copy, which 
 they in their proportions imitate and transcribe ; so is the 
 Word incarnate the great example of all the predestinate ; 
 for " he is the first-born among many brethren."" And 
 therefore it was a precept of the apostle; and by his doctrine 
 we understand its meaning, " Put ye on the Lord Jesus 
 Christ." f The similitude declares the duty. As a garment 
 is composed and made of the same fashion with the body, 
 and is applied to each part in its true figure and cornmen- 
 suration ; so should we put on Christ, and imitate the whole 
 body of his sanctity, conforming to every integral part, and 
 express him in our lives, that God, seeing our impresses, 
 may know whose image and superscription we bear, and we 
 may be acknowledged for sons, when we have the air and 
 features and resemblances of our elder brother. 8 
 
 6. In the practice of this duty we may be helped by 
 certain considerations, which are like the proportion of so 
 
 v il; ^ifrrixv a,%iurtgo;.S. Dionys. 
 u Rom. viii. 29. Ibid. f Rom. xiii. 14. 
 
 f 'H ol fuftqiuves ru top.* rifiti, fin; tiiffia; tfri ruv rifj.uff.ivar yvutris, xai fi v^a 
 ecurtit xa.ro. "Sunafc.iv l^aft.i>iuffis' yaj dyitirS. rif, KCCI /*: fiiir/ii otrov tiivv n' us yag $0.91 
 il HvSccyooitoi, Tiff.r,fli( <rov Slav agi<rra, lav TM Sly rnv $isiviia,v Ofteiaffris- Hieroctes.
 
 AN EXHORTATION TO THE 
 
 many rewards. For this, according to the nature of all 
 holy exercises, stays not for pay, till its work be quite 
 finished ; but, like music in churches, is pleasure, and piety, 
 and salary besides. So is every work of grace ; full of 
 pleasure in the execution, and is abundantly rewarded, 
 besides the stipend of a glorious eternity. 
 
 7. First : I consider that nothing is more honourable than 
 to be like God ; and the heathens, worshippers of false 
 deities, grew vicious upon t at stock ; h and we who have 
 fondnesses of imitation, counting a deformity full of honour, 
 if by it we may be like our prince,' (for pleasures were in 
 their height in Capreae, because Tiberius there wallowed in 
 them, and a wry neck in Nero's court was the mode of 
 gallantry), might do well to make our imitations prudent and 
 glorious ; and, by propounding excellent examples, heighten 
 our faculties to the capacities of an evenness with the best 
 of precedents. He that strives to imitate another, admires 
 him, and confesses his own imperfections ; and therefore, that 
 our admirations be not flattering, nor our confessions fantastic 
 and impertinent, it were but reasonable to admire Him, from 
 whom really all perfections do derive, and before whose 
 glories all our imperfections must confess their shame, and 
 needs of reformation. God, by a voice from heaven, and by 
 sixteen generations of miracles and grace, hath attested the 
 holy Jesus to be the fountain of sanctity, and the " wonder- 
 ful Counsellor," and " the Captain of our sufferings," and the 
 Guide of our manners, by being his beloved Son, in whom he 
 took pleasure and complacency to the height of satisfaction : 
 and if any thing in the world be motive to our affections, or 
 satisfactory to our understandings, what is there in heaven or 
 
 h Adulterio delectatur quis 1 Jovem respicit, et inde cupiditatis suae 
 fomenta conquirit : probat, imitatur, et laudat, quod Deus suus in cycno 
 fallit, in tauro rapit, ludit in Satyro. Coenum de Coelo facitis, et errantes 
 animos per abrupta pra-cipitia crudeli calamitate ducitis, cum borninibus 
 peccare volentibus facinorum viam deorum monstratis exemplis. Julius Finnic. 
 de Error, prof. Relig. 
 
 1 Facere recte cives suos princeps optimus faciendo docet : cumque sit 
 imperio magnus, exemplo magis est. Vellei. Paterc. ii. 126. 5. Krause. 
 - tovfarnrias 3s poi 
 $t7fias, ri -ra,ff%ii raoS'tvouf fi'ia. ya.p.ui, 
 
 ras, ciui/.n [tri <ru y' XX' ivrii xfaTt7f t 
 $<axi. Eurip. Ion, 436.
 
 IMITATION OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 earth we can desire or imagine beyond a likeness to God, 
 and participation of the Divine nature and perfections? And 
 therefore, as, when the sun arises, every man goes to his 
 work, and warms himself with his heat, and is refreshed 
 with his influences, and measures his labour with his course; 
 so should we frame all the actions of our life by His light, 
 who hath shined by an excellent righteousness, that we no 
 more walk in darkness, or sleep in lethargies, or run a gazing 
 after the lesser and imperfect beauties of the night. It is 
 the weakness of the organ, that makes us hold our hand 
 between the . sun and us, and yet stand staring upon a 
 meteor or an inflamed jelly. And our judgments are as 
 mistaken, and our appetites are as sottish, if we propound to 
 ourselves, in the courses and designs of perfections, any copy 
 but of him, or something like him, who is the most perfect. 
 And lest we think his glories too great to behold, 
 
 8. Secondly, I consider, that the imitation of the life of 
 Jesus is a duty of that excellency and perfection, that we are 
 helped in it, not only by the assistance of a good and a great 
 example, which possibly might be too great, and scare our 
 endeavours and attempts ; but also by its easiness, com- 
 pliance, and proportion to us. k For Jesus, in his whole life, 
 conversed with men with a modest virtue, which, like a well- 
 kindled fire fitted with just materials, casts a constant heat ; 
 not like an inflamed heap of stubble, glaring with great 
 emissions, and suddenly stooping into the thickness of smoke. 
 His piety was even, constant, unblamable, complying with 
 civil society, without affrightment of precedent, or prodigious 
 instances of actions greater than the imitation of men. For 
 if we observe our blessed Saviour in the whole story of his 
 life, although he was without sin, yet the instances of his 
 piety were the' actions of a very holy, but of an ordinary 
 life ; and we may observe this difference in the story of 
 Jesus from ecclesiastical writings of certain beatified persons, 
 whose life is told rather to amaze us, and to create scruples, 
 than to lead us in the evenness and serenity of a holy 
 conscience. Such are the prodigious penances of Simeon 
 Stylites, the abstinence of the religious retired into the 
 
 k Admonetur onmis aetas fieri posse, quod aliquando factum est. Exempla 
 fiunt, quse jam es.se facinora destiteruut. S. Cyprian.
 
 Ixiv 
 
 AN EXHORTATION TO THE 
 
 mountain Nitria, but especially the stories of later saints, in 
 the midst of a declining piety and aged Christendom, where 
 persons are represented holy by way of idea and fancy, if not 
 to promote the interests of a family and institution. But our 
 blessed Saviour, though his eternal union and adherences of 
 love and obedience to his heavenly Father were next to 
 infinite, yet in his external actions, in which only, with the 
 correspondence of the Spirit in those actions, he propounds 
 himself imitable, he did so converse with men, that men, 
 after that example, might for ever converse with him. We 
 find that some saints have had excrescencies and eruptions 
 of holiness in the instances of uncommanded duties, which 
 in the same particulars we find not in the story of the life 
 of Jesus. John Baptist was a greater mortifier than his 
 Lord was ; and some princes have given more money than 
 all Christ's family did, whilst he was alive : but the dif- 
 ference^ which is observable, is, that although some men did 
 some acts of counsel in order to attain that perfection, which 
 in Jesus was essential and unalterable, and was not acquired 
 by degrees, and means of danger and difficulty ; yet no man 
 ever did his whole duty, save only the holy Jesus. The 
 best of men did sometimes actions not precisely and strictly 
 requisite, and such as were besides the precept ; but yet, in 
 the greatest flames of their shining piety, they prevaricated 
 something of the commandment. They that have done the 
 most things beyond, have also done some things short of 
 their duty ; but Jesus, who intended himself the example of 
 piety, did in manners as in the rule of faith, which, because 
 it was propounded to all men, was fitted to every under- 
 standing ; it was true, necessary, short, easy, and intelligible. 
 So was his rule and his copy fitted, not only with excel- 
 lencies worthy, but with compliances possible, to be imitated ; 
 of glories so great, that the most early and constant industry 
 must confess its own imperfections ; and yet so sweet and 
 humane, that the greatest infirmity, if pious, shall find com- 
 fort and encouragement. Thus God gave his children manna 
 from heaven ; and though it was excellent, like the food of 
 angels, yet it conformed to every palate, according to that 
 appetite, which their several fancies and constitutions did 
 produce. 
 
 9. But now, when the example of Jesus is so excellent,
 
 IMITATION OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 that it allures and tempts with its facility and sweetness, and 
 that we are not commanded to imitate a life, whose story tells 
 of ecstasies in prayer, 1 and abstractions of senses, and imma- 
 terial transportations, and fastings to the exinanition of 
 spirits, and disabling all animal operations ; but a life of 
 justice and temperance, of chastity and piety, of charity and 
 devotion; such a life, without which human society cannot be 
 conserved, and by which, as our irregularities are made 
 regular, so our weaknesses are not upbraided, nor our 
 miseries made a mockery. We find so much reason to ad- 
 dress ourselves to a heavenly imitation of so blessed a 
 pattern, that the reasonableness of the thing will be a great 
 argument to chide every degree and minute of neglect. It 
 was a strange and a confident encouragement which Phocion 
 
 O O 
 
 used to a timorous Greek, who was condemned to die with 
 him : " Is it not enough to thee that thou must die with 
 Phocion?" I am sure he that is most incurious of the issues 
 of his life, is yet willing enough to reign with Jesus when he 
 looks upon the glories represented without the duty ; but it 
 is a very great stupidity and unreasonableness not to live 
 with him in the imitation of so holy and so prompt a piety. 
 It is glorious to do what he did, and a shame to decline his 
 sufferings, when there was a God to hallow and sanctify the 
 actions and a man clothed with infirmity to undergo the 
 sharpness of the passion ; so that the glory of the person 
 added excellency to the first, and the tenderness of the 
 person excused not from suffering the latter. 
 
 10. Thirdly : Every action of the life of Jesus, as it is 
 imitable by us, is of so excellent merit, that, by making up 
 the treasure of grace, it becomes full of assistances to us, 
 and obtains of God grace to enable us to its imitation, by way 
 of influence and impetration. For, as in the acquisition of 
 habits the very exercise of the action does produce a facility 
 to the action, and in some proportion becomes the cause of 
 itself; so does every exercise of the life of Christ kindle 
 its own fires, inspires breath into itself, and makes an uni- 
 vocal production of itself in a differing subject. And Jesus 
 becomes the fountain of spiritual life to us, as the prophet 
 
 1 'Cls lv%op.itis rois $to7i fiiTtagi^ri ft.iv U,TO rr,s y7,s a-Xia n Stxa *n%tis limi&rSizi, 
 clixit Eunapius de lambiicho.
 
 1XV1 AN EXHORTATION TO THE 
 
 Elisha to the dead child ; when he stretched his hands upon 
 the child's hands, laid his mouth to his mouth, and formed 
 his posture to the boy, and breathed into him, the spirit 
 returned again into the child at the prayer of Elisha ; so 
 when our lives are formed into the imitation of the life of the 
 holiest Jesus, the Spirit of God returns into us, not only by 
 the efficacy of the imitation, but by the merit and irnpetra- 
 tion of the actions of Jesus. It is reported in the Bohemian 
 story," 1 that St. Wenceslaus, their king, one winter night going 
 to his devotions, in a remote church, barefooted in the snow 
 and sharpness of unequal and pointed ice, his servant Poda- 
 vivus, who waited upon his master's piety, and endeavoured 
 to imitate his affections, began to faint through the violence 
 of the snow and cold, till the king commanded him to follow 
 him, and set his feet in the same footsteps, which his feet 
 should mark for him : the servant did so, and either fancied 
 a cure, or found one ; for he followed his prince, helped 
 forward with shame and zeal to his imitation, and by the 
 forming footsteps for him in the snow. In the same manner 
 does the blessed Jesus ; for, since our way is troublesome, 
 obscure, full of objection and danger, apt to be mistaken and 
 to affright our industry, he commands us to mark his foot- 
 steps, to tread where his feet have stood, and not only 
 invites us forward by the argument of his example, but 
 he hath trodden down much of the difficulty, and made the 
 way easier, and fit for our feet. For he knows our infirmities, 
 and himself hath felt their experience in all things but in the 
 neighbourhoods of sin ; and therefore he hath proportioned a 
 way and a path to our strengths and capacities, and, like 
 Jacob, hath marched softly and in evenness with the children 
 and the cattle, to entertain us by the comforts of his com- 
 pany, and the influences of a perpetual guide. 
 
 1 1 . Fourthly : But we must know, that not every thing 
 which Christ did is imitable by us; neither did he, in the 
 work of our redemption, in all things imitate his heavenly 
 Father. For there are some things which are issues of an 
 absolute power, some are expresses of supreme dominion, 
 some are actions of a judge. And therefore Jesus prayed 
 for his enemies, and wept over Jerusalem, when at the same 
 
 m Histor. Bobem. lib. iv.
 
 IMITATION OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 instant his eternal Father laughed them to scorn ; for he 
 knew that their day was coming, and himself had decreed 
 their ruin. But it became the holy Jesus to imitate his 
 Father's mercies ; for himself was the great instrument of the 
 eternal compassion, and was the instance of mercy ; and 
 therefore, in the operation of his Father's design, every 
 action of his was univocal, and he shewed the power of his 
 divinity in nothing but in miracles of mercy and illustrations 
 of faith, by creating arguments of credibility. In the same 
 proportion we follow Jesus as himself followed his Father : 
 for what he abated by the order tojiis intendment and 
 design, we abate by the proportions of our nature; for some 
 excellent acts of his were demonstrations of divinity, and an 
 excellent grace poured forth upon him without measure was 
 their instrument ; to which proportions if we should extend 
 our infirmities, we should crack our sinews and dissolve the 
 silver cords, before we could entertain the instances and 
 support the burden. Jesus fasted forty days and forty 
 nights ; but the manner of our fastings hath been in all ages 
 limited to the term of an artificial day ; and in the primitive 
 observations and the Jewish rites, men did eat their meal as 
 soon as the stars shone in the firmament. We never read 
 that Jesus laughed, and but once that he rejoiced in spirit; 
 but the declensions of our natures cannot bear the weight of 
 a perpetual grave deportment without the intervals of re- 
 freshment and free alacrity. Our ever blessed Saviour suf- 
 fered the devotion of Mary Magdalene to transport her to an 
 expensive expression of her religion, and twice to anoint his 
 feet with costly nard : and yet if persons, whose conditions 
 were of no greater lustre or resplendency of fortune than 
 was conspicuous in his family and retinue, should suffer the 
 same profusion upon the dressing and perfuming their bodies, 
 possibly it might be truly said, " It might better be sold, and 
 distributed to the poor." This Jesus received, as he was 
 the Christ and anointed of the Lord ; and by this he suffered 
 himself to be designed to burial, and he received the oblation 
 as eucharistical for the ejection of seven devils; for " there- 
 fore she loved much." 
 
 12. The instances are not many. For however Jesus 
 had some extraordinary transvolations, and acts of emigra- 
 tion beyond the lines of his even and ordinary conversation,
 
 AN EXHORTATION TO THE 
 
 yet it was but seldom ; for his being exemplary was of so 
 great consideration, that he chose to have fewer instances of 
 wonder, that he might transmit the more of an imitable 
 virtue. And therefore we may establish this for a rule and 
 limit of our imitations : because Christ, our Lawgiver, hath 
 described all his Father's will in sanctions and signature of 
 laws ; whatsoever he commanded, and whatsoever he did, of 
 precise morality, or in pursuance of the laws of nature, in 
 that we are to trace his footsteps : and in these his laws and 
 his practice differ but as a map and a guide, a law and a 
 judge, a rule and a precedent. But in the special instances 
 of action we are to abate the circumstances, and to separate 
 the obedience from the effect : whatsoever was moral in a 
 ceremonial performance, that is highly imitable ; and the 
 obedience of sacrificing, and the subordination to la\vs 
 actually in being even now they are abrogated, teach us 
 our duty, in a differing subject, upon the like reason. Jesus 's 
 going up to Jerusalem to the feasts, and his observation of 
 the sabbaths, teach us our duty in celebration of festivals 
 constituted by a competent and just authority. For that 
 which gave excellency to the observation of Mosaical rites 
 was an evangelical duty ; and the piety of obedience did not 
 only consecrate the observations of Levi, but taught us our 
 duty in the constitutions of Christianity. 
 
 13. Fifthly ; As the holy Jesus did some things which 
 we are not to imitate, so we also are to do some things 
 which we cannot learn from his example. For there are 
 some of our duties which presuppose a state of sin, and 
 some suppose a violent temptation and promptness to it ; 
 and the duties of prevention, and the instruments of restitu- 
 tion, are proper to us, but conveyed only by precept, and not 
 by precedent. Such are all the parts and actions of repent- 
 ance, the duties of mortification and self-denial. For what- 
 soever the holy Jesus did, in the matter of austerity, looked 
 directly upon the work of our redemption, and looked 
 back only on us by a reflex act, as Christ did on Peter, 
 when he looked him into repentance. Some states of life 
 also there are which Jesus never led ; such are those of 
 temporal governors, kings and judges, merchants, lawyers, 
 and the state of marriage : in the course of which lives many 
 cases do occur which need a precedent and the vivacity of
 
 IMITATION OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 an excellent example, especially since all the rules, which 
 they have, have not prevented the subtilty of the many 
 inventions, which men have found out, nor made provision 
 for all contingencies. Such persons, in all their special 
 needs, are to govern their actions by the rules of proportion, 
 by analogy to the holiness of the person of Jesus, and the 
 sanctity of his institution ; considering what might become 
 a person professing the discipline of so holy a Master, and 
 what he would have done in the like case ; taking our 
 heights by the excellence of his innocency and charity. 
 Only remember this, that, in such cases, we must always 
 judge on the strictest side of piety and charity, if it be a 
 matter concerning the interest of a second person ; and that, 
 in all things, we do those actions which are furthest re- 
 moved from scandal, and such as towards ourselves are 
 severe ; towards others, full of gentleness and sweetness : 
 for so would the righteous and merciful Jesus have done. 
 These are the best analogies and proportions. And in such 
 cases, when the wells are dry, let us take water from a 
 cistern, and propound to ourselves some exemplar saint, the 
 necessities of whose life have determined his piety to the like 
 occurrences. 
 
 14. But now, from these particulars we shall best account 
 to what the duty of the imitation of Jesus does amount: for 
 it signifies, that we " should walk as he walked," tread in 
 his steps, with our hand upon the guide, and our eye upon 
 his rule ; that we should do glory to him, as he did to his 
 Father ; and that whatsoever we do, we should be careful 
 that it do him honour, and no reproach to his institution ; 
 and then account these to be the integral parts of our duty, 
 which are imitation of his actions, or his spirit, of his rule, 
 or of his life; there being no better imitation of him, than 
 in such actions as do him pleasure, however he hath ex- 
 pressed or imitated the precedent. 
 
 15. He that gives alms to the poor, takes Jesus by the 
 hand; he that patiently endures injuries and affronts, helps 
 him to bear his cross; he that comforts his brother in 
 affliction, gives an amiable kiss of peace to Jesus ; he that 
 bathes his own and his neighbour's sins in tears of penance 
 and compassion, washes his Master's feet : we lead Jesus 
 into the recesses of our heart by holy meditations ; and we
 
 1XX AN EXHORTATION TO THE 
 
 enter into his heart, when we express him in our actions ; 
 for so the apostle says, " He that is in Christ, walks as he 
 also walked." n But thus the actions of our life relate to him 
 by way of worship and religion ; but the use is admirable and 
 effectual, when our actions refer to him as to our copy, and 
 we transcribe the original to the life. He that considers, with 
 what affections and lancinations of spirit, with what effusions 
 of love Jesus prayed, what fervours and assiduity, what 
 innocency of wish, what modesty of posture, what subordina- 
 tion to his Father, and conformity to the Divine pleasure, 
 were in all his devotions, is taught and excited to holy and 
 religious prayer: the rare sweetness of his deportment in all 
 temptations and violences of his passion, his charity to his 
 enemies, his sharp reprehensions to the scribes and Pharisees, 
 his ingenuity toward all men, are living and effectual sermons 
 to teach us patience and humility, and zeal, and candid sim- 
 plicity, and justice in all our actions. I add no more in- 
 stances, because all the following discourses will be prose- 
 cutions of this intendment. And the life of Jesus is not 
 described to be like a picture in a chamber of pleasure, only 
 for beauty, and entertainment of the eye ; but like the 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics, whose every feature is a precept, and 
 the images converse with men by sense, and signification of 
 excellent discourses. 
 
 16. It was not without great reason advised, that 
 every man should propound the example of a wise and 
 virtuous personage, as Cato, or Socrates, or Brutus; and, 
 by a fiction of imagination, to suppose him present as a 
 witness, and really to take his life as the direction, of all our 
 actions. The best and most excellent of the old lawgivers 
 and philosophers among the Greeks had an allay of vicious- 
 ness, and could not be exemplary all over : some were noted 
 for flatterers, as Plato and Aristippus ; some for inconti- 
 nency, as Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno, Theognis, Plato, and 
 Aristippus again ; and Socrates, whom their oracle affirmed 
 to be the wisest and most perfect man, yet was by Porphyry 
 noted for extreme intemperance of anger, both in words 
 and actions : and those Romans who were offered to them 
 for examples, although they were great in reputation, yet 
 they had also great vices ; Brutus dipped his hand in the 
 
 n 1 John, ii. 6. Seneca, Ep. 11.
 
 IMITATION OF THE LIFE OF CHRIST. 
 
 blood of Caesar, his prince, and his father by love, endear- 
 ments, and adoption ; and Cato was but a wise man all 
 day, at night he was used to drink too liberally; and both 
 he and Socrates did give their wives unto their friends ; P 
 the philosopher and the censor were procurers of their 
 wives' unchastity ; and yet these were the best among the 
 Gentiles. But how happy and richly furnished are Christ- 
 ians with precedents of saints, whose faith and revelations 
 have been productive of more spiritual graces, and greater 
 degrees of moral perfections ! And this I call the privilege 
 of a very great assistance, that I might advance the repu- 
 tation and account of the life of the glorious Jesu, which 
 is not abated by the imperfections of human nature, as 
 .they were, but receives great heightenings and perfection 
 from the Divinity of his person, of which they were never 
 capable. 
 
 17. Let us therefore press after Jesus, as Elisha did 
 after his master, with an inseparable prosecution, even 
 whithersoever he goes ; that, according to the reasonableness 
 and proportion expressed in St. Paul's advice, " As we 
 have borne the image of the earthy, we may also bear the 
 image of the heavenly. "1 For, " In vain are we called 
 Christians, if we live not according to the example and 
 discipline of Christ, the Father of the institution." 1 " When 
 St. Laurence was in the midst of the torments of the 
 gridiron, he made this to be the matter of his joy and 
 eucharist, that he was admitted to the gates through which 
 Jesus had entered ; and therefore thrice happy are they, 
 who walk in his courts all their days. And it is yet a 
 nearer union and vicinity, to imprint his life in our souls, 
 and express it in our exterior converse ; and this is done 
 
 P Atbenagoras, lib. iii. et xiii. et Tbeognis de sc. Idem testantur Laertius et 
 Lactantius. Hoc notat S. Cyrillus, lib. vi. contra Julian. 
 Narratur et prisci Catonis 
 Sajpe mero caluisse virtus. Horat. 3. 21. 11. 
 
 Majorum et sapientissimorum disciplina, Graeci Socratis et Romani Catonis, 
 qui uxores suas amicis communicaverunt, quas in matrimonium duzerant 
 liberorum causa, et alibi creandorum, nescio quidera an invitas : quid nam de 
 castitate cunirent, quam mariti tarn facile donaverant 1 O sapientiae Atticse, 
 O Romans gravitatis exemplum ! Leno est pbilosopbus et censor. Tertul. 
 Apolog. c. 39. 
 
 i 1 Cor. xv. -19. 
 
 r Dictum Malacbiae Abbat. apud S. Bernardum, in Vila S. Mai.
 
 AN EXHORTATION, &C. 
 
 by him only, who (as St. Prosper' describes the duty) 
 despises all those gilded vanities which he despised, that 
 fears none of those sadnesses which he suffered, that 
 practises or also teaches those doctrines which he taught, 
 and hopes for the accomplishment of all his promises. 
 And this is truest religion, and the most solemn adoration.* 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O eternal, holy, and most glorious Jesu, who hast united 
 two natures of distance infinite, descending to the low- 
 nesses of human nature, that thou misrhtest exalt human 
 
 * zj 
 
 nature to a participation of the Divinity ; we, thy people, 
 that sat in darkness and in the shadows of death, have 
 seen great light, to entertain our understandings and 
 enlighten our souls with its excellent influences ; for the 
 excellency of thy sanctity, shining gloriously in every 
 part of thy life, is like thy angel, the pillar of fire, which 
 called thy children from the darknesses of Egypt. Lord, 
 open mine eyes, and give me power to behold thy righteous 
 glories ; and let my soul be so entertained with affections 
 and holy ardours, that I may never look back upon the 
 flames of Sodom, but may follow thy light, which recreates 
 and enlightens, and guides us to the mountains of safety, 
 and sanctuaries of holiness. Holy Jesu, since thy image 
 is imprinted on our nature by creation, let me also express 
 thy image by all the parts of a holy life, conforming my 
 will and affections to thy holy precepts ; submitting my 
 understanding to thy dictates and lessons of perfection ; 
 imitating thy sweetnesses and excellencies of society, 
 thy devotion in prayer, thy conformity to God, thy zeal 
 tempered with meekness, thy patience heightened with 
 charity ; that heart, and hands, and eyes, and all my 
 faculties, may grow up with the increase of God, till I 
 come to the full measure of the stature of Christ, even 
 to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus ; that at last in thy 
 light I may see light, and reap the fruits of glory from the 
 seeds of sanctity, in the imitation of thy holy life, O 
 blessed and holy Saviour Jesus ! Amen. 
 
 Lib. ii. de Vita Contemplat. c. 21. 
 
 1 Religiosissimus Cultus iniituri. l.actant.
 
 THE LIFE 
 OUR BLESSED LORD AND SAVIOUR 
 
 JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 BEGINNING AT THE ANNUNCIATION TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN MABY, 
 UNTIL HIS BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION INCLUSIVELY. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 
 The History of the Conception of Jesus. 
 
 1. WHEN the fulness of time was come, after the frequent 
 repetition of promises, the expectation of the Jewish nation, 
 the longings and tedious waitings of all Tioly persons, the 
 departure of the " sceptre from Judah, and the lawgiver 
 from between his feet ; " when the number of Daniel's 
 years was accomplished, and the Egyptian and Syrian 
 kingdoms had their period ; God, having great compassion 
 towards mankind, remembering his promises, and our great 
 necessities, sent his Son into the world, to take upon him 
 our nature, and all that guilt of sin which stuck close to our 
 nature, and all that punishment, which was consequent to 
 our sin : which came to pass after this manner. 
 
 2. In the days of Herod the king, the angel Gabriel was 
 sent from God to a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a 
 holy maid, called Mary, espoused to Joseph, and found her 
 in a capacity and excellent disposition to receive the greatest 
 honour, that ever was done to the daughters of men. Her 
 employment was holy and pious, her person young, her 
 years florid and springing, her body chaste, her mind humble, 
 and a rare repository of divine graces. She was full of 
 grace and excellencies; and God poured upon her a full 
 
 VOL. II. F
 
 25 HISTORY OF THE 
 
 measure of honour, in making her the mother of the Messias : 
 for the " angel came to her, and said, Hail, thou that art 
 highly favoured, the Lord is with thee ; blessed art thou 
 among women." 
 
 3. We cannot but imagine the great mixture of innocent 
 disturbances and holy passions, that, in the first address of 
 the angel, did rather discompose her settledness, and inter- 
 rupt the silence of her spirits, than dispossess her dominion, 
 which she ever kept over those subjects, which never had 
 been taught to rebel beyond the mere possibilities of natural 
 imperfection. But if the angel appeared in the shape of a 
 man, it was an unusual arrest to the blessed Virgin, who 
 was accustomed to retirements and solitariness, and had not 
 known an experience of admitting a comely person, but a 
 stranger, to her closet and privacies. But if the heavenly 
 messenger did retain a diviner form, more symbolical to 
 angelical nature, and more proportionable to his glorious 
 message, although her daily employment was a conversation 
 with angels, who, in their daily ministering to the saints, 
 did behold her chaste conversation, coupled with fear, 
 yet they used not any affrighting glories in the offices of 
 their daily attendances, but were seen only by spiritual 
 discernings. However, so it happened, that " when she 
 saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her 
 mind, what manner of salutation this should be." 
 
 4. But the angel, who came with designs of honour and 
 comfort to her, not willing that the inequality and glory 
 of the messenger should, like too glorious a light to a weaker 
 eye, rather confound the faculty than enlighten the organ, 
 did, before her thoughts could find a tongue, invite her to 
 a more familiar confidence than possibly a tender virgin 
 (though of the greatest serenity and composure) could have 
 put on, in the presence of such a beauty and such a holiness. 
 And " the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou 
 has found favour with God. And behold, thou shalt 
 conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call 
 his name Jesus." 
 
 5. The holy Virgin knew herself a person very unlikely 
 to be a mother: for, although the desires of becoming a 
 mother to the Messias were great in every of the daughters 
 of Jacob, and about that time the expectation of his reve-
 
 CONCEPTION OF JESUS. 3 
 
 lation was high and pregnant, and therefore she was espoused 
 to an honest and a just person of her kindred and family, 
 and so might not despair to become a mother ; yet she was 
 a person of a rare sanctity, and so mortified a spirit, that 
 for all this desponsation of her, according to the desire of 
 her parents, and the custom of the nation, she had not set 
 one step toward the consummation of her marriage, so much 
 as in thought ; and possibly had set herself back from it by 
 a vow of chastity and holy celibate: for " Mary said unto 
 the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man ?" 
 
 6. But the angel, who was a person of that nature, which 
 knows no conjunctions but those of love and duty, knew 
 that the piety of her soul, and the religion of her chaste 
 purposes, was a great imitator of angelical purity, and 
 therefore perceived where the philosophy of her question 
 did consist; and, being taught of God, declared that the 
 manner should be as miraculous, as the message itself was 
 glorious. For the angel told her, that this should not be 
 done by any way, which our sin and the shame of Adam had 
 unhallowed, by turning nature into a blush, and forcing her 
 to a retirement from a public attesting the means of her own 
 preservation ; but the whole matter was from God, and so 
 should the manner be: for " the angel said unto her, The 
 Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the High- 
 est shall overshadow thee : therefore also that holy thing, 
 which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God." 
 
 7. When the blessed Virgin was so ascertained, that she 
 should be a mother* and a maid, and that two glories, like 
 the two luminaries of heaven, should meet in her, that she 
 might in such a way become the mother of her Lord, that 
 she might with better advantages be his servant ; then all 
 her hopes and all her desires received such satisfaction, and 
 filled all the corners of her heart so much, as indeed it was 
 fain to make room for its reception. But she to whom the 
 greatest things of religion, and the transportations of de- 
 votion, were made familiar, by the assiduity and piety of 
 her daily practices, however she was full of joy, yet she was 
 
 quae ventre beato 
 
 Gaudia matris habeus cum virgimtatis honore, 
 
 Nee primam similem visa es, nee habere sequentem ; 
 
 Sola sine exemplo placuisti foemina Christo. Sedul.
 
 4 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE ANNUNCIATION 
 
 carried like a full vessel, without the violent tossing? of 
 a tempestuous passion, or the wrecks of a stormy imagina- 
 tion : and, as the power of the Holy Ghost did descend upon 
 her, like rain into a fleece of wool, without any obstreperous 
 noises or violences to nature, but only the extraordinaries 
 of an exaltation; so her spirit received it with the gentleness 
 and tranquillity fitted for the entertainment of the spirit of 
 love, and a quietness symbolical to the holy guest of her 
 spotless womb, the Lamb of God ; for she meekly replied, 
 " Behold the handmaid of the Lord ; be it unto me accord- 
 ing unto thy word. And the angel departed from her," 
 having done his message. And at the same time the Holy 
 Spirit of God did make her to conceive in her womb the 
 immaculate Son of God, the Saviour of the world. 
 
 Ad SECTION I. 
 
 Considerations upon the Annunciation of the Blessed Mary, 
 and the Conception of the Holy Jesus. 
 
 1. THAT which shines brightest, presents itself first to the 
 eye ; and the devout soul, in the chain of excellent and 
 precious things, which are represented in the counsel, design, 
 and first beginnings of the work of our redemption, hath not 
 leisure to attend the twinkling of the lesser stars, till it hath 
 stood and admired the glory and eminencies of the Divine 
 love, manifested in the incarnation of the Word eternal. 
 God had no necessity, in order to the conservation or 
 the heightening his own felicity, but out of mere and perfect 
 charity, and the bowels of compassion, sent* into the world 
 his only Son, for remedy to human miseries, to ennoble our 
 nature by an union with Divinity, to sanctify it with his 
 justice, to enrich it with his grace, to instruct it with his 
 doctrine, to fortify it with his example, to rescue it from 
 servitude, to assert it into the liberty of the sons of God, 
 and at last to make it partaker of a beatifical resurrection. 
 2. God, who, in the infinite treasures of his wisdom and 
 
 * Cum inter noa et Deum discordiam peccando fecimus, taraen ad nos 
 Deus legatum suum prior misit, ut nos ipsi, qui peccavimus, ad pacem Dei 
 rogati veniamus. St. Greg.
 
 AND THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS. 5 
 
 providence, could have found out many other ways for our 
 redemption, than the incarnation of his eternal Son, was 
 pleased to choose this, not only that the remedy by man 
 might have proportion to the causes of our ruin, whose 
 introduction and intromission was by the prevarication of 
 man ; but also, that we might with freer dispensation receive 
 the influences of a Saviour, with whom we communicate in 
 nature. Although Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, 
 were of greater name and current, yet they were not so 
 salutary as the waters of Jordan, to cure Naaman's leprosy. 
 And if God had made the remedy of human nature to have 
 come all the way clothed in prodigy, and every instant of 
 its execution had been as terrible, affrighting, and as full 
 of majesty, as the apparitions upon Mount Sinai ; yet it had 
 not been so useful and complying to human necessities, as 
 was the descent of God to the susception of human nature, 
 whereby (as in all medicaments) the cure is best wrought by 
 those instruments, which have the fewest dissonances to our 
 temper, and are the nearest to our constitution. For thus 
 the Saviour of the world became human, alluring, full of 
 invitation and the sweetnesses of love, exemplary, humble, 
 and medicinal. 
 
 3. And, if we consider the reasonableness of the thing, 
 what can be given more excellent for the redemption of man, 
 than the blood of the Son of God? And what can more 
 ennoble our nature, than that by the means of his holy 
 humanity it was taken up into the cabinet of the mysterious 
 Trinity? 6 What better advocate could we have for us, than 
 he that is appointed to be our Judge ? And what greater 
 hopes of reconciliation can be imagined, than that God, in 
 whose power it is to give an absolute pardon, hath taken a 
 new nature, entertained an office, and undergone a life of 
 poverty, with a purpose to procure our pardon ? For now, 
 though, as the righteous Judge, he will judge the nations 
 righteously ; yet, by the susception of our nature, and its 
 appendant crimes, he is become a party ; and, having obliged 
 himself as man, as he is God he will satisfy, by putting the 
 value of an infinite merit to the actions and sufferings of his 
 
 b Quod sperare nullus audebat : quod si forte in mentem alicujus incidisset, 
 poterat aestimare se in blasphemiam incurrisse. -St. Primasius.
 
 6 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE ANNUNCIATION 
 
 humanity. And if he had not been God, he could not have 
 given us remedy ; if he had not been man, we should have 
 wanted the excellency of example. 
 
 4. And till now, human nature was less than that of 
 angels ; but, by the incarnation of the Word, was to be 
 exalted above the cherubims : yet the archangel Gabriel, 
 being despatched in embassy to represent the joy and 
 exaltation of his inferior, instantly trims his wings with love 
 and obedience, and hastens with this narrative to the holy 
 Virgin. And, if we should reduce our prayers to action, 
 and do God's will on earth, as the angels in heaven do it, we 
 should promptly execute every part of the Divine will, though 
 it were to be instrumental to the exaltation of a brother 
 above ourselves ; knowing no end but conformity to the 
 Divine will, and making simplicity of intention to be the 
 fringes and exterior borders of our garments. 
 
 5. When the eternal God meant to stoop so low as to 
 be fixed to our centre, he chose for his mother a holy person 
 and a maid, but yet affianced to a just man, that he might 
 not only be secure in the innocency, but also provided for 
 in the reputation, of his holy mother : teaching us that we 
 must not only satisfy ourselves in the purity of our purposes 
 and hearty innocence, but that we must provide also things 
 honest in the sight of all men, being free from the suspicion 
 and semblances of evil ; so making provision for private 
 innocence and public honesty : it being necessary, in order 
 to charity, and edification of our brethren, that we hold forth 
 no impure flames or smoking firebrands, but pure and 
 trimmed lamps, in the eyes of all the world. 
 
 6. And yet her marriage was more mysterious ; for as, 
 besides the miracle, it was an eternal honour and advance- 
 ment to the glory of virginity that he chose a virgin for his 
 mother, so it was in that manner attempered, that the Virgin 
 was betrothed, lest honourable marriage might be disreputed, 
 and seem inglorious, by a positive rejection from any par- 
 ticipation of the honour. Divers of the old doctors, from 
 the authority of Ignatius' 1 , add another reason, saying, 
 that the blessed Jesus was therefore born of a woman 
 
 c 'Ayaffu a oiiotii irt^i euainas tua't-jfaTi tyyivfrcu Qttova{, Hier. in Pythag. 
 d Origen. Homil. VI. in Levit. Hier. Comment, in 1 Matth. St. Basilius, 
 et alii.
 
 AND THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS. 7 
 
 betrothed, and under the pretence of marriage, that the 
 devil, who knew the Messias was to be born of a virgin, 
 might not expect him there, but so be ignorant of the 
 person, till God had served many ends of providence upon 
 him. 
 
 7. The angel, in his address, needed not to go in inquisi- 
 tion after a wandering fire, but knew she was a star fixed in 
 her own orb : he found her at home ; and, lest that also might 
 be too large a circuit, she was yet confined to a more 
 intimate retirement : she was in her oratory, private and 
 devout. There are some curiosities so bold and determinate, 
 as to tell the very matter of her prayer, 6 and that she was 
 praying for the salvation of all the world, and the revelation 
 of the Messias, desiring she might be so happy as to kiss 
 the feet of her who should have the glory to be his mother. 
 We have no security of the particular ; but there is no piety 
 so diffident as to require a sign to create a belief, that her 
 employment at the instant was holy and religious ; but in 
 that disposition she received a grace, which the greatest 
 queens would have purchased with the quitting of their 
 diadems, and hath consigned an excellent document to all 
 women, that they accustom themselves often to those 
 retirements, where none but God and his angels can have 
 admittance. For the holy Jesus can come to them too, and 
 dwell with them, hallowing their souls, and consigning their 
 bodies to a participation of all his glories. But recollecting 
 of all our scattered thoughts and exterior extravagances, and 
 receding from the inconveniences of a too free conversa- 
 tion, is the best circumstance to dispose us to a heavenly 
 visitation. 
 
 8. The holy Virgin, when she saw an angel, and heard 
 a testimony from heaven of her grace and piety, was troubled 
 within herself at the salutation, and the manner of it : for 
 she had learned, that the affluence of Divine comforts and 
 prosperous successes should not exempt us from fear, but 
 make it the more prudent and wary, lest it entangle us in a 
 vanity of spirit ; God having ordered that our spirits should 
 be affected with dispositions in some degrees contrary to 
 exterior events, that we be fearful in the affluence of prosper- 
 
 St. Bernard.
 
 8 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE ANNUNCIATION 
 
 cms things, and joyful in adversity; as knowing that this 
 may produce benefit and advantage ; and the changes that 
 are consequent to the other, are sometimes full of mischiefs, 
 but always of danger. But her silence and fear were her 
 guardians ; that, to prevent excrescences of joy ; this, of 
 vaiuer complacency. 
 
 9. And it is not altogether inconsiderable to observe, 
 that the holy Virgin came to a great perfection and state of 
 piety by a few, and those modest and even, exercises and 
 external actions. St. Paul travelled over the world, preached 
 to the Gentiles, disputed against the Jews, confounded 
 heretics, writ excellently learned letters, suffered dangers, 
 injuries, affronts, and persecutions to the height of wonder, 
 and by these violences of life, action and patience, obtained 
 the crown of an excellent religion and devotion. But the 
 holy Virgin, although she was engaged sometimes in an 
 active life, and in the exercise of an ordinary and small 
 economy and government, or ministries of a family, yet she 
 arrived to her perfections by the means of a quiet and silent 
 piety, the internal actions of love, devotion, and contem- 
 plation; and instructs us, that not only those who have 
 opportunity and powers of a magnificent religion, or a 
 pompous charity, or miraculous conversion of souls, or 
 assiduous and effectual preachings, or exterior demonstra- 
 tions of corporal mercy, shall have the greatest crowns, and 
 the addition of degrees and accidental rewards ; but the 
 silent affections, the splendours of an internal devotion, the 
 unions of love, humility, and obedience, the daily offices of 
 prayer and praises sung to God, the acts of faith and fear, of 
 patience and meekness, of hope and reverence, repentance 
 and charity, and those graces which walk in a veil and 
 silence, make great ascents to God, and as sure progress to 
 favour and a crown, as the more ostentous and laborious 
 exercises of a more solemn religion. No man needs to com- 
 plain of want of power or opportunities for religious perfec- 
 tions : a devout woman in her closet, praying with much zeal 
 and affections for the conversion of souls, is in the same 
 order to a " shining like the stars in glory," as he who, by 
 excellent discourses, puts it into a more forward disposition 
 to be actually performed. And possibly her prayers obtained 
 energy and force to my sermon, and made the ground fruit-
 
 AND THE CONCEPTION OF JESUS. 9 
 
 ful, and the seed spring up to life eternal. Many times God 
 is present in the still voice and private retirements of a quiet 
 religion, and the constant spiritualities of an ordinary life ; 
 when the loud and impetuous winds, and the shining tires of 
 more laborious and expensive actions, are profitable to others 
 only, like a tree of balsam, distilling precious liquor for others, 
 not for its own use. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O eternal and almighty God, who didst send thy holy angel 
 in embassy to the blessed Virgin mother of our Lord, to 
 manifest the actuating thine eternal purpose of the re- 
 demption of mankind by the incarnation of thine eternal 
 Son ; put me, by the assistances of thy Divine grace, into 
 such holy dispositions, that I may never impede the event 
 and effect of those mercies, which, in the counsels of thy 
 predestination, thou didst design for me. Give me a 
 promptness to obey thee to the degree and semblance of 
 angelical alacrity ; give me holy purity and piety, prudence 
 and modesty, like those excellencies which thou didst 
 create in the ever-blessed Virgin, the mother of God : 
 grant that my employment be always holy, unmixed with 
 worldly affections, and, as much as my condition of life 
 will bear, retired from secular interests and disturbances ; 
 that I may converse with angels, entertain the holy Jesus, 
 conceive him in my soul, nourish him with the expresses of 
 most innocent and holy affections, and bring him forth and 
 publish him in a life of piety and obedience, that he may 
 dwell in me for ever, and I may for ever dwell with him, in 
 the house of eternal pleasures and glories, world without 
 end. Amen. 
 
 SECTION II. 
 
 The Bearing of Jesus in the Womb of the Blessed Virgin. 
 
 1 . ALTHOUGH the blessed Virgin had a faith as prompt and 
 ready, as her body was chaste and her soul pure ; yet God, 
 who uses to give full measure, shaken together, and running
 
 10 HISTORY OF JESUS BEING IN THE WOMB. 
 
 over, did, by way of confirmation, and fixing the confidence 
 of her assent, give an instance of his omnipotency in the 
 very particular of an extraordinary conception. For the angel 
 said, " Behold thy cousin Elizabeth hath also conceived a 
 son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her that 
 was called barren : for with God nothing shall be impos- 
 sible." A less argument would have satisfied the necessity 
 of a faith, which had no scruple ; and a greater would not 
 have done it in the incredulity of an ungentle and pertinacious 
 spirit. But the holy maid had complacency enough in the 
 message, and holy desires about her, to carry her understand- 
 ing as far as her affections, even to the fruition of the angel's 
 message ; which is such a sublimity of faith, that it is its 
 utmost consummation, and shall be its crown, when our faith 
 is turned into vision, our hopes into actual possessions, and 
 our grace into glory. 
 
 2. And she, who was now full of God, bearing God in her 
 virgin womb, and the Holy Spirit in her heart, who had also 
 overshadowed her, enabling her to a supernatural and mira- 
 culous conception, arose with haste and gladness, to commu- 
 nicate that joy, which was designed for all the world ; and 
 she found no breast to pour forth the first emanations of her 
 overjoyed heart so fit as her cousin Elizabeth's, who had 
 received testimony from God to have been " righteous, 
 walking in all the commandments of the Lord blameless," 
 who also had a special portion in this great honour : for she 
 was designed to be the mother of the Baptist, who was sent 
 as a forerunner, " to prepare the ways of the Lord, and to 
 make his paths straight. And Mary arose in those days, 
 and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of 
 Judah." 
 
 3. Her haste was in proportion to her joy and desires, but 
 yet went no greater pace than her religion : for as in her 
 journey she came near to Jerusalem, she turned in, that she 
 might visit his temple, whose temple she herself was now; 
 and there, not only to remember the pleasures of religion, 
 which she had felt in continual descents and showers falliii"- 
 
 O 
 
 on her pious heart, for the space of eleven years' attendance 
 there in her childhood, but also to pay the first fruits of her 
 thanks and joy, and to lay all her glory at his feet, whose 
 humble handmaid she was, in the greatest honour of being
 
 HISTORY OF JESUS BEING IN THE WOMB. 11 
 
 his blessed mother. Having worshipped, she went on her 
 journey, " and entered into the house of Zacharias, and 
 saluted Elizabeth." 
 
 4. It is not easy to imagine, what a collision of joys was 
 at this blessed meeting : two mothers of two great princes, 
 the one the greatest that was born of woman, and the other 
 was his Lord, and these made mothers by two miracles, met 
 together with joy and mysteriousness ; where the mother of 
 our Lord went to visit the mother of his servant, and the 
 Holy Ghost made the meeting festival, and descended upon 
 Elizabeth, and she prophesied. Never, but in heaven, was 
 there more joy and ecstasy. The persons, who were women 
 whose fancies and affections were not only hallowed, but 
 made pregnant and big with religion, meeting together to 
 compare and unite their joys, and their eucharist, and then 
 made prophetical and inspired, must needs have discoursed 
 like seraphims and the most ecstasied order of intelligences ; 
 for all the faculties of nature were turned into grace, and 
 expressed in their way the excellent solemnity. ** For it 
 came to pass when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, 
 the babe leaped in her womb ; and Elizabeth was filled with 
 the Holy Ghost." 
 
 5. After they had both prophesied, and sung their hymns, 
 and resaluted each other with the religion of saints and the 
 joys of angels, " Mary abode with her cousin Elizabeth about 
 three months, and then returned to her own house." Where 
 when she appeared with her holy burden to her husband 
 Joseph, and that he perceived her to be with child, and 
 knew that he had never unsealed that holy fountain of 
 virginal purity, he was troubled. For although her deport- 
 ment had been pious and chaste to a miracle, her carriage 
 reserved, and so grave, that she drave away temptations, and 
 impure visits, and all unclean purposes from the neighbour- 
 hood of her holy person ; yet when he saw she was with 
 child, and had not yet been taught a lesson higher than the 
 principles of nature, " he was minded to put her away," for 
 he knew she was with child ; but yet " privily," because he 
 was a good man, and knew her piety to have been such, that 
 it had almost done violence to his sense, and made him 
 disbelieve what was visible and notorious, and, therefore, he 
 would do it privately. " But while he thought on these
 
 12 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE INTERVAL 
 
 things, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, 
 saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee 
 Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the 
 Holy Ghost. Then Joseph, being raised from sleep, did as 
 the angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto him his 
 wife." 
 
 Ad SECTION II. 
 
 Considerations concerning the Circumstances of the Interval 
 between the Conception and Nativity. 
 
 ] . WHEN the blessed Virgin was ascertained of the manner 
 of her becoming a mother, and that her tremblings were over, 
 upon the security she should preserve her virgin purity as a 
 clean oblation to the honour of God, then she expressed her 
 consent to the angelical message, and instantly she conceived 
 the holy Jesus in her womb, by the supernatural and Divine 
 influence of the Holy Ghost. For she was highly zealous to 
 reconcile her being mother to the Messias, with those purities 
 and holy celibate, which she had designed to keep as advan- 
 tages to the interests of religion, and his honour, who chose 
 her from all the daughters of Adam, to be instrumental of the 
 restitution of grace and innocence to all her father's family. 
 And we shall receive benefit from so excellent example, if we 
 be not so desirous of a privilege as of a virtue, of honour as of 
 piety : and as we submit to the weight and pressure of sad- 
 nesses and infelicities, that God's will may be accomplished ; 
 so we must be also ready to renounce an exterior grace or 
 favour, rather than it should not be consistent with exemplar 
 and rare piety. 
 
 2. When the Son of God was incarnate in the womb of 
 his Virgin mother, the holy maid arose ; and though she was 
 super-exalted by an honour greater than the world yet ever 
 saw, she still dwelt upon the foundation of humility ; and to 
 make that virtue more signal and eminent, she arose and 
 went hastily to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who also had con- 
 ceived a son in her old age : for so we all should be curious 
 and watchful against vanities and transportations, when we 
 are advanced to the gaieties of prosperous accidents, and in
 
 BETWEEN THE CONCEPTION AND NATIVITY. 13 
 
 the greatest privileges descend to the lowest, to exercise a 
 greater measure of virtue against the danger of those tempta- 
 tions, which are planted against our heart, to ruin our hopes 
 and glories. 
 
 3. But the joys that the Virgin mother had, were such as 
 concerned all the world ; and that part of them, which was her 
 peculiar, she would not conceal from persons apt to their en- 
 tertainment, but go to publish God's mercy toward her to 
 another holy person, that they might join in the praises of 
 God ; as knowing, that though it may be convenient to re- 
 present our personal necessities in private, yet God's gracious 
 returns, and the blessings he makes to descend on us, are 
 more fit, when there is no personal danger collaterally ap- 
 pendant, to be published in the communion of saints; that 
 the hopes of others may receive increase, that their faith may 
 have confirmation, that their charity and eucharist may grow 
 up to become excellent and great, and the praises of God 
 may be sung aloud, till the sound strike at heaven, and join 
 with the hallelujahs, which the morning stars in their orbs pay 
 to their great Creator. 
 
 4. When the holy Virgin had begun her journey, she 
 made haste over the mountains, that she might not only 
 satisfy the desires of her joy by a speedy gratulation, but 
 lest she should be too long abroad under the dispersion and 
 discomposing of her retirements: and therefore she hastens 
 to an enclosure, to her cousin's house, as knowing that all 
 virtuous women, like tortoises, carry their house on their 
 heads, and their chapel in their heart, and their danger in 
 their eye, and their souls in their hands, and God in all their 
 actions. And indeed her very little burden, which she bare, 
 hindered her not but she might make haste enough ; and as 
 her spirit was full of cheerfulness and alacrity, so even her 
 body was made airy and vegete : for there was no sin in her 
 burden, to fill it with natural inconveniences ; and there is this 
 excellency in all spiritual things, that they do no disadvantage 
 to our persons, nor retard our just temporal interests. And 
 the religion, by which we carry Christ within us, is neither so 
 peevish as to disturb our health, nor so sad as to discompose 
 our just and modest cheerfulness, nor so prodigal as to force 
 us to needs and ignoble trades : but recreates our body by 
 the medicine of holy fastings and temperance, fills us full of
 
 14 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE INTERVAL 
 
 serenities and complacencies by the sweetnesses of a holy 
 conscience and joys spiritual, promotes our temporal interests 
 by the gains and increases of the rewards of charity, and by 
 securing God's providence over us, while we are in the pursuit 
 of the heavenly kingdom. And as in these dispositions she 
 climbed the mountains with much facility, so there is nothing 
 in our whole life of difficulty so great, but it may be managed 
 by those assistances we receive from the holiest Jesus, when 
 we carry him about us ; as the valleys are exalted, so the 
 mountains are made plain before us. 
 
 5. When her cousin Elizabeth saw the mother of her 
 Lord come to visit her, as the Lord himself descended to 
 visit all the world in great humility, she was pleased and 
 transported to the height of wonder and prophecy, and " the 
 babe sprang in her womb," and was sanctified, first doing his 
 homage and adoration to his Lord that was in presence. 
 And we also, although we can do nothing unless the Lord 
 first prevent us with his gracious visitation, yet if he first 
 come unto us, and we accept and entertain him with the 
 expresses and correspondencies of our duty, we shall receive 
 the grace and honour of sanctification. But if St. Elizabeth, 
 who received testimony from God that she " walked in all 
 the commandments of the Lord blameless," was carried into 
 ecstasy, wondering at the dignation and favour done to her 
 by the mother of her Lord ; with what preparations and holy 
 solemnities ought we to entertain his addresses to us by his 
 holy sacrament, by the iuamissions of his Spirit, by the assist- 
 ances of his graces, and all other his vouchsafings and de- 
 scents into our hearts ? 
 
 6. The blessed Virgin hearing her cousin full of spirit 
 and prophecy, calling her blessed, and praising her faith, and 
 confirming her joy, instantly sang her hymn to God, return- 
 ing those praises which she received, to him to whom they 
 did appertain. For so we should worship God with all our 
 praises, being willing upon no other condition to extend one 
 hand to receive our own honour, but that with the other we 
 might transmit it to God ; that as God is honoured in all his 
 creatures, so he may be honoured in us too : looking upon 
 the graces which God hath given us, but as greater instru- 
 ments and abilities to serve him, being none of ours, but 
 talents which are intrusted into our banks to be improved.
 
 BETWEEN THE CONCEPTION AND NATIVITY. 15 
 
 But as a precious pearl is orient and medicinal, because God 
 hath placed those excellencies in it for ends of his own, but 
 itself is dead to all apprehensions of it, and knows no re- 
 flections upon its own value, only God is magnified in his 
 work ; so is every pious person precious and holy, but morti- 
 fied to all vainer complacencies in those singularities and emi- 
 nencies, which God placed there, because he was so pleased, 
 saying, there he would have a temple built, because from 
 thence he would take delight to receive glory and adoration. 
 
 7. After all these holy and festival joys, which the two 
 glad mothers feasted themselves withal, a sad cloud did in- 
 tervene and passed before the face of the blessed Virgin. 
 The just and righteous Joseph, her espoused husband, per- 
 ceiving her to be with child, " was minded to put her away," 
 as not knowing the divinity of the fountain, which watered 
 the Virgin's sealed and hallowed womb, and made it fruitful ; 
 but he purposed to do it " privily," that he might preserve the 
 reputation of his spouse, whose piety he knew was great, and 
 was sorrowful it should now set in a sad night, and be ex- 
 tinct. But it was an examplar charity, and reads to us a rule 
 for our deportment towards erring and lapsed persons, that 
 we entreat them with meekness, and pity, and fear ; not hast- 
 ening their shame, nor provoking their spirit, nor making 
 their remedy desperate by using of them rudely, till there be 
 no worse thing for them to fear, if they should be dissolved 
 into all licentiousness. For an open shame is commonly 
 protested unto, when it is remediless, and the person either 
 despairs and sinks under the burden, or else grows impudent, a 
 and tramples upon it. But the gentleness of a modest and 
 charitable remedy preserves that which is virtue's girdle, fear 
 and blushing : and the beginning of a punishment chides 
 them into the horror of remembrance and guilt, but preserves 
 their meekness and modesty, because they, not feeling the 
 worst of evils, dare not venture upon the worst of sins. 
 
 8. But it seems the blessed Virgin, having received this 
 greatest honour, had not made it known to her husband 
 Joseph ; and when she went to her cousin Elizabeth, the 
 Virgin was told of it by her cousin, before she spake of it 
 herself, for her cousin had it by revelation and the spirit of 
 
 Frontemque a crimiue sumit.
 
 16 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE INTERVAL 
 
 prophecy. And it is in some circumstances and from some 
 persons more secure to conceal visions and those heavenly 
 gifts, which create estimations among men, than to publish 
 them, which may possibly minister to vanity ; and those 
 exterior graces may do God's work, though no observer note 
 them, but the person for whose sake they are sent : like rain 
 falling in uninhabited valleys, where no eye observes showers ; 
 yet the valleys laugh and sing to God in their refreshment 
 without a witness. However, it is better to hear the report of 
 our good things from the mouths of others, than from our- 
 selves: and better yet, if the beauty of the tabernacle be 
 covered with skins, that none of our beauties be seen but by 
 worshippers, that is, when the glory of God and the interests 
 of religion or charity are concerned in their publication. For 
 so it happened to be in the case of the blessed Virgin, as she 
 related to her cousin Elizabeth ; and so it happened not to 
 be, as she referred to her husband Joseph. 
 
 9. The holy Virgin could not but know, that Joseph would 
 be troubled with sorrow and insecure apprehensions concern- 
 ing her being with child : but such was her innocence and 
 her confidence in God, that she held her peace, expecting 
 which way God would provide a remedy to the inconvenience : 
 for if we " commit ourselves to God in well doing, as unto a 
 faithful Creator," preserving the tranquillity of our spirits and 
 the evenness of our temper in the assault of infamy and dis- 
 reputation, God, who loves our innocence, will be its patron, 
 and will assert it from the scandal, if it be expedient for us : 
 if it be not, it is not fit we should desire it. But if the holy 
 Jesus did suffer his mother to fall into misinterpretation and 
 suspect, which could not but be a great affliction to her ex- 
 cellent spirit, rarely tempered as an eye, highly sensible of 
 every ruder touch, we must not think it strange, if we be 
 tried and pressed with a calamity and unhandsome accidents: 
 only remember, that God will find a remedy to the trouble, 
 and will sanctify the affliction, and secure the person, if we 
 be innocent, as was the holy Virgin. 
 
 10. But Joseph was not hasty in the execution of his 
 purposes, nor of making his thoughts determinate, but stood 
 long in deliberation, and longer before he acted it, because it 
 was an invidious matter, and a rigour. He was, first, to have 
 defamed and accused her publicly, and, being convicted, by
 
 BETWEEN THE CONCEPTION AND NATIVITY. 17 
 
 the law she was to die, if he had gone the ordinary way ; but 
 he, who was a just man, that is, according to the style of 
 Scripture and other wise writers, 13 " a good, a charitable 
 man," found that it was more agreeable to justice to treat an 
 offending person with the easiest sentence, than to put things 
 to extremity, and render the person desperate, and without 
 remedy, and provoked by the suffering of the worst of what 
 she could fear. No obligation to justice does force a man to 
 be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence. A just man does 
 justice to every man, and to every thing ; and then, if he be 
 also wise, he knows there is a debt of mercy and compassion 
 due to the infirmities of a man's nature, and that debt is to be 
 paid : and he that is cruel and ungentle to a sinning person, 
 and does the worst thing to him, dies in his debt, and is 
 unjust. Pity, and forbearance, and long-suffering, and fair 
 interpretation, and excusing our brother, and taking things 
 in the best sense, and passing the gentlest sentence, are as 
 certainly our duty, and owing to every person that does 
 offend, and can repent, as calling men to account can be 
 owing to the law, and are first to be paid ; and he that does 
 not so, is an unjust person : which because Joseph was not, 
 he did not call furiously for justice, or pretend that God re- 
 quired it at his hands presently, to undo a suspected person, 
 but waved the killing letter of the law, and secured his own 
 interest and his justice too, by intending to dismiss her pri- 
 vately. But, before the thing was irremediable, God ended 
 his question by a heavenly demonstration, and sent an angel 
 to reveal to him the innocence of his spouse, and the divinity 
 of her son ; and that he was an immediate derivative from 
 Heaven, and the heir of all the world. And in all our doubts 
 we shall have a resolution from Heaven, or some of its 
 ministers, if we have recourse thither for a guide, and be not 
 hasty in our discourses, or inconsiderate in our purposes, or 
 rash in judgment. For God loves to give assistances to us, 
 when we most fairly and prudently endeavour, that grace be 
 not put to do all our work, but to facilitate our labour ; not 
 creating new faculties, but improving those of nature. If we 
 
 b 1 Jobn, i, 9. Psalm Cxi. 3. Aixa<o<ruvj, ^titTo-ms, aya&errii, 0jXasv9jair/. 
 Phitostr. de Vita Apollon. lib. iii. c. 7. 
 
 c Non soliim ab ulticmis atrocitate, sed etiam ab accusationis severitate, 
 aliena justi persona est Ambros. 
 
 VOL. II. O
 
 18 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE INTERVAL, &C. 
 
 consider warily, God will guide us in the determination ; but 
 a hasty person outruns his guide, prevaricates his rule, and 
 very often engages upon error. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O holy Jesu, Son of the Eternal God, thy glory is far above 
 all heavens, and yet thou didst descend to earth, that thy 
 descent might be the more gracious, by how much thy 
 glories were admirable, and natural, and inseparable : I 
 adore thy holy humanity with humble veneration, and the 
 thankful addresses of religious joy, because thou hast 
 personally united human nature to the eternal Word, 
 carrying it above the seats of the highest cherubim. 
 This great and glorious mystery is the honour and glory 
 of man. It was the expectation of our fathers, who saw 
 the mysteriousness of thy incarnation at great and obscure 
 distances. And blessed be thy name, that thou hast caused 
 me to be born after the fulfilling of thy prophecies, and 
 the consummation and exhibition of so great a love, so 
 great mysteriousness. Holy Jesu, though I admire and 
 adore the immensity of thy love and condescension, who 
 wert pleased to undergo our burdens and infirmities for 
 us; yet I abhor myself, and detest my own impurities, 
 which were so great, and contradictory to the excellency 
 of God, that, to destroy sin, and save us, it became neces- 
 sary that thou shouldest be sent into the world, to die our 
 death for us, and to give us of thy life. 
 
 II. 
 
 Dearest Jesu, thou didst not breathe one sigh, nor shed one 
 drop of blood, nor weep one tear, nor suffer one stripe, nor 
 preach one sermon, for the salvation of the devils: and what 
 sadness and shame is it then, that I should cause so many 
 insufferable loads of sorrows to fall upon thy sacred head ! 
 Thou art wholly given for me, wholly spent upon my uses, 
 and wholly for every one of the elect. Thou, in the beginning 
 of the work of our redemption, didst suffer nine months' 
 imprisonment in the pure womb of thy holy mother, to re- 
 deem me from the eternal servitude of sin, and its miserable
 
 HISTORY OF THE NATIVITY. 19 
 
 consequents. Holy Jesu, let me be born anew, receive 
 a new birth and a new life, imitating thy graces and 
 excellencies, by which thou art beloved of thy Father, and 
 hast obtained for us a favour and atonement. Let thy 
 holy will be done by me, let all thy will be wrought in me, 
 let thy will be wrought concerning me ; that I may do thy 
 pleasure, and submit to the dispensation of thy provi- 
 dence, and conform to thy holy will, and may for ever 
 serve thee in the communion of saints, in the society of 
 thy redeemed ones, now, and in the glories of eternity. 
 Amen. 
 
 SECTION III. 
 
 The Nativity of our Blessed Saviour Jesus. 
 
 1 . THE holy maid longed to be a glad mother ; and she 
 who carried a burden, whose proper commensuration is the 
 days of eternity, counted the tedious minutes, expecting 
 when the Sun of Righteousness should break forth from his 
 bed, where nine months he hid himself as behind a fruitful 
 cloud. About the same time, God, who in his infinite 
 wisdom does concentre and tie together in one end things 
 of disparity and disproportionate natures, making things 
 improbable to co-operate to what wonder or to what truth 
 he pleases, brought the holy Virgin to Bethlehem, the city 
 of David, " to be taxed," with her husband Joseph, according 
 to a decree upon all the world, issuing from Augustus Caesar.* 
 But this happened in this conjunction of time, that it might 
 be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet Micah : " And 
 thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art not the least 
 among the princes of Judah ; for out of thee shall come 
 a governor, that shall rule my people Israel." This rare 
 act of Providence was highly remarkable, because this taxing 
 seems wholly to have been ordered by God, to serve and 
 
 aT H Si on fouro $o<riov tea,} ri/nra^ajciffrov iros rov fJjyovffrau /3<r/Xf/'j, AiyuTrau S' 
 vtrorayijs xo.} <rns rt^iurr; ' A.I/TUVIHV xai KAiairaTgaj S-ySaotins *' liictfriv. Euseb. 
 lib. i. c. 6. Histor. Ecctes. Auno soil, tertio Olympiad. 194. Caesare Au- 
 gusto et Plautio Silano Coss.
 
 20 HISTORY OF THE NATIVITY. 
 
 minister to the circumstances of this birth ; b for this taxing 
 was not in order to tribute. Herod was now king, and 
 received all the revenues of the Fiscus, and paid to Augustus 
 an appointed tribute, after the manner of other kings, friends 
 and relatives of the Roman empire : neither doth it appear 
 that the Romans laid a new tribute on the Jews, before the 
 confiscation of the goods of Archelaus. Augustus, therefore, 
 sending special delegates to tax every city, made only an 
 inquest c after the strength of the Roman empire in men and 
 monies; and did himself no other advantage, but was di- 
 rected by him, who rules and turns the hearts of princes, 
 that he might, by verifying a prophecy, signify and publish 
 the divinity of the mission and the birth of Jesus. 
 
 2. She, that had conceived by the operation of that 
 Spirit, who dwells within the element of love, was no ways 
 impeded in her journey by the greatness of her burden ; but 
 arrived at Bethlehem in the throng of strangers, who had 
 so filled up the places of hospitality and public entertainment, 
 that "there was no room" for Joseph and Mary "in the 
 inn." But yet she felt, that it was necessary to retire, where 
 she might softly lay her burden, who began now to call at 
 the gates of his prison, and nature was ready to let him 
 forth. But she, that was mother to the King of all the 
 creatures, could find no other but a stable, a cave of a rock, d 
 whither she retired ; where, when it began to be with her 
 after the manner of women, she humbly bowed her knees, 
 in the posture and guise of worshippers, and in the midst of 
 glorious thoughts and highest speculations, " brought forth 
 her first-born into the world." 
 
 3. As there was no sin in the conception, so neither had 
 she pains in the production, as the Church, from the days 
 of Gregory Nazianzen until now, hath piously believed ; e 
 though, before his days, there were some opinions to the 
 
 b 'O Auyavfras untfirurai <r!f It BtiSXtt^ rinq lia, rev fr^orray/jutTts ftii u.-jct- 
 yjofjiif S. C/in/sost. Horn. 8. in Matth. 
 
 c Vide Suidam in Verbo i^ray^ri. Dio. lib. Ivi. trip^u aXXat/j xx>) TO, 
 n TU loiurut xa.i TO, TUI iri>).itn uvroypa^tfiitavs- 
 
 d Juxta propheticum illud, Isa. jxxiii. 16. Ourts olxvru it i^n^S frn^ulu 
 r'trfxf Irxvpif' Tf 2lVfru ivr*, apud LXX. Sed bane periodum Judaei 
 eraserunt ex Hebrseo textu. Sic et Symmacbus, asm S$>JT<, mystice 
 Bethlehem, sive Dooms panis, indigitatur. 
 
 Vide Waddingum, p. 270.
 
 HISTORY OF THE NATIVITY. 21 
 
 contrary, but certainly neither so pious, nor so reasonable. 
 For to her alone did not the punishment of Eve extend, 
 that " in sorrow she should bring forth :" for where nothing 
 of sin was an ingredient, there misery cannot cohabit. For 
 though amongst the daughters of men many conceptions are 
 innocent and holy, being sanctified by the word of God 
 and prayer, hallowed by marriage, designed by prudence, 
 seasoned by temperance, conducted by religion towards a 
 just, a hallowed, and a holy end, and yet their productions 
 are in sorrow ; yet this of the blessed Virgin might be other- 
 wise, because here sin was no relative, and neither was in the 
 principle nor the derivative, in the act nor in the habit, in the 
 root nor in the branch : there was nothing in this but the 
 sanctification of a virgin's womb, and that could not be the 
 parent of sorrow, especially that gate not having been opened, 
 by which the curse always entered. And as to conceive by 
 the Holy Ghost was glorious, so to bring forth any of " the 
 fruits of the Spirit" is joyful and full of felicities. And he 
 that came from his grave fast tied with a stone and a signature, 
 and into the college of apostles, " the doors being shut," and 
 into the glories of his father through the solid orbs of all the 
 firmament, came also (as the Church piously believes) into the 
 world so, without doing violence to the virginal and pure 
 body of his mother ; that he did also leave her virginity 
 entire, to be as a seal, that none might open the gate of 
 that sanctuary, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken 
 of the Lord by the prophet, " This gate shall be shut, 
 it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; 
 because the Lord God of Israel hath entered by it, therefore 
 it shall be shut." f 
 
 4. Although all the world were concerned in the birth of 
 this great Prince, yet I find no story of any one that ministered 
 at it, save only angels, who knew their duty to their Lord, 
 and the great interests of that person ; whom, as soon as he 
 was born, they presented to his mother, who could not but 
 receive him with a joy next to the rejoicings of glory and 
 beatific vision, seeing him to be born her son, who was the Son 
 of God, of greater beauty than the sun, purer than angels, 
 more loving than the seraphims, as dear as the eye and heart 
 
 f Ezek. xlir. 2.
 
 22 HISTORY OF THE NATIVITY. 
 
 of God, where he was from eternity engraven, his beloved and 
 his only begotten. 
 
 5. When the virgin-mother now felt the first tenderness 
 and yearnings of a mother's bowels, and saw the Saviour of 
 the world born, poor as her fortunes could represent him, 
 naked as the innocence of Adam, she took him, and "wrapt 
 him in swaddling clothes ;" and after she had a while cradled 
 him in her arms, she "laid him in a manger;" for so was 
 the design of his humility ; that as the last scene of his life 
 was represented among thieves, so the first was amongst 
 beasts, the sheep, and the oxen ; according to that mysterious 
 hymn of the prophet Habakkuk, " His brightness was as the 
 light ; he had horns coming out of his hand, and there was 
 the hiding of his power. " g 
 
 6. But this place, which was one of the great instances of 
 his humility, grew to be as venerable as became an instru- 
 ment ; h and it was consecrated into a church, the crib into 
 an altar, where first lay that " Lamb of God," which after- 
 wards was sacrificed for the sins of all the world. And when 
 Adrian, the emperor, who intended a great despite to it, 
 built a temple to Venus and Adonis in that place, where the 
 holy virgin-mother, and her more holy Son were humbly laid ; 
 even so he could not obtain, but that, even amongst the 
 Gentile inhabitants of the neighbouring countries, it was held 
 in an account far above scandal and contempt. For God can 
 ennoble even the meanest of creatures, especially if it be but 
 a relative and instrumental to religion, higher than the inju- 
 ries of scoffers and malicious persons. But it was then a 
 temple full of religion, full of glory, when angels were the 
 ministers, the holy Virgin was the worshipper, and Christ 
 the Deity. 
 
 Ad SECTION III. 
 
 Considerations upon the Birth of our Blessed Saviour Jesus. 
 
 1. ALTHOUGH the blessed Jesus desired, with the ar- 
 dency of an inflamed love, to be born, and to finish the 
 
 * Hab. iii. 4. In roedio animnlium cognosceris. Sic LXX. 
 b Ven. Beda de Locis Sanctis, c. 8. S. Hieron. epist 48.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE NATIVITY. 23 
 
 work of our redemption ; yet he did not prevent the period 
 of nature, nor break the laws of the womb, and antedate his 
 own sanctions, which he had established for ever. He stayed 
 nine months, and then brake forth " as a giant joyful to run 
 his course." For premature and hasty actions, and such 
 counsels, as know not how to expect the times appointed in 
 God's decree, are like hasty fruit, or a young person snatched 
 away in his florid age, sad and untimely. He that hastens 
 to enjoy his wish before the time, raises his own expecta- 
 tion, and yet makes it unpleasant by impatience, and loseth 
 the pleasure of the fruition when it conies, because he hath 
 made his desires bigger than the thing can satisfy. He that 
 must eat an hour before his time, gives probation of his 
 intemperance or his weakness ; and if we dare not trust God 
 with the circumstance of the event, and stay his leisure, 
 either we disrepute the infinity of his wisdom, or give clear 
 demonstration of our own vanity. 
 
 2. When God descended to earth, he chose to be born in 
 the suburbs and retirement of a small town, but he was 
 pleased to die at Jerusalem, the metropolis of Judaea ; which 
 chides our shame and pride, who are willing to publish our 
 gaieties in piazzas and the corners of the streets of most 
 populous places ; but our defects, and the instruments of our 
 humiliation, we carry into deserts, and cover with the night, 
 and hide them under ground, thinking no secrecy dark 
 enough to hide our shame, nor any theatre large enough to 
 behold our pompous vanities ; for so we make provisions for 
 pride, and take great care to exclude humility. 
 
 3. When the holy Virgin now perceived, that the ex- 
 pectation of the nations was arrived at the very doors of 
 revelation and entrance into the world, she brought forth 
 the holy Jesus, who, like light through transparent glass, 
 passed through, or a ripe pomegranate from a fruitful 
 tree, fell to the earth, without doing violence to its nurse 
 and parent. She had no ministers to attend but angels, 
 and neither her poverty nor her piety would permit her 
 to provide other nurses ; but herself did the offices of a 
 tender and pious parent. She kissed him, and worship- 
 ped him, and thanked him that he would be born of her, 
 and she suckled him, and bound him in her arms and 
 swaddling-bands; and when she had represented to God
 
 24 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE NATIVITY. 
 
 her first scene of joy and eucharist, she softly laid him in 
 the manger, till her desires and his own necessities called 
 her to take him, and to rock him softly in her arms : and 
 from this deportment she read a lecture of piety and 
 maternal care, which mothers should perform toward their 
 children when they are born, not to neglect any of that 
 duty, which nature and maternal piety requires. 
 
 4. Jesus was pleased to be born of a poor mother, in a 
 poor place, in a cold winter's night, far from home, amongst 
 strangers, with all the circumstances of humility and poverty. 
 And no man will have cause to complain of his coarse robe, if 
 he remembers the swaddling-clothes of this holy Child ; nor 
 to be disquieted at his hard bed, when he considers Jesus laid 
 in a manger ; nor to be discontented at his thin table, when 
 he calls to mind, the King of heaven and earth was fed with 
 a little breast-milk. But since the eternal wisdom of the 
 Father, who "knew to choose the good, and refuse the evil," 
 did choose a life of poverty, it gives us demonstration, that 
 riches and honours, those idols of the world's esteem, are so 
 far from creating true felicities, that they are not of them- 
 selves eligible in the number of good things : however, no 
 man is to be ashamed of innocent poverty, of which many 
 wise men make vows, and of which the holy Jesus made 
 election, and his apostles after him made public profession. 
 And if any man will choose and delight in the affluence 
 of temporal good things, suffering himself to be transported 
 with caitive affections in the pleasures of every day, he may 
 well make a question, whether he shall speed as well here- 
 after;' since God's usual method is, that they only, who 
 follow Christ here, shall be with him for ever. 
 
 5. The condition of the person who was born, is here of 
 greatest consideration. For he that cried in the manger, 
 that sucked the paps of a woman, that h,ath exposed himself 
 to poverty and a world of inconveniences, is "the Son of 
 the living God," of the same substance with his Father, 
 begotten before all ages, before the morning stars ; he is 
 God eternal. He is also, by reason of the personal union of 
 
 1 O*n fu ravf Sai'tirm, a N/r'{n, 
 xdffr,; ^traXa/Sovross iy /5<' 
 
 Philem. Frag. 64. ed. Cleric, p. 360.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE NATIVITY. 25 
 
 the Divinity with his human nature, " the Son of God ;" 
 not by adoption, as good men and beatified angels are, but 
 by an extraordinary and miraculous generation. He is " the 
 heir" of his Father's glories and possessions, not by suc- 
 cession, (for his Father cannot die,) but by an equality of 
 communication. He is "the express image of his Father's 
 person," according to both natures ; the miracle and excess 
 of his Godhead being, as upon wax, imprinted upon all the 
 capacities of his humanity. And, after all this, he is our 
 Saviour ; that to our duties of wonder and adoration we 
 may add the affections of love and union, as himself, besides 
 his being admirable in himself, is become profitable to us. 
 " Vere Verbum hoc est abbreviatum," saith the prophet ; 
 the eternal Word of the Father is shortened to the dimen- 
 sions of an infant. 
 
 6. Here then are concentred the prodigies of greatness 
 and goodness, of wisdom and charity, of meekness and 
 humility, and march all the way in mystery and incom- 
 prehensible mixtures ; if we consider him in the bosom of 
 his Father, where he is seated by the postures of love and 
 essential felicity ; and in the manger, where love also placed 
 him, and an infinite desire to communicate his felicities to 
 us. As he is God, his throne is in the heaven, and he fills 
 all things by his immensity : as he is man, he is circum- 
 scribed by an uneasy cradle, and cries in a stable. As he is 
 God, he is seated upon a super-exalted throne ; as man, 
 exposed to the lowest estate of uneasiness and need. As 
 God, clothed in a robe of glory, at the same instant when 
 you may behold and wonder at his humanity, wrapped in 
 cheap and unworthy cradle-bands. As God, he is encircled 
 with millions of angels; as man, in the company of beasts. 
 As God, he is the eternal Word of the Father, eternal, sus- 
 tained by himself, all-sufficient, and without need : and 
 yet he submitted himself to a condition, imperfect, inglo- 
 rious, indigent, and necessitous. And this consideration is 
 apt and natural to produce great affections of love, duty, 
 and obedience, desires of union and conformity to his 
 sacred person, life, actions, and laws ; that we resolve all 
 our thoughts, and finally determine all our reason and our 
 passions and capacities upon that saying of St. Paul,
 
 26 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE NATIVITY. 
 
 " He that loves not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be 
 accursed. " k 
 
 7. Upon the consideration of these glories, if a pious 
 soul shall, upon the supports of faith and love, enter into the 
 stable where this great King was born, and with affections 
 behold every member of the holy body, and thence pass 
 into the soul of Jesus, we may see a scheme of holy 
 meditations, enough to entertain all the degrees of our love 
 and of our understanding, and make the mystery of the 
 nativity as fruitful of holy thoughts, as it was of blessings to 
 us. And it may serve instead of a description of the person 
 of Jesus, conveyed to us in imperfect and apocryphal 
 schemes. If we could behold his sacred feet with those 
 affections which the holy Virgin did, we have transmitted to 
 us those mysteries in story, which she had first in part by 
 spiritual and divine infused light, and afterwards by ob- 
 servation. Those holy feet, tender, and unable to support 
 his sacred body, should bear him over all the province of his 
 cure, with great zeal for the gaining of souls, to the belief 
 and obedience of his holy laws ; those are the feet, that 
 should walk upon seas and hills of water, as upon firm 
 pavement ; at which the lepers and diseased persons should 
 stoop, and gather health up ; which Mary Magdalen should 
 wash with tears, and wipe with her hair, and anoint with 
 costly nard, as expressions of love and adoration, and there 
 find absolution and remedy for her sins ; and which, finally, 
 should be rent by the nails of the cross, and afterwards 
 ascend above the heavens, making the earth to be his 
 footstool. From hence take patterns of imitation, that our 
 piety be symbolical, that our affections be passionate and 
 eucharistical, full of love, and wonder, and adoration ; that 
 our feet tread in the same steps, and that we transfer the 
 symbol into mystery, and the mystery to devotion, praying 
 the holy Jesus to actuate the same mercies in us, which 
 were finished at his holy feet, forgiving our sins, healing our 
 sicknesses ; and then place ourselves irremovably, becoming 
 his disciples, and strictly observing the rules of his holy 
 institution, " sitting at the feet" of this our greatest Master. 
 
 k 1 Cor. xvi. 22.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE NATIVITY. 27 
 
 8. In the same manner a pious person may (with the 
 blessed Virgin) pass to the consideration of his holy hands, 
 which were so often lifted up to God in prayer ; whose touch 
 was miraculous and medicinal, cleansing lepers, restoring 
 perishing limbs, opening blind eyes, raising dead persons to 
 life ; those hands which fed many thousands, by two miracles 
 of multiplication ; that purged the temple from profaneness ; 
 that, in a sacramental manner, bare his own body, and gave 
 it to be the food and refreshment of elect souls, and after 
 were cloven and rent upon the cross, till the wounds became 
 (after the resurrection) so many transparencies and glorious 
 instruments of solemn, spiritual, and efficacious benediction. 
 Transmit this meditation into affections and practices, " lift- 
 ing up pure hands" in prayer, that our devotions be united 
 to the merits of his glorious intercession ; and putting our- 
 selves into his hands and holy providence, let us beg those 
 effects upon our souls and spiritual cures, which his precious 
 hands did operate upon their bodies, transferring those simi- 
 litudes to our ghostly and personal advantages. 
 
 9. We may also behold his holy breast, and consider, 
 that there lay that sacred heart, like the dove within the ark, 
 speaking peace to us, being the regiment of love and 
 sorrows, the fountain of both the sacraments, running out in 
 the two holy streams of blood and water, when the rock was 
 smitten, when his holy side was pierced : and there, with St. 
 John, let us lay our head, and place our heart, and thence 
 draw a treasure of holy revelations and affections, that we 
 may rest in him only, and upon him lay our burdens, filling 
 every corner of our heart with thoughts of the most amiable 
 and beloved Jesus. 
 
 10. In like manner we may unite the day of his nativity 
 with the day of his passion, and consider all the parts of his 
 body, as it was instrumental in all the work of our redemp- 
 tion ; and so imitate, and in some proportion partake of, 
 that great variety of sweetnesses, and amorous reflexes, and 
 gracious intercourses, which passed between the blessed 
 Virgin and the holy Child, according to his present capaci- 
 ties, and the clarity of that light, which was communicated 
 to her by Divine infusion. And all the members of this 
 blessed Child, his eyes, his face, his head, all the organs of
 
 28 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE NATIVITY. 
 
 his senses, afford variety of entertainment and motion to our 
 affections, according as they served, in their several employ- 
 ments and co-operations, in the mysteries of our restitution. 
 
 11. But his body was but his soul's upper garment, and 
 the considerations of this are as immaterial and spiritual as 
 the soul itself, and more immediate to the mystery of the 
 nativity. This soul is of the same nature and substance 
 with ours ; in this inferior to the angels, that of itself it is 
 incomplete, and discursive in a lower order of ratiocination ; 
 but in this superior: 1. That it is personally united to the 
 Divinity, full of the Holy Ghost, overrunning with grace, 
 which was dispensed to it without measure. (And by the 
 mediation of this union, as itself is exalted far above all 
 orders of intelligences, so we also have contracted alliance 
 with God, teaching us not to unravel our excellences by 
 infamous deportments.) 2. Here also we may meditate, that 
 his memory is indeterminable and unalterable, ever remem- 
 bering to do us good, and to present our needs to God by 
 the means of his holy intercession. 3. That his under- 
 standing is without ignorance, knowing the secrets of our 
 hearts, full of mysterious secrets of his Father's kingdom, in 
 which " all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of 
 God are hidden." 1 4. That his will is impeccable, enter- 
 tained with an uninterrupted act of love to God, greater than 
 all angels and beatified spirits present to God in the midst of 
 the transportations and ravishments of paradise : that this 
 M'ill is full of love to us, of humility in itself, of conformity 
 to God, wholly resigned by acts of adoration and obedience. 
 It was moved by six wings ; zeal of the honour of God, and 
 compunction for our sins, pity to our miseries, and hatred of 
 our impieties; desires of satisfying the wrath of God, and 
 great joy at the consideration of all the fruits of his nativity ; 
 the appeasing of his Father, the redemption of his brethren. 
 And upon these wings he mounted up into the throne of 
 glory, carrying our nature with him above the seats of angels. 
 These second considerations present themselves to all, that 
 with piety and devotion behold the holy Babe lying in the 
 obscure and humble place of his nativity. 
 
 1 Col. ii. 3.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE NATIVITY. 29 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 HOLY and immortal Jesus, I adore and worship thee, with 
 the lowest prostrations and humility of soul and body, 
 and give thee all thanks for that great love to us, whereof 
 thy nativity hath made demonstration ; for that humility 
 of thine, expressed in the poor and ignoble circumstances, 
 which thou didst voluntarily choose in the manner of thy 
 birth. And I present to thy holy humanity, enchased in 
 the adorable Divinity, my body and soul ; humbly de- 
 siring, that as thou didst clothe thyself with a human 
 body, thou mayest invest me with the robes of righteous- 
 ness, covering my sins, enabling my weaknesses, and sus- 
 taining my mortality, till I shall finally, in conformity to 
 thy beauties and perfections, be clothed with the stole of 
 glory. Amen. 
 
 II. 
 
 Vouchsafe to come to me by a more intimate and spiritual 
 approximation, that so thou mayest lead me to thy Father; 
 for of myself I cannot move one step towards thee. Take 
 me by the hand, place me in thy heart, that there I may 
 live, and there I may die : that as thou hast united our 
 nature to thy eternal being, thou mightest also unite my 
 person to thine by the interior adunations of love, and 
 obedience, and conformity. Let thy ears be open to my 
 prayers, thy merciful eyes look upon my miseries, thy holy 
 hands be stretched out to my relief and succour : let some 
 of those precious distilling tears, which nature, and thy 
 compassion, and thy sufferings, did cause to distil and 
 drop from those sacred fontinels, water my stony heart, 
 and make it soft, apt for the impressions of a melting, 
 obedient, and corresponding love ; and moisten mine eyes, 
 that I may, upon thy stock of pity and weeping, mourn 
 for my sins ; that so my tears and sorrows, being drops of 
 water coming from that holy Rock, may indeed be united 
 unto thine, and made precious by such holy mixtures. 
 Amen.
 
 30 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 
 
 III. 
 
 Blessed Jesus, now that thou hast sanctified and exalted 
 human nature, and made even my body precious by a 
 personal uniting it to the Divinity, teach me so reverently 
 to account of it, that I may not dare to profane it with 
 impure lusts or caitive affections, and unhallow that ground 
 where thy holy feet have trodden. Give to me ardent 
 desires, and efficacious prosecutions of these holy effects, 
 which thou didst design for us in thy nativity, and other 
 parts of our redemption : give me great confidence in thee, 
 which thou hast encouraged by the exhibition of so 
 glorious favours ; great sorrow and confusion of face at 
 the sight of mine own imperfections, and estrangements, 
 and great distances from thee, and the perfections of thy 
 soul ; and bring me to thee by the strictnesses of a zealous 
 and affectionate imitation of those sanctities, which, next 
 to the hypostatical union, added lustre and excellence to 
 thy humanity ; that I may live here with thee in the 
 expresses of a holy life, and die with thee by mortification 
 and an unwearied patience ; and reign with thee in im- 
 mortal glories, world without end. Amen. 
 
 DISCOURSE I. 
 
 Of nursing Children, in imitation of the blessed Virgin-Mother. 
 
 1. THESE later ages of the world have declined into a 
 softness above the effeminacy of Asian princes, and have 
 contracted customs, which those innocent and healthful days 
 of our ancestors knew not ; whose piety was natural, whose 
 charity was operative, whose policy was just and valiant, 
 and whose economy was sincere, and proportionable to the 
 dispositions and requisites of nature. And in this particular, 
 the good woman of old gave one of their instances. 3 The 
 
 * Quod si pudica mulier in partem juvet 
 Domum atque dulces liberos : 
 (Sabina qualis, aut perusta solibus 
 Pernicis uxor Appuli) 
 Non me Lucrina juverint conch jlia 
 Magis, &c. HOT. Epod. ii.
 
 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 31 
 
 greatest personages nursed their own children, did the work 
 of mothers, and thought it was unlikely, women should 
 become virtuous by ornaments and superadditions of mo- 
 rality, who did decline the laws and prescriptions of nature, 
 whose principles supply us with the first and most common 
 rules of manners and more perfect actions. In imitation of 
 whom, and especially of the Virgin Mary, who was mother 
 and nurse to the holy Jesus, I shall endeavour to correct 
 those softnesses and unnatural rejections of children, which 
 are popular up to a custom and fashion, even where no 
 necessities of nature or just reason can make excuse. 
 
 2. And I cannot think the question despicable, and the 
 duty of meanest consideration; although it be specified in 
 an office of small esteem, and suggested to us by the prin- 
 ciples of reason, and not by express sanctions of Divinity. 
 For although other actions are more perfect and spiritual, 
 yet this is more natural and humane ; other things, being 
 superadded to a full duty, rise higher, but this builds 
 stronger, and is like a part of the foundation, having no 
 lustre, but much strength ; and however the others are full 
 of ornament, yet this hath in it some degrees of necessity, 
 and possibly is with more danger and irregularity omitted, 
 than actions, which spread their leaves fairer, and look more 
 gloriously. 
 
 3. First : Here I consider, that there are many sins in 
 the scene of the body and the matter of sobriety, which are 
 highly criminal, and yet the laws of God, expressed in 
 Scripture, name them not ; but men are taught to distinguish 
 them by that reason, which is given us by nature, and is 
 imprinted in our understanding, in order to the conservation 
 of human kind. For since every creature hath something 
 in it sufficient to propagate the kind, and to conserve the 
 individuals from perishing in confusions and general dis- 
 orders, which in beasts we call instinct, that is, an habitual 
 or prime disposition to do certain things, which are propor- 
 tionable to the end whither it is designed ; man also, if he be 
 not more imperfect, must have the like : and because he 
 knows and makes reflections upon his own acts, and under- 
 stands the reason of it, that which in them is instinct, in him 
 is natural reason, which is, a desire to preserve himself and 
 his own kind ; and differs from instinct, because he under-
 
 32 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 
 
 stands his instinct and the -reasonableness of it, and they do 
 not. But man, being a higher thing, even in the order of 
 creation, and designed to a more noble end in his animal 
 
 / O 
 
 capacity, his argumentative instinct is larger than the natural 
 instinct of beasts : for he hath instincts in him, in order to 
 the conservation of society , b and therefore hath principles, 
 that is, he hath natural desires to it for his own good ; and 
 because he understands them, they are called principles, and 
 laws of nature, but are no other than what I have now 
 declared ; for beasts do the same things we do, and have 
 many the same inclinations, which in us are the laws of 
 nature, even all which we have in order to our common end. 
 But that, which in beasts is nature and an impulsive force, in 
 us must be duty and an inviting power : we must do the 
 same things with an actual or habitual designation of that 
 end, to which God designs beasts, (supplying by his wisdom 
 their want of understanding,) and then, what is mere nature 
 in them, in us is natural reason. And therefore marriage in 
 men is made sacred, when the mixtures of other creatures 
 are so merely natural, that they are not capable of being 
 virtuous ; because men are bound to intend that end, which 
 God made. And this, with the superaddition of other ends, 
 of which marriage is representative in part, and in part 
 effective, does consecrate marriage, and makes it holy and 
 mysterious. But then there are in marriage many duties, 
 which we are taught by instinct ; that is, by that reason 
 whereby we understand, what are the best means to promote 
 the end, which we have assigned us. And by these laws all 
 unnatural mixtures are made unlawful, and the decencies 
 which are to be observed in marriage, are prescribed us by 
 this. 
 
 4. Secondly : Upon the supposition of this discourse, t 
 consider again, that, although to observe this instinct, or 
 these laws of nature (in which I now have instanced), be no 
 great virtue in any eminence of degree, (as no man is much 
 commended for not killing himself, or for not degenerating 
 into beastly lusts;) yet, to prevaricate some of these laws, 
 may become almost the greatest sin in the world. And 
 
 b Naturale jus partim, ro J/x/av, -rSfiv, d,*(>u<r/ns ep.olaf >.wsvriXs<r<ra:<rav' partiro, 
 rt Tfo; xa).exa'yaSiiey xattty a.fokfft, xou ft,en* ixato* tiittfu^M rot TV 3-g^5Tv fain. 
 Joteph. Orig, ivi. 10.
 
 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 33 
 
 therefore, although to live according to nature be a testimony 
 fit to be given to a sober and a temperate man, and rises no 
 higher ; yet, to do an action against nature, is the greatest 
 dishonour and impiety in the world, (I mean of actions whose 
 scene lies in the body,) and disentitles us to all relations to 
 God, and vicinity to virtue. 
 
 5. Thirdly : Now, amongst actions which we are taught 
 by nature, some concern the being and the necessities of 
 nature, some appertain to her convenience and advantage : 
 and the transgressions of these respectively have their height- 
 enings or depressions ; and, therefore, to kill a man is worse 
 than some preternatural pollutions, because more destructive 
 of the end and designation of nature, and the purpose of 
 instinct. 
 
 6. Fourthly : Every part of this instinct is then, in some 
 sense, a law, when it is in a direct order to a necessary end, 
 and by that is made reasonable. I say, in some sense it is a 
 law ; that is, it is in a near disposition to become a law. It 
 is a rule, without obligation to a particular punishment, be- 
 yond the effect of the natural inordination and obliquity of 
 the act ; it is not the measure of a moral good or evil, but of 
 the natural ; that is, of comely and uncomely. For if, in the 
 individuals, it should fail, or that there pass some greater 
 obligation upon the person in order to a higher end, not 
 consistent with those means designed in order to the lesser 
 end, in that particular it is no fault, but sometimes a virtue. 
 And, therefore, although it be an instinct, or reasonable 
 towards many purposes, that every one should beget a man 
 in his own image, in order to the preservation of nature ; 
 yet if there be a superaddition of another and higher end, 
 and contrary means persuaded in order to it, (such as is holy 
 celibate, or virginity, in order to a spiritual life, in some 
 persons,) there the instinct of nature is very far from passing 
 obligation upon the conscience, and in that instance ceases 
 to be reasonable. And, therefore, the Romans, who invited 
 men to marriage with privileges, and punished morose and 
 ungentle natures that refused it, yet they had their chaste 
 and unmarried vestals ; the first, in order to the common- 
 wealth ; these, in a nearer order to religion. 
 
 7. Fifthly : These instincts or reasonable inducements 
 become laws, obliging us in conscience and in the way of 
 
 VOL. II. H
 
 34 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 
 
 religion ; and the breach of them is directly criminal when 
 the instance violates any end of justice, or charity, or sobriety, 
 either designed in nature's first intention, or superinduced by 
 God or man. For every thing that is unreasonable to some 
 certain purpose is not presently criminal, much less is it 
 against the law of nature, (unless every man that goes out of 
 his way sins against the law of nature) ; and every contra- 
 dicting of a natural desire or inclination is not a sin against 
 a law of nature. For the restraining sometimes of a lawful 
 and a permitted desire is an act of great virtue, and pursues 
 a greater reason ; as in the former instance. But those 
 things only, against which such a reason as mixes with cha- 
 rity or justice, or something that is now in order to a further 
 end of a commanded instance of piety, may be without error 
 brought, those things are only criminal. And God, having 
 first made our instincts reasonable, hath now made our reason 
 and instincts to be spiritual ; and having sometimes restrained 
 our instincts, and always made them regular, he hath, by the 
 intermixture of other principles, made a separation of instinct 
 from instinct, leaving one in the form of natural inclination, 
 and they rise no higher than a permission or a decency, it is 
 lawful, or it is comely so to do ; (for no man can affirm it to 
 be a duty to kill him that assaults my life, or to maintain my 
 children for ever without their own industry, when they are 
 able, what degrees of natural fondness soever I have towards 
 them ; nor that I sin if I do not marry, when I can contain :) 
 and yet every one of these may proceed from the affections 
 and first inclinations of nature. But until they mingle with 
 justice, or charity, or some instance of religion and obedience, 
 they are no laws ; the other that are so mingled being raised 
 to duty and religion. Nature inclines us, and reason judges 
 it apt and requisite in order to certain ends ; but then every 
 particular of it is made to be an act of religion from some 
 other principle : as yet it is but fit and reasonable, not 
 religion and particular duty, till God or man hath interposed. 
 But whatsoever particular in nature was fit to be made a law 
 of religion, is made such by the superaddition of another 
 principle ; and this is derived to us by tradition from Adam 
 to Noah, or else transmitted to us by the consent of all the 
 world upon a natural and prompt reason, or else by some 
 other instrument derived to us from God, but especially by
 
 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 35 
 
 the Christian religion, which hath adopted all those things 
 which we call " things honest, things comely, and things of 
 good report," into a law and a duty : as appears Phil. iv. 8. 
 
 8. Upon these propositions I shall infer, by way of in- 
 stance, that it ii a duty that women should nurse their own 
 children. For, first, it is taught to women by that instinct 
 which nature hath implanted in them. For, as Phavorinus, c 
 the philosopher, discoursed, it is but to be half a mother to 
 bring forth children, and not to nourish them ; and it is some 
 kind of abortion, or an exposing of the infant, which, in the 
 reputation of all wise nations, is infamous and uncharitable. 
 And if the name of mother be an appellative of affection and 
 endearments, why should the mother be willing to divide it 
 with a stranger? The earth is the mother of us all, not only 
 because we were made of her red clay, but chiefly that she 
 daily gives us food from her bowels and breasts ; and plants 
 and beasts give nourishment to their offsprings, after their 
 production, with greater tenderness than they bare them in 
 their wombs : and yet women give nourishment to the 
 embryo, which, whether it be deformed or perfect, they know 
 not, and cannot love what they never saw ; and yet when 
 they do see it, when they have rejoiced that a child is born, 
 and forgotten the sorrows of production, they, who then can 
 first begin to love it, if they begin to divorce the infant from 
 the mother, the object from the affection, cut off the oppor- 
 tunities and occasions of their charity or piety. 
 
 9. For why hath nature given to women two exuberant 
 fontinels, which, " like two roes that are twins, feed among 
 the lilies, " d and drop milk like dew from Hermon, and hath 
 invited that nourishment from the secret recesses, where the 
 infant dwelt at first, up to the breast where naturally now the 
 child is cradled in the entertainments of love and maternal 
 embraces; 6 but that nature, having removed the babe, and 
 carried its meat after it, intends that it should be preserved f 
 
 c A pud A. Gellium, lib. xii. c. 1. d Cant. 4, 5. 
 
 e Ilicet exundans claustris, erumpere gestit 
 
 Humor- 
 
 Si prohibes, furit in mammis, turbasque dolorum 
 
 Miscet, et ingrata poenas a matre reposcit. Sammartft. Peedotnyph. 
 
 f Sponte fluunt alimenta suis accommoda rebus, 
 Cognatumque bibunt membra baud invita liquorem.-r-Iefem.
 
 36 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 
 
 by the matter and ingredients of its constitution, and have 
 the same diet prepared with a more mature and proportion- 
 able digestion ? If nature intended them not for nourishment, 
 I am sure it less intended them for pride and wantonness ; 
 they are needless excrescences and vices of nature, unless 
 employed in nature's work and proper iritendment. And if 
 it be a matter of consideration of what blood children are 
 derived, we may also consider that the derivation continues 
 after the birth ; and, therefore, abating the sensuality, the 
 nurse is as much the mother as she that brought it forth ; 
 and so much the more, as there is a longer communication of 
 constituent nourishment (for so are the first emanations) in 
 this than in the other. So that here is first the instinct, or 
 prime intendment, of nature. 
 
 10. Secondly : And that this instinct may also become 
 humane and reasonable, we see it by experience in many 
 places, that foster-children are dearer to the nurse than to the 
 mother, as receiving and ministering respectively perpetual 
 prettinesses of love, and fondness, and trouble, and need, and 
 invitations, and all the instruments of endearment ; besides a 
 vicinity of dispositions and relative tempers by the communica- 
 tion of blood and spirits from the nurse to the suckling, which 
 makes use the more natural, and nature more accustomed. 
 And, therefore, the affections, which these exposed or derelict 
 children bear to their mothers, have no grounds of nature or 
 assiduity, but civility and opinion; 6 and that little of love 
 which is abated from the foster-parents, upon public report 
 that they are not natural, that little is transferred to mothers 
 upon the same opinion, and no more. Hence come those 
 unnatural aversions, those unrelenting dispositions, those 
 carelessnesses and incurious deportments towards their child- 
 ren which are such ill-sown seeds, from whence may arise 
 up a bitterness of disposition and mutual provocation. The 
 affection which children bear to their nurses, was highly 
 remarked in the instance of Scipio Asiaticus, who rejected 
 the importunity of his brother Africanus in behalf of the ten 
 captains, who were condemned for offering violence to the 
 Vestals, but pardoned them at the request of his foster-sister : 
 
 * Obliteratis et abolitis nativae pietatis elementis, quicquid ita educati Jiberi 
 amare patrem atque matrem videntur, magnam partem non naturalis ille amor est, 
 sed civilis et opimibilis Phavor. apud A. Gellium.
 
 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 37 
 
 and being asked, why he did more for his nurse's daughter 
 than for his own mother's son ? gave this answer : " I esteem 
 her rather to be my mother that brought me up, than her that 
 oare me and forsook me." And I have read the observation, 
 that many tyrants have killed their mothers, but never any 
 did violence to his nurse ; as if they were desirous to suck 
 the blood of their mother raw, which she refused to give to 
 them digested into milk. And the bastard-brother of the 
 Gracchi, returning from his victories in Asia to Rome, pre- 
 sented his mother with a jewel of silver, and his nurse with a 
 girdle of gold, upon the same account. Sometimes children 
 are exchanged, and artificial bastardies introduced into a 
 family, and the right heir supplanted. It happened so to 
 Artabanus, king of Epirus. His child was changed at nurse, 
 and the son of a mean knight succeeded in the kingdom ; 
 the event of which was this : The nurse too late discovered 
 the treason : a bloody war was commenced ; both the pre- 
 tenders slain in battle ; and the kingdom itself was usurped 
 by Alexander, the brother to Olympias, the wife of Philip 
 the Macedonian. At the best, though there happen no 
 such extravagant and rare accidents, yet it is not likely a 
 stranger should love the child better than the mother ; and 
 if the mother's care could suffer it to be exposed, a stranger's 
 care may suffer it to be neglected. For how shall a hireling 
 endure the inconveniences, the tediousnesses, and unhand- 
 somenesses of a nursery, when she, whose natural affection 
 might have made it pleasant, out of wantonness or softness 
 hath declined the burden ? But the sad accidents which, by 
 too frequent observation, are daily seen happening to nurse- 
 children, give great probation that this intendment of nature 
 designing mothers to be the nurses, that their affection might 
 secure and increase their care, and the care best provide for 
 their babes, is most reasonable, and proportionable to the 
 discourses of humanity. 
 
 1 1 . But as this instinct was made reasonable, so in this 
 also the reason is in order to grace and spiritual effects ; and, 
 therefore, is among those things which God hath separated 
 from the common instincts of nature, and made properly to 
 be laws, by the mixtures of justice and charity. For it is 
 part of that education which mothers, as a duty, owe to their 
 children, that they do, in all circumstances, and with all their 
 
 >944
 
 38 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 
 
 powers, which God to that purpose gave them, promote their 
 capacities and improve their faculties. 11 Now, in this also, as 
 the temper of the body is considerable in order to the inclina- 
 tions of the soul, so is the nurse in order to the temper of the 
 body ; and a lamb sucking a goat, or a kid sucking an ewe, 
 change their fleece and hair respectively, say naturalists. For 
 if the soul of man were put into the body of a mole, it could 
 not see nor speak, because it is not fitted with an instrument 
 apt and organical to the faculty ; and when the soul hath its 
 proper instruments, its music is pleasant or harsh, according 
 to the sweetness or the unevenness of the string it touches : 
 for David himself could not have charmed Saul's melancholic 
 spirit with the strings of his bow, or the wood of his spear. 
 And just so are the actions or dispositions of the soul, angry 
 or pleasant, lustful or cold, querulous or passionate, according 
 as the body is disposed by the various intermixtures of 
 natural qualities. And as the carelessness of nurses hath 
 sometimes returned children to their parents crooked, con- 
 sumptive, half starved, and unclean, from the impurities of 
 nature ; so their society and their nourishment together have 
 disposed them to peevishness, to lust, to drunkenness, to 
 pride, to low and base demeanours, to stubbornness. And 
 as a man would have been unwilling to have had a child by 
 Harpaste, Seneca's wife's fool ; so he would, in all reason, be 
 as unwilling to have had her to be the nurse : for very often 
 mothers by the birth do riot transmit their imperfections, yet 
 it seldom happens, but the nurse does : which is the more 
 considerable, because nurses are commonly persons of no 
 great rank, certainly lower than the mother, and, by conse- 
 quence, liker to return their children with the lower and more 
 servile conditions ; and commonly those vainer people teach 
 them to be peevish and proud, to lie, or at least seldom give 
 them any first principles contrariant to the nurse's vice. 
 And, therefore, it concerns the parent's care, in order to a 
 virtuous life of the child, to secure its first seasonings ; 
 because, whatever it sucks in first, it swallows and believes 
 
 h Nam Gracchorum eloquentise multum contulisse accepiinus Corneliam 
 Matrem. Quint, lib. i. c. 1. Protinus ut erit parens factus, acrem quam 
 maxiim- curam impendat, ante omnia ne sit vitiosua sermo nutricibus, 
 quas, si fieri posset, sapientes Chrysippus optavit Quint, lib. i. cap. 1. 
 rX aXXor^ov /3A.a/3iv, ya.\a. 'faov utf'iKiftov. Hippoc. 1. de Alimento. Ka^atrsj l 
 virSai yi, firi^Uf XKX.V;. Aristoph.
 
 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 39 
 
 infinitely, and practises easily, and continues longest. And 
 this is more proper for a mother's care ; ' while the nurse 
 thinks, that giving the child suck, and keeping its body 
 clean, is all her duty. But the mother cannot think herself 
 so easily discharged. And this consideration is material in 
 all cases, be the choice of the nurse never so prudent and 
 curious ; and it is not easily apprehended to be the portion of 
 her care to give it spiritual milk, and therefore it intrenches 
 very much upon impiety and positive relinquishing the edu- 
 cation of their children, when mothers expose the spirit of 
 the child either to its own weaker inclinations, or the wicked 
 principles of an ungodly nurse, or the carelessness of any less 
 obliged person. 
 
 12. And then let me add, that a child sucks the nurse's 
 milk, and digests her conditions, if they be never so bad, k 
 but seldom gets any good. For virtue being superaddition to 
 nature, and perfections not radical in the body, but contra- 
 dictions to, and meliorations of, natural indispositions, does 
 not easily convey itself by ministrations of food, as vice 
 does ; which, in most instances, is nothing but mere nature 
 grown to custom, and not mended by grace : so that it is 
 probable enough, such natural distemperatures may pass in 
 the rivulets of milk, like evil spirits in a white garment, when 
 virtues are of harder purchase, and dwell so low in the heart, 
 that they but rarely pass through the fountains of generation. 
 And, therefore, let no mother venture her child upon a 
 stranger, whose heart she less knows than her own. And 
 because few of those nicer women think better of others than 
 themselves, (since, out of self-love, they neglect their own 
 bowels,) it is but an act of improvidence to let my child 
 derive imperfections from one, of whom I have not so good 
 an opinion as of myself. 
 
 13. And if those many blessings and holy prayers, which 
 the child needs, or his askings or sicknesses, or the mother's 
 fears or joys, respectively, do occasion, should not be cast 
 into this account ; yet those principles, which, in all cases 
 wherein the neglect is vicious, are the causes of the exposing 
 the child, are extremely against the piety and chanty of 
 
 ' "AXXari (ttjjTgu/Jj jr'iK'i np-i^v, aXX0T f*.r,rni>. Fictitm Proverb, 
 k Hyrcana;que admorunt ubera tigres .Virgil, Ataivas pa/rS-
 
 40 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 
 
 Christian religion, which prescribes severity and austere de- 
 portment, and the labours of love, and exemplar tenderness 
 of affections, and piety to children, which are the most 
 natural and nearest relations the parents have. That religion, 
 which commands us to visit and to tend sick strangers, and 
 wash the feet of the poor, and dress their ulcers, and sends 
 us upon charitable embassies into unclean prisons, and bids 
 us lay down our lives for one another, is not pleased with a 
 niceness and sensual curiosity (that I may not name the 
 wantonnesses of lusts), which denies suck to our own children. 
 What is more humane and affectionate than Christianity ? 
 and what is less natural and charitable than to deny the 
 expresses of a mother's affection ? which certainly to good 
 women is the greatest trouble in the world, and the greatest 
 violence to their desires, if they should not express and 
 minister. 
 
 14. And it would be considered, whether those mothers, 
 who have neglected their first duties of piety and charity, 
 can expect so prompt and easy returns of duty and piety 
 from their children, whose best foundation is love ; and that 
 love strongest, which is most natural ; and that most natural 
 which is conveyed by the first ministries and impresses of 
 nourishment and education. And if love descends more 
 strongly than it ascends, and commonly falls from the parents 
 upon the children in cataracts, and returns back again up to 
 the parents but in gentle dews ; if the child's affection keeps 
 the same proportions towards such unkind mothers, it will be 
 as little as atoms in the sun, and never express itself but 
 when the mother needs it not ; that is, in the sunshine of a 
 clear fortune. 
 
 15. This, then, is amongst those instincts, which are 
 natural, heightened first by reason, and then exalted by grace 
 into the obligation of a law ; and, being amongst the sanc- 
 tions of nature, its prevarication is a crime very near those 
 sins, which divines, in detestation of their malignity, call sins 
 against nature, and is never to be excused but in cases of 
 necessity 1 or greater charity ; as when the mother cannot be 
 a nurse by reason of natural disability, or is afflicted with a 
 
 1 Necessitas, magnum imbecillitatis humanae patrocinium, quicquid cogit 
 e xcusat. 5nec.
 
 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 41 
 
 disease, which might be transmitted in the milk ; or, in case of 
 the public necessities of a kingdom, for the securing of suc- 
 cession in the royal family. And yet, concerning this last, 
 Lycurgus made a law, that the noblest amongst the Spartan 
 women, though their king's wives, should at least nurse their 
 eldest son, and the plebeians should nurse all theirs; and 
 Plutarch reports, that the second son of King Themistes 
 inherited the kingdom in Sparta, only because he was nursed 
 with his mother's milk, and the eldest was therefore rejected, 
 because a stranger was his nurse. And that queens have 
 suckled and nursed their own children, is no very unusual 
 kindness in the simplicity and hearty affections of elder ages, 
 as is to be seen in Herodotus and other historians. I shall 
 only remark one instance, out of the Spanish Chronicles, 
 which Henry Stephens, in his Apology for Herodotus, reports 
 to have heard from thence related by a noble personage, 
 Monsieur Marillac : That a Spanish lady, married into France, 
 nursed her child with so great a tenderness and jealousy, 
 that, having understood the little prince once to have sucked 
 a stranger, she was unquiet, till she had forced him to vomit 
 it up again. In other cases, the crime lies at their door, who 
 enforce neglect upon the other, and is heightened in propor- 
 tion to the motive of the omission ; as, if wantonness or pride 
 be the parent of the crime, the issue, besides its natural 
 deformity, hath the excrescences of pride or lust to make it 
 more ugly. 
 
 16. To such mothers I propound the example of the holy 
 Virgin, who had the honour to be visited by an angel ; yet, 
 after the example of the saints in the Old Testament, she 
 gave to the holy Jesus drink from those bottles, which himself 
 had filled for his own drinking ; and her paps were as surely 
 blessed for giving him suck, as her womb for bearing him : 
 and reads a lecture of piety and charity, which if we deny to 
 our children, there is then in the world left no argument or 
 relation great enough to kindle it from a cinder to a flame. 
 God gives dry breasts, for a curse to some, for an affliction 
 to others ; but those, that invite it to them by voluntary arts, 
 " love not blessing, therefore shall it be far from them." 
 And I remember, that it was said concerning Annius Minu- 
 tius, the censor, that he thought it a prodigy, and extremely
 
 42 THE DUTY OF NURSING CHILDREN. 
 
 ominous to Rome, that a Roman lady refused to nurse her 
 child, and yet gave suck to a puppy, that her milk might, 
 with more safety, be dried up with artificial applications. 
 Let none, therefore, divide the interests of their own children ; 
 for she that appeared before Solomon, and would have the 
 child divided, was not the true mother, and was the more 
 culpable of the two. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O holy and eternal God, Father of the creatures, and King 
 of all the world, who hast imprinted in all the sons of thy 
 creation principles and abilities to serve the end of their 
 own preservation, and to men hast superadded reason, 
 making those first propensities of nature to be reasonable 
 in order to society, and a conversation in communities and 
 bodies politic, and hast, by several laws and revelations, 
 directed our reasons to nearer applications to thee, and 
 performance of thy great end, the glory of our Lord and 
 Father ; teach me strictly to observe the order of creation, 
 and the designs of the creatures, that in my order I may 
 do that service which every creature does in its proper 
 capacity. Lord, let me be as constant in the ways of 
 religion as the sun in his course ; as ready to follow the 
 intimations of thy Spirit as little birds are to obey the 
 directions of thy providence, and the conduct of thy hand. 
 And let me never, by evil customs, or vain company, or 
 false persuasions, extinguish those principles of morality 
 and right reason which thou hast imprinted in my under- 
 standing, in my creation and education, and which thou 
 hast ennobled by the superadditions of Christian institu- 
 tion ; that I may live according to the rules of nature in 
 such things which she teaches, modestly, temperately, and 
 affectionately, in all the parts of my natural and political 
 relations; and that I, proceeding from nature to grace, 
 may henceforth go on from grace to glory, the crown of 
 all obedience, prudent and holy walking, through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. Amen.
 
 HISTORY OF THE ACCIDENTS, &C. 43 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 
 Of the great and glorious Accidents happening about the Birth 
 
 of Jesus. 
 
 1 . ALTHOUGH the birth of Christ was destitute of the usual 
 excrescences and less necessary pomps, which used to signify 
 and illustrate the birth of princes ; yet his first humility was 
 made glorious with presages, miracles, and significations from 
 heaven, which did not only, like the furniture of a princely 
 bedchamber, speak the riches of the parent, or greatness of 
 the son within its own walls, but did declare to all the world 
 that their prince was born, publishing it with figures and 
 representments almost as great as its empire. 
 
 2. For when all the world did expect that in Judaea 
 should be born their prince, and that the incredulous world 
 had, in their observation, slipped by their true prince because 
 he came not in pompous and secular illustrations ; upon that 
 very stock Vespasian a was nursed up in*hope of the Roman 
 empire, and that hope made him great in designs ; and they 
 being prosperous made his fortunes correspond to his hopes, 
 and he was endeared and engaged upon that fortune by the 
 prophecy which was never intended him by the prophet. 
 But the fortune of the Roman monarchy was not great 
 enough for this prince designed by the old prophets. And, 
 therefore, it was not without the influence of a Divinity that 
 his decessor Augustus, about the time of Christ's nativity, 
 refused to be called Lord ; b possibly it was to entertain the. 
 people with some hopes of restitution of their liberties, 
 till he had griped the monarchy with a stricter and faster 
 hold. But the Christians were apt to believe, that it was 
 upon the prophecy of a sibyl foretelling the birth of a greater 
 prince, to whom all the world should pay adoration ; and that 
 the prince was about that time born in Judaea, the oracle, 
 which was dumb to Augustus's question, told him unasked, 
 the devil having no tongue permitted him but one to proclaim 
 that " an Hebrew child was his Lord and enemy." 
 
 * Suefon. in Vita Vesp. Vide etiam Ciceron. de Divin. 
 
 b Orosius, lib. v, c. 22. Suidas in Histor. Verb. Augustus.
 
 11 HISTORY OF THE ACCIDENTS 
 
 3. At the birth of which child there was an universal 
 peace through all the world. For then it was that Augustus 
 Caesar, d having composed all the wars of the world, did, the 
 third time, cause the gates of Janus's temple to be shut ; and 
 this peace continued for twelve years, even till the extreme 
 old age of the prince, until rust had sealed the temple doors, 
 which opened not till the sedition of the Athenians, and the 
 rebellion of the Dacians caused Augustus to arm. For he 
 that was born was the Prince of Peace, and came to reconcile 
 God with man, and man with his brother ; and to make, by 
 the sweetness of his example and the influence of a holy 
 doctrine, such happy atonements between disagreeing natures, 
 such confederations and societies between enemies, that 
 " the wolf and the lamb should lie down together, and a little 
 child," boldly, and without danger, " put his finger in the 
 nest and cavern of an asp."' And it could be no less than 
 miraculous, that so great a body as the Roman empire, con- 
 sisting of so many parts, whose constitutions were differing, 
 their humours contrary, their interests contradicting each 
 other's greatness, and all these violently oppressed by an 
 usurping power, should have no limb out of joint, not so 
 much as an aching tooth, or a rebelling humour, in that huge 
 collection of parts; but so it seemed good in the eye of 
 Heaven, by so great and good a symbol, to declare not only 
 the greatness, but the goodness, of the Prince, that was then 
 born in Judaea, the Lord of all the world. 
 
 4. But because the heavens, as well as the earth, are his 
 creatures, and do serve him, at his birth he received a sign in 
 heaven above, as well as in the earth beneath, as an homage 
 paid to their common Lord. For as certain shepherds were 
 " keeping watch over their flocks by night," near that part 
 where Jacob did use to feed his cattle, when he was in the 
 land of Canaan, "the angel of the Lord came upon them, 
 and the glory of the Lord shone round about them." Needs 
 must the shepherds be afraid when an angel came arrayed in 
 glory, and clothed their persons in a robe of light great 
 enough to confound their senses and scatter their understand- 
 ings. But " the angel said unto them, Fear not ; for I bring 
 unto you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For 
 
 d Orosius. e Isa. xi. 6.
 
 HAPPENING ABOUT THE NATIVITY. 45 
 
 unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, 
 which is Christ the Lord." The shepherds needed not be 
 invited to go see this glorious sight ; but, lest their fancy 
 should rise up to an expectation of a prince as externally 
 glorious, as might be hoped for upon the consequence of so 
 glorious an apparition, the angel, to prevent the mistake, told 
 them of a sign, which, indeed, was no other than the thing 
 signified ; but yet was therefore a sign, because it was so 
 remote from the common probability and expectation of such 
 a birth, that, by being a miracle, so great a prince should be 
 born so poorly, it became an instrument to signify itself, and 
 all the other parts of mysterious consequence. For the angel 
 said, " This shall be a sign unto you, Ye shall find the babe 
 wrapt in swaddling-clothes, lying in a manger." 
 
 5. But as light, when it first begins to gild the east, 
 scatters indeed the darknesses from the earth, but ceases not 
 to increase its flame, till it hath made perfect day ; so it 
 happened now, in this apparition of the angel of light : he 
 appeared and told his message, and did shine, but the light 
 arose higher and higher, till midnight was as bright as mid- 
 day. For " suddenly there was with the angel a multitude 
 of the heavenly host ;" and after the angel had told his 
 message in plain song, the whole chorus joined in descant, 
 and sang a hymn to the tune and sense of Heaven, where 
 glory is paid to God in eternal and never-ceasing offices, and 
 whence good will descends upon men in perpetual and never- 
 stopping torrents. Their song was, " Glory be to God on 
 high, on earth peace, good will towards men :" by this song 
 not only referring to the strange peace/ which at that time 
 put all the world in ease ; but to the great peace, which this 
 new-born Prince should make between his Father and all 
 mankind. 
 
 6. As soon as these blessed choristers had sung their 
 Christmas carol, and taught the Church a hymn to put into 
 her offices for ever in the anniversary of this festivity, " the 
 angels returned into heaven," and " the shepherds went to 
 Bethlehem, to see this thing, which the Lord had made 
 
 f Igitur eo tempore, i. e. eo anno, quo firmissimam verissimamque pacem 
 ordinatione Dei Caesar composuit, natus est Christus; cujus adventui pax 
 ista famulata est: in cujus ortu audientibus hominibus exsultantes angeli 
 cecinerunt, " Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax/' &c. P. Orosius.
 
 46 HISTORY OF THE ACCIDENTS 
 
 known unto them. And they came with haste, and found 
 Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger." Just as 
 the angel had prepared their expectation, they found the 
 narrative verified, and saw the glory and the mystery of it by 
 that representment, which was made by the heavenly ministers, 
 seeing God through the veil of a child's flesh, the heir of 
 Heaven wrapt in swaddling-clothes, and a person, to whom 
 the angels did minister, laid in a manger ; and they beheld, 
 and wondered, and worshipped. 
 
 7. But as precious liquor, warmed and heightened by a 
 flame, first crowns the vessel, and then dances over its brim 
 into the fire, increasing the cause of its own motion and 
 extravagancy ; so it happened to the shepherds, whose hearts 
 being filled with the oil of gladness up unto the brim, the joy 
 ran over, as being too big to be confined in their own breasts, 
 and did communicate itself, growing greater by such dissemi- 
 nation. For " when they had seen it, they made known 
 abroad the saying, which was told them concerning this child. 
 And," as well they might, "all that heard it, wondered." 
 But Mary, having first changed her joy into wonder, turned 
 her wonder into entertainments of the mystery, and the 
 mystery into a fruition and cohabitation with it : For " Mary 
 kept all these sayings, and pondered them in her heart." 
 And the shepherds having seen what the angels did upon the 
 publication of the news, which less concerned them than us, 
 had learnt their duty, to sing an honour to God for the 
 nativity of Christ : for " the shepherds returned, glorifying 
 and praising God for all the things, that they had heard and 
 seen, as it was told unto them." 
 
 8. But the angels had told the shepherds, that the nativity 
 was " glad tidings of great joy unto all people ;" and, that 
 " the heavens might declare the glory of God, and the firma- 
 ment shew his handy-work ;" this also was told abroad, even 
 to the Gentiles, by a sign from heaven, by the message of a 
 star. For there was a prophecy of Balaam, famous in all the 
 eastern country, and recorded by Moses, 8 " There shall come 
 a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre shall arise out of Israel : 
 Out of Jacob shall come he, that shall have dominion." 
 Which although in its first sense it signified David, who was 
 
 * Num. xxiv. 17
 
 HAPPENING ABOUT TITE NATIVITY. 47 
 
 the conqueror of the Moabites ; yet, in its more mysterious 
 and chiefly intended sense, it related to the Son of David. 
 And, in expectation of the event of this prophecy, 11 the 
 Arabians, the sons of Abraham by Keturah, whose portion 
 given by their patriarch was gold, frankincense, and myrrh, 
 who were great lovers of astronomy, did with diligence 
 expect the revelation of a mighty prince in Judea at such 
 time, when a miraculous and extraordinary star should ap- 
 pear. And, therefore, " when Jesus was born in Bethlehem 
 of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, there came wise 
 men," inspired by God, taught by art, and persuaded by 
 prophecy, " from the East to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he 
 that is born King of the Jews ? for we have seen his star in 
 the East, and are come to worship him." The Greeks 
 suppose this, which was called a star, to have been indeed 
 an angel in a pillar of fire, and the semblance of a star ; 
 and it is made the more likely, by coming and standing 
 directly over the humble roof of his nativity, which is not 
 discernible in the station of a star, though it be supposed 
 to be lower than the orb of the moon. To which, if we 
 add, that they only saw it, (so far as we know,) and that 
 it appeared, as it were, by voluntary periods, it will not 
 be very improbable, but that it might be like the angel, that 
 went before the sons of Israel in a pillar of fire by night ; 
 or rather, like the little shining stars sitting upon the bodies 
 of Probus, Tharacus, and Andronicus, martyrs, when their 
 bodies were searched for, in the days of Dioclesian, and 
 pointed at by those bright angels. 
 
 9. This star did not trouble Herod, till the Levantine 
 princes expounded the mysteriousness of it, and said it 
 declared a " king to be born in Jewry," and that the star 
 was his, not applicable to any signification but of a king's 
 birth. And, therefore, although it was no prodigy nor 
 comet, 1 foretelling diseases, plagues, war, and death, but 
 only the happy birth of a most excellent prince ; yet it 
 brought affrightment to Herod and all Jerusalem : for " when 
 Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and 
 all Jerusalem with him." And thinking that the question of 
 the kingdom was now in dispute, and an heir sent from 
 
 h Epiphan. in Expos. Fid. Cath. c. 8. 
 
 1 Et terris mutantem regna cometem. Chalciilint in Tirnxum Platonit.
 
 48 HISTORY OF THE ACCIDENTS 
 
 heaven to lay challenge to it, who brought a star and the 
 learning of the East with him, for evidence and probation of 
 his title, Herod thought there was no security to his usurped 
 possession, unless he could rescind the decrees of Heaven, 
 and reverse the results and eternal counsels of predestination. 
 And he was resolved to venture it, first by craft, and then by 
 violence. 
 
 10. And first, " he calls the chief priests and scribes of 
 the people together, and demanded of them, where Christ 
 should be born ;" and found, by their joint determination, 
 that Bethlehem of Judea was the place, designed by ancient 
 prophecy and God's decree. Next, he inquired of the wise 
 men concerning the star, but privily, what time it appeared. 
 For the star had not motion certain and regular, k by the 
 laws of nature ; but it so guided the wise men in their 
 journey, that it stood when they stood, moved not when 
 they rested, and went forward when they were able, making 
 no more haste than they did, who carried much of the 
 business and employment of the star along with them. But 
 when Herod was satisfied in his questions, " he sent them to 
 Bethlehem," with instructions " to search diligently for the 
 young child, and to bring him word," pretending that he 
 would '* come and worship him also." 
 
 11. The wise men prosecuted the business of their jour- 
 ney, and " having heard the king, they departed ; and the 
 star," (which, as it seems, attended their motion,) " went 
 before them, until it came and stood over where the young 
 child was ;" where " when they saw the star, they rejoiced 
 with exceeding great joy." Such a joy as is usual to wearied 
 travellers, when they are entering into their inn ; such a joy 
 as when our hopes and greatest longings are laying hold 
 upon the proper objects of their desires, a joy of certainty 
 immediately before the possession : for that is the greatest 
 joy, which possesses before it is satisfied, and rejoices with a 
 joy not abated by the surfeits of possession, but heightened 
 with all the apprehensions and fancies of hope, and the 
 neighbourhood of fruition; a joy of nature, of wonder, and 
 of religion. And now their hearts laboured with a throng 
 of spirits and passions, and ran into the house, to the 
 
 k Leo. Serrn. 4, de Epiphan.
 
 HAPPENING ABOUT THE NATIVITY. 49 
 
 embraccment of Jesus, even before their feet : but " when 
 they were come into the house, they saw the young Child, 
 with Mary his mother." And possibly their expectation 
 was something lessened, and their wonder heightened, when 
 they saw their hope empty of pomp and gaiety, the great 
 King's throne to be a manger, a stable to his chamber of 
 presence, a thin court, and no ministers, and the King him- 
 self a pretty babe ; and, but that he had a star over his 
 head, nothing to distinguish him from the common condition 
 of children, or to excuse him from the miseries of a poor 
 and empty fortune. 
 
 12. This did not scandalize those wise persons; but, 
 being convinced by that testimony from heaven, and the 
 union of all circumstances, " they fell down and worshipped 
 him," after the manner of the Easterlings, when they do 
 veneration to their kings ; not with an empty Ave, and gay 
 blessing of fine words, but " they bring presents, and come 
 into his courts;" for " when they had opened their trea- 
 sures, they presented unto him gifts, gold, frankincense, and 
 myrrh." And if these gifts were mysterious, 1 beyond the 
 acknowledgment of him to be the King of the Jews, and 
 Christ, that should come into the world ; frankincense might 
 signify him to be acknowledged a God, myrrh to be a man, 
 and gold to be a king; unless we choose by gold to signify 
 the acts of rnercy ; by myrrh, the chastity of minds and purity 
 of our bodies, to the incorruption of which myrrh is espe- 
 cially instrumental ; and by incense we intend our prayers," 1 
 as the most apt presents and oblations to the honour and 
 service of this young King. But however the fancies of 
 religion may represent variety of ideas, the act of adoration 
 was direct and religious, and the myrrh was medicinal to his 
 tender body ; the incense possibly no more than was neces- 
 sary in a stable, the first throne of his humility ; and the 
 gold was a good antidote against the present indigencies of 
 his poverty : presents such as were used in all the Levant, 
 (especially in Arabia and Saba, to which the growth of 
 myrrh and frankincense were proper,) in their addresses to 
 their God and to their king ; and were instruments with 
 
 1 S. Ambros. in ii. Lu. 6. Leo, Ser. de Epipb. Theophil. in Matt. ii. 
 S. Bernard, in Serm. 2, de Epipb. 
 
 Phil. iv. 18. Ps. cili. 2. Rev. v. 8. 
 VOL. II. I
 
 50 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 which, under the veil of flesh, they worshipped the eternal 
 Word ; the wisdom of God, under infant innocency ; the 
 almighty power, in so great weakness ; and under the lowness 
 of human nature, the altitude of majesty, and the infinity of 
 divine glory. And so was verified the prediction of the 
 prophet Esay, n under the type of the son of the prophetess, 
 " Before a child shall have knowledge to cry, My father and 
 my mother, he shall take the spoil of Damascus and Samaria 
 from before the king of Assyria." 
 
 13. When they had paid the tribute of their offerings and 
 adoration, " being warned in their sleep by an angel, not 
 to return to Herod, they returned into their own country 
 another way;" where, having been satisfied with the plea- 
 sures of religion, and taught by that rare demonstration 
 which was made by Christ, how man's happiness did nothing 
 at all consist in the affluence of worldly possessions, or the 
 tumours of honour : having seen the eternal Son of God 
 poor and weak, and unclothed of all exterior ornaments ; 
 they renounced the world, and retired empty into the re- 
 cesses of religion, and the delights of philosophy. 
 
 Ad SECTION IV. 
 
 Considerations upon the Apparition of the Angels to the 
 Shepherds. 
 
 1. WHEN the angels saw that come to pass, which Ga- 
 briel, the great ambassador of God, had declared ; that 
 which had been prayed for and expected four thousand 
 years; and that, by the merits of this new-born Prince, their 
 younger brethren and inferiors in the order of intelligent 
 creatures were now to be redeemed, that men should partake 
 the glories of their secret habitations, and should fill up 
 those void places, which the fall of Lucifer and the third part 
 of the stars had made, their joy was as great as their under- 
 standing ; and these mountains did leap with joy, because 
 the valleys were filled with benediction, and a fruitful shower 
 from heaven. And if, at the conversion of one sinner, there 
 
 Isa. viii. 4. Justin M. Dial, cum Tryphon. Tertul. lib. iii. contra 
 Marcion. c. 13.
 
 THE ANGELICAL APPARITION. 51 
 
 is jubilation, and a festival kept among the angels, how great 
 shall we imagine this rejoicing to be, when salvation and 
 redemption were sent to all the world ! But we also, to 
 whom the joy did more personally relate, (for they rejoiced 
 for our sakes,) should learn to estimate the grace done us, 
 and believe there is something very extraordinary in the 
 piety and salvation of a man, when the angels, who in 
 respect of us are unconcerned in the communications, rejoice 
 with the joy of conquerors, or persons suddenly ransomed 
 from tortures and death. 
 
 2. But the angels also had other motions ; for besides 
 the pleasures of that joy, which they had in beholding human 
 nature so highly exalted, and that God was man, and man 
 was God ; they were transported with admiration at the 
 ineffable counsel of God's predestination, prostrating them- 
 selves with adoration and modesty, seeing God so humbled, 
 and man so changed, and so full of charity, that God 
 stooped to the condition of man, and man was inflamed 
 beyond the love of seraphim, and was made more knowing 
 than cherubim, more established than thrones, more happy 
 than all the orders of angels. The issue of this consideration 
 teaches us to learn their charity, and to exterminate all the 
 intimations and beginnings of envy, that we may as much 
 rejoice at the good of others as of ourselves : for then we 
 love good for God's sake, when we love good, wherever God 
 hath placed it : and that joy is charitable, which overflows 
 our neighbours' fields, when ourselves are unconcerned in 
 the personal accruments ; for so we are " made partakers of 
 all that fear God," when charity unites their joy to ours, as 
 it makes us partakers of their common sufferings. 
 
 3. And now the angels, who had adored the holy Jesus 
 in heaven, come also to pay their homage to him upon 
 earth ; and laying aside their flaming swords, they take into 
 their hands instruments of music, and sing, " Glory be to 
 God on high." First signifying to us, that the incarnation 
 of the holy Jesus was a very great instrument of the glorifi- 
 cation of God ; and those divine perfections, in which he is 
 chiefly pleased to communicate himself to us, were in nothing 
 manifested so much as in the mysteriousness of this work. 
 Secondly : And in vain doth man satisfy himself with com- 
 placencies and ambitious designs upon earth, when he sees
 
 52 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 before him God in the form of a servant, humble, and poor, 
 and crying, and an infant full of need and weakness. 
 
 4. But God hath pleased to reconcile his glory with our 
 eternal benefit ; and that also was ,part of the angels' song, 
 " In earth, peace to men of good will." For now we need 
 not, with Adam, to fly from the presence of the Lord, saying, 
 " I heard thy voice, and I was afraid, and hid myself;" for 
 he, from whom our sins made us once to fly, now weeps, and 
 is an infant in his mother's arms, seeking strange means to 
 be reconciled to us; hath forgotten all his anger, and is 
 swallowed up with love, and encircled with irradiations of 
 amorous affections and good will ; and the effects of this 
 good will are not referred only to persons of heroical and 
 eminent graces and operations, of vast and expensive chari- 
 ties, of prodigious abstinencies, of eremitical retirements, of 
 ascetical diet, of perfect religion, and canonized persons; 
 but to all " men of good will," whose souls are hallowed with 
 holy purposes and pious desires, though the beauties of the 
 religion and holy thoughts were not spent in exterior acts, 
 nor called out by the opportunities of a rich and expressive 
 fortune. 
 
 5. But here we know, where the seat and regiment of 
 peace is placed, and all of it must pass by us and descend 
 upon us, as duty and reward. It proceeds from the Word 
 incarnate, from the Son of God, undertaking to reconcile us 
 to his Father ; and it is ministered and consigned unto us by 
 every event and act of Providence, whether it be deciphered 
 in characters of paternal indulgence, or of correction, or 
 absolution. For that is not peace from above, to have all 
 things according to our human and natural wishes ; but to 
 be in favour with God, that is peace ; always remembering, 
 that to be chastised by him is not a certain testimony of his 
 mere wrath, but to all his servants a character of love and 
 of paternal provision, since " he chastises every son whom he 
 receives." Whosoever seeks to avoid all this world's adversity, 
 can never find peace ; but he only who hath resolved all his 
 affections, and placed them in the heart of God ; he who 
 denies his own will, and hath killed self-love, and all those 
 enemies within, that make afflictions to become miseries 
 indeed, and full of bitterness ; he only enjoys this peace: 
 and in proportion to every man's mortification and self-
 
 THE ANGELICAL APPARITION. 53 
 
 denial, so are the degrees of his peace. And this is the 
 peace, which the angel proclaimed at the enunciation of that 
 birth, which taught humility, and contempt of things below, 
 and all their vainer glories, by the greatest argument in the 
 world, even the poverty of God incarnate. And if God sent 
 his own, natural, only-begotten, and beloved Son, in all the 
 dresses of poverty and contempt ; that person is vain, who 
 thinks God will love him better than he loved his own Son, 
 or that he will express his love any other or gentler way, 
 than to make him partaker of the fortune of his eldest Son. 
 There is one other postern to the dwellings of peace, and 
 that is, "good will to men ;" for so much charity as we 
 have to others, such a measure of peace also we may enjoy 
 at home : for peace was only proclaimed to " men of good 
 will," to them that are at peace with God and all the 
 world. 
 
 6. But the angel brought the message to shepherds, to 
 persons simple, and mean, and humble ; persons likely to be 
 more apprehensive of the mystery, and less of the scandal, 
 of the poverty of the Messias : for they whose custom or 
 affections dwell in secular pomps, who are not used by 
 charity or humility to stoop to an evenness and consideration 
 of their brethren of equal natures, though of unequal for- 
 tunes, are persons, of all the world, most indisposed and 
 removed from the understanding of spiritual excellencies, 
 especially when they do not come clothed with advantages 
 of the world, and of such beauties which they admire. 
 God himself in poverty, comes in a prejudice to them that 
 love riches, and simplicity is folly to crafty persons ; a a mean 
 birth is an ignoble stain, beggary is a scandal, and the cross 
 an unanswerable objection. But the angel's moral in the 
 circumstance of his address, and inviting the poor shepherds 
 to Bethlehem, is, that none are fit to come to Christ but 
 those who are poor in spirit, despisers of the world, simple in 
 
 a At nos virtutes ipsas invertimus, atque 
 Sincerum cupimus vas incrustare. Probus quis 
 Nobiscum vivit? multum est demissus bomo. Illi 
 Tardo, cognomen pingui damus ^ 
 
 Simplicior quis ut forte legentetn 
 
 Aut taciturn impellat quovis serraone 1 molestus ! 
 Communi sensu plane caret, inquimus. 
 
 Horat. Serm. lib. i. Sat. 3, 65.
 
 54 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 their hearts, without craft and secular designs ; and therefore 
 neither did the angel tell the story to Herod, nor to the 
 scribes and pharisees, whose ambition had ends contradictory 
 to the simplicity and poverty of the birth of Jesus. 
 
 7. These shepherds, when they conversed with angels, 
 were " watching over their flocks by night;" no revellers, 
 but in a painful and dangerous employment, the work of an 
 honest calling, securing their folds against incursions of wild 
 beasts, which in those countries are not seldom or unfre- 
 quent. And Christ being the great Shepherd, (and possibly, 
 for the analogy's sake, the sooner manifested to shepherds,) 
 hath made his ministers overseers of their flocks, distin- 
 guished in their particular folds, and conveys the mysterious- 
 ness of his kingdom, first to the pastors, and by their 
 ministry, to the flocks. But although all of them be admitted 
 to the ministry, yet those only to the interior recesses and 
 nearer imitations of Jesus, who are watchful over their flocks, 
 assiduous in their labours, painful in their sufferings, present 
 in the dangers of the sheep, ready to interpose their persons 
 and sacrifice their lives ; these are shepherds, who first con- 
 verse with angels, and finally shall enter into the presence of 
 the Lord. But, besides this symbol, we are taught in the 
 significations of the letter, that he that is diligent in the 
 business of an honest calling, is then doing service to God ; 
 and a work so pleasing to him, who hath appointed the sons 
 of men to labour, that to these shepherds he made a return 
 and recompence, by the conversation of an angel ; and hath 
 advanced the reputation of an honest and a mean employ- 
 ment to such a testimony of acceptance, that no honest 
 person, though busied in meaner offices, may ever hereafter, 
 in the estimation of Christ's disciples, become contemptible. 
 
 8. The signs, which the angel gave to discover the babe, 
 were no marks of lustre and vanity ; but they should find, 
 1. a babe; 2. swaddled; 3. lying in a manger: the first, a 
 testimony of his humility: the second, of his poverty; the 
 third, of his incommodity and uneasiness ; for Christ came to 
 combat the whole body of sin, and to destroy every province 
 of Satan's kingdom; for these are direct antinomies to " the 
 lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." 
 Against the first, Christ opposed his hard and uneasy 
 lodging; against the second, the poorness of his swaddling-
 
 THE ANGELICAL APPARITION. 55 
 
 bands and mantle ; and the third is combated by the great 
 dignation and descent of Christ from a throne of majesty to 
 the state of a sucking babe. And these are the first lessons 
 he hath taught us for our imitation ; which that we may the 
 better do, as we must take him for our pattern, so also for 
 our helper, and pray to the holy Child, and he will not only 
 teach us, but also give us power and ability. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O blessed and eternal Jesu, at whose birth the quires of 
 angels sang praises to God, and proclaimed peace to men, 
 sanctify my will and inferior affections ; make me to be 
 within the conditions of peace, that I be holy and mor- 
 tified, a despiser of the world and exterior vanities, humble 
 and charitable ; that by thy eminent example I may be so 
 fixed in the designs and prosecution of the ends of God 
 and a blissful eternity, that I be unmoved with the terrors 
 of the world, unaltered with its allurements and seductions, 
 not ambitious of its honour, not desirous of its fulness and 
 plenty ; but make me diligent in the employment thou 
 givest me, faithful in discharge of my trust, modest in my 
 desires, content in the issues of thy providence ; that in 
 such dispositions I may receive and entertain visitations 
 from heaven, and revelations of the mysteries and blisses 
 evangelical ; that by such directions I may be brought 
 into thy presence, there to see thy beauties and admire 
 thy graces, and imitate all thy imitable excellences, and 
 rest in thee for ever ; in this world, by the perseverance of 
 a holy and comfortable life, and in the world to come, in 
 the participation of thy essential glories and felicities, O 
 blessed and eternal Jesus ! 
 
 Considerations of the Epiphany of the Blessed Jesus by a Star, 
 and the Adoration of Jesus by the Eastern Magi. 
 
 1. GOD, who is the universal Father of all men, at the 
 nativity of the Messias gave notice of it to all the world, as 
 they were represented by the grand division of Jews and 
 Gentiles ; to the Jewish shepherds by an angel, to the
 
 56 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE EPIPHANY, 
 
 Eastern magi by a star. For the Gospel is of universal 
 dissemination, not confined within the limits of a national 
 prerogative, but catholic and diffused. As God's love was, 
 so was the dispensation of it, " without respect of persons : " 
 for all, being included under the curse of sin, were to him 
 equal and indifferent, undistinguishable objects of mercy. 
 And Jesus, descended of the Jews, was also " the expecta- 
 tion of the Gentiles," and therefore communicated to all : 
 the grace of God being like the air we breathe; and "it 
 hath appeared to all men," a saith St. Paul; but the con- 
 veyances and communications of it were different, in the 
 degrees of clarity and illustration. The angel told the 
 shepherds the story of the nativity plainly and literally : the 
 star invited the wise men by its rareness and preternatural 
 apparition ; to which, also, as by a footpath, they had been 
 led by the prophecy of Balaam. 
 
 2. But here first the grace of God prevents us ; without 
 him we can do nothing ; he lays the first stone in every 
 spiritual building, and then expects, by that strength he first 
 gave us, that we make the superstructures. But as a stone, 
 thrown into a river, first moves the water, and disturbs its 
 surface into a circle, and then its own force wafts the neigh- 
 bouring drops into a larger figure by its proper weight ; so is 
 the grace of God the first principle of our spiritual motion ; 
 and when it moves us into its own figure, and hath actuated 
 and ennobled our natural powers by the influence of that first 
 incentive, we continue the motion, and enlarge the progress. 
 But as the circle on the face of the waters grows weaker, till 
 it hath smoothed itself into a natural and even current, 
 unless the force be renewed or continued ; so does all our 
 natural endeavour, when first set a-work by God's preventing 
 grace, decline to the imperfection of its own kind, unless the 
 same force be made energetical and operative, by the con- 
 tinuation and renewing of the same supernatural influence. 
 
 3. And therefore the Eastern magi, being first raised up 
 into wonder and curiosity by the apparition of the star, were 
 very far from finding Jesus by such general and indefinite 
 significations ; but then the goodness of God's grace in- 
 creased its own influence ; for an inspiration from the Spirit 
 
 Tit. ii. 11.
 
 AND THE ADORATION BY THE WISE MEN. 57 
 
 of God admonished them to observe the star, shewed the 
 star, that they might find it, taught them to acknowledge it b , 
 instructed them to understand its purpose, and invited them 
 to follow it, and never left them till they had found the holy 
 Jesus. Thus also God deals with us. He gives us the first 
 grace, and adds the second ; he enlightens our understand- 
 ings, and actuates our faculties, and sweetly allures us by the 
 proposition of rewards, and wounds us with the arrows of his 
 love, and inflames us with fire from heaven; ever giving us 
 new assistances, or increasing the old, refreshing us with 
 comforts, or arming us with patience ; sometimes stirring our 
 affections by the lights held out to our understanding, some- 
 times bringing confirmation to our understanding by the 
 motion of our affections, till, by variety of means, we at last 
 arrive at Bethlehem, in the service and entertainments of 
 the holy Jesus ; which we shall certainly do, if we follow 
 the invitations of grace and exterior assistances, which are 
 given us to instruct us, to help us, and to invite us, but not 
 to force our endeavours and co-operations. 
 
 4. As it was an unsearchable wisdom, so it was an im- 
 measurable grace of providence and dispensation, which 
 God did exhibit to the wise men ; to them, as to all men, 
 disposing the ministries of his grace sweetly, and by pro- 
 portion to the capacities of the person suscipient. For God 
 called the Gentiles by such means, which their customs and 
 learning had made prompt and easy. For these magi were 
 great philosophers and astronomers, and therefore God sent 
 a miraculous star, to invite and lead them to a new and more 
 glorious light, the lights of grace and glory. And God so 
 blessed them in following the star, to which their innocent 
 curiosity and national customs were apt to lead them, that 
 their custom was changed to grace, and their learning 
 heightened with inspiration ; and God crowned all with a 
 spiritual and glorious event. It was not much unlike which 
 God did to the princes and diviners among the Philistines, 
 who sent the ark back with five golden emrods and five 
 golden mice ; an act proportionable to the custom and sense 
 of their nation and religion : yet God accepted their opinion 
 
 b Dedit intellectual qui prjestitit signum. S. Leo. Ser. 1, de Tlpiph.
 
 58 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE EPIPHANY, 
 
 and divination to the utmost end they designed it, and took 
 the plagues of emrods and mice from them. For oftentimes 
 the custom or the philosophy of the opinions of a nation 
 are made instrumental, through God's acceptance, to ends 
 higher than they can produce by their own energy and in- 
 tendment. And thus the astrological divinations of the 
 magi were turned into the order of a greater design than the 
 whole art could promise, their employment being altered 
 into grace, and nature into a miracle. But then, when the 
 wise men were brought by this means, and had seen Jesus, 
 then God takes ways more immediate and proportionable to 
 the kingdom of grace ; the next time, God speaks to them, 
 by an angel. For so is God's usual manner, to bring us to 
 him ; first, by ways agreeable to us ; and then to increase, 
 by ways agreeable to himself. And when he hath furnished 
 us with new capacities, he gives new lights, in order to more 
 perfect employments : and, " To him that hath, shall be 
 given full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and 
 running over;" the eternal kindness of God being like the 
 sea, which delights to run in its old channel, and to fill the 
 hollownesses of the earth, which itself hath made and hath 
 once watered. 
 
 5. This star, which conducted the wise men to Bethle- 
 hem, (if, at least, it was properly a star, and not an angel,) 
 was set in its place to be seen by all ; but was not observed, 
 or not understood, nor its message obeyed, by any but the 
 three wise men. And indeed no man hath cause to com- 
 plain of God, as if ever he would be deficient in assistances 
 necessary to his service ; but first the grace of God separates 
 us from the common condition of incapacity and indisposi- 
 tion, and then we separate ourselves one from another by 
 the use or neglect of this grace ; and God doing his part to 
 us, hath cause to complain of us, who neglect that which is 
 our portion of the work. And, however even the issues and 
 the kindnesses of God's predestination and antecedent 
 mercy do very much toward the making the grace to be 
 effective of its purpose, yet the manner of all those influences 
 and operations being moral, persuasive, reasonable, and 
 divisible, by concourse of various circumstances, the cause 
 and the effect are brought nearer and nearer, in various
 
 AND THE ADORATION BY THE WISE MEN. 59 
 
 suscipients ; but not brought so close together, but that God 
 expects us to do something towards it ; c so that we may say, 
 with St. Paul, " It is not I, but the grace of God that is 
 with me." And at the same time, when, by reason of our 
 co-operation, we actuate and improve God's grace, and 
 become distinguished from other persons more negligent 
 under the same opportunities, God is he who also does dis- 
 tinguish us by the proportions and circumstantiate applica- 
 tions of his grace to every singular capacity ; that we may be 
 careful not to neglect the grace, and yet to return the entire 
 glory to God. d 
 
 6. Although God, to second the generous design of these 
 wise personages in their inquiry of the new prince, made the 
 star to guide them through the difficulties of their journey ; 
 yet when they came to Jerusalem, the star disappeared ; God 
 so resolving to try their faith, and the activity of their 
 desires ; to remonstrate to them that God is the Lord of all 
 his creatures, and a voluntary dispenser of his own favours, 
 and can as well take them away as indulge them ; and to 
 engage them upon the use of ordinary means and minis- 
 tries, when they are to be had : for now the extraordinary 
 and miraculous guide for a time did cease ; that they, being 
 at Jerusalem, might inquire of them, whose office and pro- 
 fesssion of sacred mysteries did oblige them to publish the 
 Messias. For God is so great a lover of order, 8 so regular 
 and certain an exactor of us to use those ordinary ministries 
 of his own appointing, that he, having used the extraordinary, 
 but as architects do frames of wood, to support the arches 
 till they be built, takes them away when the work is ready, 
 and leaves us to those other of his designation ; and hath 
 given such efficacy to these, that they are as persuasive and 
 operative as a miracle ; and St. Paul's sermon would convert 
 as many, as if Moses should rise from the grave. And now 
 the doctrines of Christianity have not only the same truth, 
 but the same evidence and virtue also, they had in the midst 
 
 ^iiriii^rt TH, KVTO; %<u Sios ffuvdiTTirat* 
 
 'tis Ttiii a,*ivfft %/>r>patT auStv afi>.t7. JEschyl. Pers<E. 847. Blomf. 
 d Slav SE Saljov \yrn Ivrv%i7v /Sjarauf . jEichyl. \-JTTO. i<ri 6/3. 621. 
 e TauTo y-t> iffTiv dvrn xxt TO tivai ffof'ia., TO Iv Tti^u xai Ti\tioTnTi -r^otiyui T 
 troir,fii' urn ffutufiivai aXXri/.aif fotfiav, KO.I Ta|/v, xcti riXt<TjTa. Hierjcl. A 
 p. 18.
 
 60 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE EPIPHANY, 
 
 of those prime demonstrations, extraordinary by miracle and 
 prophecy, if men were equally disposed. 
 
 7. When they were come to the doctors of the Jews, 
 they asked confidently, and with great openness, under the 
 ear and eye of a tyrant prince, bloody and timorous, jealous 
 and ambitious, "Where is he that is born King of the Jews?" 
 and so gave evidence of their faith, of their magnanimity, 
 and fearless confidence and profession of it, and of their love 
 of the mystery and object, in pursuance of which they had 
 taken so troublesome and vexatious journeys : and besides 
 that they upbraided the tepidity and infidel baseness of the 
 Jewish nation, who stood unmoved and unconcerned by all 
 the circumstances of wonder, and stirred not one step to 
 make inquiry after, or to visit the new-born King : they also 
 teach us to be open and confident in our religion and faith, 
 and not to consider our temporal, when they once come to 
 contest against our religious interests. 
 
 8. The doctors of the Jews told the wise men where 
 Christ was to be born ; the magi, they address themselves 
 with haste to see him and to worship, and the doctors them- 
 selves stir not ; God not only serving himself with truth, out 
 of the mouths of impious persons, but magnifying the re- 
 cesses of his counsel, and wisdom, and predestination ; who 
 uses the same doctrine to glorify himself and to confound his 
 enemies, to save the scholars, and to condemn the tutors, to 
 instruct one, and upbraid the other ; making it an instrument 
 of faith, and a conviction of infidelity : the sermons of the 
 doctors, in such cases, being like the spoils of beavers, sheep, 
 and silkworms, designed to clothe others, and are made the 
 occasions of their own nakedness, and the causes of their 
 death. But as it is a demonstration of the Divine wisdom, 
 so it is of human folly ; there being no greater imprudence 
 in the world, than to do others' advantage, and to neglect 
 our own. f If thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak 
 good of thee : but if thou be like a channel in a garden, 
 through which the water runs to cool and moisten the herbs, 
 but nothing for its own use ; thou buildest a fortune to them 
 upon the ruins of thine own house, while, " after thy preach- 
 ing to others, thou thyself dost become a castaway." 
 
 f Piaga mortale che si non puo guarire, 
 Yivere in altrui, et in so stesso morire.
 
 AND THE ADORATION BY THE WISE MEN. 61 
 
 9. When the wise men departed from Jerusalem, the star 
 again appeared, and they rejoiced with exceeding great joy : 
 and, indeed, to new converts and persons in their first 
 addresses to the worship of God, such spiritual and exterior 
 comforts are often indulged ; because then God judges them 
 to be most necessary, as being invitations to duty by the 
 entertainments of our affections with such sweetnesses, which 
 represent the glory of the reward, by the antepasts and 
 refreshments dispensed even in the ruggedness of the way, 
 and incommodities of the journey. All other delights are 
 the pleasures of beasts, or the sports of children ; these are 
 the antepasts, and preventions of the full feasts and over- 
 flowings of eternity. 
 
 10. When they came to Bethlehem, and the star pointed 
 them to a stable, they entered in ; and being enlightened 
 with a Divine ray, proceeding from the face of the holy 
 Child, and seeing through the cloud, and passing through 
 the scandal of his mean lodging and poor condition, they 
 bowed themselves to the earth ; first giving themselves an 
 oblation to this great King, then they made offering of their 
 gifts ; for a man's person is first accepted, then his gift. 
 God first regarded Abel, and then accepted his offering : 
 which we are best taught to understand by the present 
 instance ; for it means no more, but thai all outward services 
 and oblations are made acceptable by the prior presentation 
 of an inward sacrifice. If we have first presented ourselves, 
 then our gift is pleasant, as coming but to express the truth 
 of the first sacrifice ; but if our persons be not first made a 
 holocaust to God, the lesser oblations of outward presents 
 are like sacrifices without salt and fire, nothing to make 
 them pleasant or religious. For all other senses of this pro- 
 position charge upon God the distinguishing and accepta- 
 tion of persons, against which he solemnly protests : God 
 regards no man's person, but according to the doing of his 
 duty ; but then God is said first to accept the person, and 
 then the gift, when the person is first sanctified and given to 
 God by the vows and habits of a holy life ; and then all the 
 actions of his religion are homogeneal to their principle, and 
 accepted by the acceptation of the man. 
 
 11. These magi presented to the holy Babe, gold, frank- 
 incense, and myrrh, protesting their faith of three articles by
 
 62 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE EPIPHANY, &C. 
 
 the symbolical oblation : by gold, that he was a king ; by 
 incense, that he was a God ; by myrrh, that he was a man. 
 And the presents also were representative of interior virtues : 
 the myrrh signifying faith, mortification, chastity, compunc- 
 tion, and all the actions of the purgative way of spiritual 
 life ; the incense signifying hope, prayer, obedience, good 
 intention, and all the actions and devotions of the illumina- 
 tive ; the giving the gold representing love to God and our 
 neighbours, the contempt of riches, poverty of spirit, and all 
 the eminences and spiritual riches of the unitive life. And 
 these oblations if we present to the holy Jesus, both our 
 persons and our gifts shall be accepted, our sins shall be 
 purged, our understandings enlightened, and our wills united 
 to this holy Child, and entitled to a communion of all his 
 glories. 
 
 12. And thus, in one view and two instances, God hath 
 drawn all the world to himself by his son Jesus, in the 
 instance of the shepherds and the Arabian magi, Jews and 
 Gentiles, learned and unlearned, rich and poor, noble and 
 ignoble ; that in him all nations, and all conditions, and all 
 families, and all persons, might be blessed ; g having called 
 all by one star or other, by natural reason, or by the secrets 
 of philosophy ; by the revelations of the Gospel, or by the 
 ministry of angels ; by the illuminations of the Spirit, or by 
 the sermons and dictates of spiritual fathers ; and hath con- 
 signed this lesson to us, that we must never appear before 
 the Lord empty, offering gifts to him, by the expenses or by 
 the affections of charity ; either the worshipping or the ob- 
 lations of religion, either the riches of the world or the love 
 of the soul : for if we cannot bring gold with the rich Ara- 
 bians, we may, with the poor shepherds, come and " kiss the 
 Son, lest he be angry ;" and in all cases come and " serve 
 him with fear and reverence," and spiritual rejoicings. 
 
 8 Nam simul terris animisque duri, 
 Et sua Bessi nive duriores, 
 Nunc oves facti, duce te, gregantur 
 
 Pacis in aulam. 
 
 Nox ubi quondam fuerat ferarum, 
 Nunc ibi ritus viget angelorum, 
 Et latet Justus quibus ipse latro 
 
 Vixit in antris. 
 
 S. Paulinus in Reditu Nicetce.
 
 HISTORY OF THE CIRCUMCISION, &C. C3 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 Most holy Jesu, thou art the glory of thy people Israel, and a 
 light to the Gentiles, and wert pleased to call the Gentiles 
 to the adoration and knowledge of thy sacred person and 
 laws, communicating the inestimable riches of thy holy 
 discipline to all, with an universal undistinguishing love ; 
 give unto us spirits docible, pious, prudent, and ductile, 
 that no motion or invitation of grace be ineffectual, but 
 may produce excellent effects upon us, and the secret 
 whispers of thy spirit may prevail upon our affections, in 
 order to piety and obedience, as certainly as the loudest 
 and most clamorous sermons of the Gospel. Create in us 
 such excellences, as are fit to be presented to thy glorious 
 Majesty ; accept of the oblation of myself, and my entire 
 services : but be thou pleased to verify my offering, and 
 secure the possession to thyself, that the enemy may not 
 pollute the sacrifice, or divide the gift, or question the 
 title ; but that I may be wholly thine, and for ever, clarify 
 my understanding, sanctify my will, replenish my memory 
 with arguments of piety ; then shall I present to thee an 
 oblation rich and precious, as the treble gift of the Levant- 
 ine princes. Lord, I am thine, reject me not from thy 
 favour, exclude me not from thy presence ; then shall I 
 serve thee all the days of my life, and partake of the 
 glories of thy kingdom, in which thou reignest gloriously 
 and eternally. Amen. 
 
 SECTION V. 
 
 Of the Circumcision of Jesus, and his Presentation in the 
 Temple. 
 
 1, AND now the blessed Saviour of the world began to do 
 the work of his mission and our redemption : and because 
 man had prevaricated all the Divine commandments, to 
 which all human nature respectively to the persons of several 
 capacities was obliged, and therefore the whole nature was
 
 64 HISTORY OF THE CIRCUMCISION, &C. 
 
 obnoxious to the just rewards of its demerits : first, Christ 
 was to put that nature he had assumed, into a savable con- 
 dition, by fulfilling his Father's preceptive will, and then to 
 reconcile it actually, by suffering the just deservings of its 
 prevarications. He therefore addresses himself to all the 
 parts of an active obedience ; " and when eight days were 
 accomplished for the circumcising of the Child," he exposed 
 his tender body to the sharpness of the circumcising stone, 
 and shed his blood in drops, giving an earnest of those 
 rivers, which he did afterwards pour out for the cleansing all 
 human nature, and extinguishing the wrath of God. 
 
 2. He that had no sin, nor was conceived by natural 
 generation, could have no adherences to his soul or body, 
 which needed to be pared away by a rite, and cleansed by a 
 mystery ; neither, indeed, do we find it expressed, that cir- 
 cumcision 3 was ordained for abolition or pardon of original 
 sin, (it is indeed presumed so ;) but it was instituted to be a 
 seal of a covenant between God and Abraham, and Abraham's 
 posterity, " a seal of the righteousness of faith," and there- 
 fore was not improper for him to suffer, who was the child of 
 Abraham, and who was the Prince of the covenant, and " the 
 Author and Finisher of that faith," which was consigned to 
 Abraham in circumcision. But so mysterious were all the 
 actions of Jesus, that this one served many ends. For, 1. It 
 gave demonstration of the verity of human nature. 2. So he 
 began to fulfil the law. 3. And took from himself the scan- 
 dal of uncircumcision, which would eternally have prejudiced 
 the Jews against his entertainment and communion. 4. And 
 then he took upon him that name, which declared him to be 
 the Saviour of the world ; which, as it was consummate in 
 the blood of the cross, so was it inaugurated in the blood of 
 circumcision : for " when the eight days were accomplished 
 for circumcising of the Child, his name was called Jesus." 
 
 3. But this holy family, who had laid up their joys in the 
 eyes and heart of God, longed, till they might be permitted 
 an address to the temple, that there they might present the 
 holy Babe unto his Father ; and indeed that he, who had no 
 
 1 "Of foff lit firynf \\r l ya.yi S<av ' A/Sgaa^, 
 Auras a.-r oi^avaSiv *sXT*ayt fttirt ffvv olxu 
 Sa^x' d-jrtfu^ffcu vrofffr,; it-re" xai f irfaifffH. 
 
 Euseb. lib. ix. c. 22. Prcepar. Evangel.
 
 HISTORY OF THE CIRCUMCISION, &C. 65 
 
 other, might be brought to his own house. For although, 
 while he was a child, he did differ nothing from a servant, 
 yet he was the Lord of the place : it was his Father's house, 
 and he was "the Lord of all." And therefore, "when the 
 days of the purification were accomplished, they brought him 
 to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord," to whom he was 
 holy, as being the first-born; the " first-born of his mother," 
 the " only begotten Son of his Father," and "the first-born 
 of every creature." And they "did with him according to 
 the law of Moses, offering a pair of turtle doves " for his 
 redemption. 
 
 4. But there was no public act about this holy Child, but 
 it was attended by something miraculous and extraordinary. 
 And, at this instant, the Spirit of God directed a holy person 
 into the temple, that he might feel the fulfilling of a prophecy 
 made to himself, that he might, before his death, " behold the 
 Lord's Christ," and embrace " the glory and consolation of 
 Israel, and the light of the Gentiles," in his arms : for old 
 ' ' Simeon came by the Spirit into the temple ; and when the 
 parents brought in the child Jesus, then took he him up in 
 his arms, and blessed God," and prophesied, and spake 
 glorious things of that Child, and things sad and glorious 
 concerning his mother; that the "child was set for the 
 rising and fulling of many in Israel, for a sign that should 
 be spoken against ;" and the bitterness of that contradiction 
 should pierce the heart of the holy Virgin-mother like a 
 s\vord, that her joy at the present accidents might be attem- 
 pered with present revelation of her future trouble, and the 
 excellent favour of being the mother of God might be 
 crowned with the reward of martyrdom, and a mother's love 
 be raised up to an excellency great enough to make her 
 suffer the bitterness of being transfixed with his love and 
 sorrow, as with a sword. 
 
 5. But old Anna, the prophetess, came also in, full of 
 years and joy, and found the reward of her long prayers and 
 fasting in the temple : the long-looked-for redemption of 
 Israel was now in the temple, and she saw with her eyes 
 the Light of the World, the Heir of Heaven, the long-looked- 
 for Messias, whom the nations had desired and expected till 
 their hearts were faint, and their eyes dim, with looking 
 further, and apprehending greater distances. She also 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 66 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. 
 
 prophesied, " and gave thanks unto the Lord. But Joseph 
 and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken 
 of him." 
 
 Ad SECTION V. 
 
 Considerations upon the Circumcision of the holy Child Jesus. 
 
 1. WHEN eight days were come, the holy Jesus was circum- 
 cised, and shed the first-fruits of his blood ; offering them to 
 God, like the prelibation of a sacrifice, and earnest of the 
 great seas of effusion designed for his passion, not for the 
 expiation of any stain himself had contracted ; for he was 
 spotless as the face of the sun, and had contracted no wrinkle 
 from the aged and polluted brow of Adam : but it was an act 
 of obedience, and yet of choice and voluntary susception, to 
 which no obligation had passed upon him in the condition of 
 his own person. For, as he was included in the verge of 
 Abraham's posterity, and had put on the common outside of 
 his nation, his parents had intimation enough to pass upon 
 him the sacrament of the national covenant, and it became 
 an act of excellent obedience : but because he was a person 
 extraordinary, and exempt from the reasons of circumcision, 
 and himself in person was to give period to the rite, therefore 
 it was an act of choice in him, and in both the capacities 
 becomes a precedent of duty to us ; in the first, of obedience ; 
 in the second, of humility. 
 
 2. But it is considerable, that the holy Jesus, who might 
 have pleaded his exemption, especially in a matter of pain 
 and dishonour, yet chose that way which was more severe 
 and regular ; so teaching us to be strict in our duties, and 
 sparing in the rights of privilege and dispensation. We 
 pretend every indisposition of body to excuse us from penal 
 duties, from fasting, from going to church ; and instantly we 
 satisfy ourselves with saying, " God will have mercy, and not 
 sacrifice :" so making ourselves judges of our own privileges, 
 in which commonly we are parties against God, and therefore 
 likely to pass unequal sentence. It is not an easy argument 
 that will bring us to the severities and rigours of duty ; but 
 we snatch at occasions of dispensation, and therefore possibly
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. 67 
 
 may mistake the justice of the opportunities by the importu- 
 nities of our desires. However, if this too much easiness 
 be, in any case, excusable from sin, yet, in all cases, it is an 
 argument of infirmity; and the regular observation of the 
 commandment is the surer way to perfection. For not every 
 inconvenience of body is fit to be pleaded against the incon- 
 venience of losing spiritual advantages, but only such which 
 upon prudent account does intrench upon the laws of charity ; 
 or such whose consequent is likely to be impediment of a 
 duty in a greater degree of loss than the present omission. 
 For the spirit being in many perfections more eminent than 
 the body, all spiritual improvements have the same propor- 
 tions ; so that, if we were just estimators of things, it ought 
 not to be less than a great incommodity to the body, which 
 \ve mean to prevent by the loss of a spiritual benefit, or the 
 omission of a duty : he were very improvident, who would 
 lose a finger for the good husbandry of saving a ducat; and 
 it would be an unhandsome excuse from the duties of repent- 
 ance, to pretend care of the body. The proportions and 
 degrees of this are so nice, and of so difficult determination, 
 that men are more apt to untie the girdle of discipline with 
 the loose hands of dispensation arid excuse, than to strain her 
 too hard by the strictures and bindings of severity ; but the 
 error were the surer on this side. 
 
 3. The blessed Jesus refused not the signature of this 
 bloody covenant, though it were the character of a sinner ; 
 and did sacramentally rescind the impure reliques of Adam, 
 and the contractions of evil customs ; which was the greatest 
 descent of humility that is imaginable, that he should put 
 himself to pain to be reckoned amongst sinners, and to have 
 their sacraments and their protestations, though his innocence 
 was purer than the flames of cherubim. But we use arts to 
 seem more righteous than we are, desiring rather to be 
 accounted holy than to be so ; as thinking the vanity of 
 reputation more useful to us than the happiness of a remote 
 and far distant eternity. But if (as it is said) circumcision 
 was ordained, besides the signing of the covenant, to abolish 
 the guilt of original sin, we are willing to confess that ; it 
 being no act of humiliation to confess a crime that all the 
 world is equally guilty of, that could not be avoided by our 
 timeliest industry,and that serves us for so many ends in the
 
 68 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. 
 
 excuse and minoration of our actual impieties : so that, as 
 Diogenes trampled upon Plato's pride with a greater fastuous- 
 ness and humorous ostentation ; so we do with original sin, 
 declaim against it bitterly, to save the others harmless, and 
 are free in the publication of this, that we may be instructed 
 how to conceal the actual. The blessed Jesus had in him no 
 principle of sin, original nor actual ; and therefore this de- 
 signation of his, in submitting himself to the bloody covenant 
 of circumcision, which was a just express and sacramental 
 abscission of it, was an act of glorious humility ; yet our 
 charging of ourselves so promptly with Adam's fault, what- 
 ever truth it may have in the strictness of theology, hath 
 (forsitan) but an ill end in morality ; and so I now consider 
 it, without any reflection upon the precise question. 
 
 4. For though the fall of Adam lost to him all those 
 supernatural assistances which God put into our nature by 
 way of grace, yet it is by accident that we are more prone 
 to many sins than we are to virtue. Adam's sin did discom- 
 pose his understanding and affections ; and every sin we do, 
 does still make us more unreasonable, more violent, more 
 sensual, more apt still to the multiplication of the same or 
 the like actions : the first rebellion of the inferior faculties 
 against the will and understanding, and every victory the 
 flesh gets over the spirit, makes the inferior insolent, strong, 
 tumultuous, domineering, and triumphant, upon the propor- 
 tionable ruins of the spirit, blinding our reason and binding 
 our will ; and all these violations of our powers are increased 
 by the perpetual ill customs, and false principles, and ridicu- 
 lous guises of the world ; which makes the later ages to be 
 worse than the former, 3 unless some other accident do inter- 
 vene, to stop the ruin and declension of virtue ; such as are 
 God's judgments, the sending of prophets, new imposition of 
 laws, messages from heaven, diviner institutions, such as in 
 particular was the great discipline of Christianity. And even 
 in this sense here is origination enough for sin, and impairing 
 of the reasonable faculties of human souls, without charging 
 our faults upon Adam. 
 
 5. But besides this, God, who hath propounded to man 
 glorious conditions, and designed him to an excellent state 
 
 * ftvs ifatjtuvf jteu tyyvs Star yiyti'tritt, (it\rifrtu; n atras Ifvffii, xiii TGI agirrar 
 i>icrf //, u; Xfvfout yinf ropi^tftcu.Porphyr. lib. iv. de non Esu, Animalium.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. 69 
 
 of immortality, hath required of him such a duty as shall 
 put man to labour, and present to God a service of a free 
 and difficult obedience. For therefore God hath given us 
 laws, which come cross and are restraints to our natural 
 inclinations, that we may part with something in the service 
 of God which we value. For although this is nothing in 
 respect of God, yet to man it is the greatest he can do. 
 What thanks were it to man to obey God in such things, 
 which he would do, though he were not commanded ? But 
 to leave all our own desires, and to take up objects of God's 
 propounding, contrary to our own, and desires against our 
 nature, this is that which God designed as a sacrifice of our- 
 selves to him. And, therefore, God hath made many of his 
 laws to be prohibitions in the matter of natural pleasure, and 
 restraints of our sensitive appetite. Now, this being become 
 the matter of Divine laws, that we should, in many parts and 
 degrees, abstain from what pleases our senses, by this super- 
 vening accident it happens that we are very hardly weaned 
 from sin, but most easily tempted to a vice. And then we 
 think we have reason to lay the fault upon original sin, and 
 natural aversation from goodness, when this inclination to 
 vice is but accidental, and occasional upon the matter and 
 sanction of the laws. Our nature is not contrary to virtue, 
 for the laws of nature and right reason do not only oblige us, 
 but incline us to it ; b but the instances of some virtues are 
 made to come cross to our nature, that is, to our natural 
 appetites; by reason of which it comes to pass, that (as St. 
 Paul says) "we are by nature the children of wrath ;" c 
 meaning, that, by our natural inclinations, we are disposed 
 to contradict those laws which lay fetters upon them, we are 
 apt to satisfy the lusts of the flesh : for in these he there 
 instances. 
 
 6. But in things intellectual and spiritual, where neither 
 the one nor the other satisfy the sensual part, we are indif- 
 ferent to virtue or to vice; and, when we do amiss, it is 
 wholly, and in all degrees, inexcusably our own fault. In the 
 old law, when it was a duty to swear by the God of Israel in 
 solemn causes, men were apt enough to swear by him only ; 
 
 b Tttavro! piv y> i roT; ^.ayiKtis yiylfi iiofiovfilvos g*f> f*ri traaafiaivtit vif etUTui 
 [6iot/] S/of/s^svTaf vofiovs, Hieroc. 
 c Ephes. ii. 3.
 
 70 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. 
 
 and that sometimes the Israelites did swear by the queen of 
 Heaven, it was by the ill example and desires to comply with 
 the neighbour nations, whose daughters they sometimes mar- 
 ried, or whose arms they feared, or whose friendship they 
 desired, or with whom they did negotiate. It is indifferent 
 to us to love our fathers and to love strangers, according as 
 we are determined by custom or education. Nay, for so 
 much of it as is natural and original, vve are more inclined to 
 
 o * 
 
 love them than to disrepute them ; and if we disobey them, 
 it is when any injunction of theirs comes cross to our natural 
 desires and purposes. But if, from our infancy, we be told 
 concerning a stranger that he is our father, we frame our 
 affections to nature, and our nature to custom and education, 
 and are as apt to love him who is not, and yet is said to be, 
 as him who is said not to be, and yet indeed is, our natural 
 father. 
 
 7. And in sensual things, if God had commanded poly- 
 gamy or promiscuous concubinate, or unlimited eatings and 
 drinkings, it is not to be supposed but that we should have 
 been ready enough to have obeyed God in all such imposi- 
 tions : and the sons of Israel never murmured, when God 
 bade them borrow jewels and ear-rings, and spoil the Egypt- 
 ians. But because God restrained these desires, our duties 
 are the harder, because they are fetters to our liberty, and 
 contradictions to those natural inclinations, which also are 
 made more active by evil custom and unhandsome educations. 
 From which premises we shall observe, in order to practice, 
 that sin creeps upon us in our education so tacitly and 
 undiscernibly, d that we mistake the cause of it, and yet so 
 prevalently and effectually, that we judge it to be our very 
 nature, and charge it upon Adam, to lessen the imputation 
 upon us, or to increase the license or the confidence, when 
 every one of us is the Adam, the " man of sin," and the 
 parent of our own impurities. For it is notorious, that our 
 own iniquities do so discompose our naturals, and evil customs 
 and examples do so encourage impiety, and the law of God 
 
 d Non enim nos tarditatis natura damnavit, sed ultra nobis quod oporte- 
 bat indulsimus : ita non tarn ingenio nos illi superarunt quam proposito. 
 Qui til. 
 
 Sitaxgarni Qtiffi*, \uittifMitt. 7/ ray TI ^v^) ?^T '<rat/S/)>, TI/TI yj 
 titan 1o.iu.eia.. Arist. ii. Top. C. 3. 
 a.K.^UTti tifn, iff rifas aiSoa-ru 1a.'iy.ui. Stob. Serm. 250.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. 71 
 
 enjoins such virtues, which do violence to nature, that our 
 proclivity to sin is occasioned by the accident, and is caused 
 by ourselves : whatever mischief Adam did to us, we do more 
 to ourselves. 6 We are taught to be revengeful in our cradles, 
 and are taught to strike our neighbour, as a means to still our 
 frowardness, and to satisfy our wranglings. Our nurses teach 
 us to know the greatness of our birth, or the riches of our 
 inheritance; or they learn us to be proud, or to be impatient, 
 before they learn us to know God, or to say our prayers. 
 And then, because the use of reason comes at no definite 
 time, but insensibly and divisibly, we are permitted such acts 
 with impunity too long; deferring to repute them to be sins, 
 till the habit is grown strong, natural, and masculine. And 
 because from the infancy it began in inclinations, and tender 
 overtures, and slighter actions, Adam is laid in the fault, and 
 original sin did all ; and this clearly we therefore confess/ 
 that our faults may seem the less, and the misery be pre- 
 tended natural, that it may be thought to be irremediable, 
 and therefore we not engaged to endeavour a cure ; so that 
 the confession of our original sin is no imitation of Christ's 
 humility in suffering circumcision, but too often an act of 
 pride, carelessness, ignorance, and security. 
 
 8. At the circumcision, his parents imposed the holy 
 name told to the Virgin by the angel ; " his name was called 
 Jesus," a name above every name. For, in old times, God 
 was known by names of power, of nature, of majesty. But 
 his name of mercy was reserved till now, when God did 
 purpose to pour out the whole treasure of his mercy by the 
 mediation and ministry of his holy Son. And because God 
 
 Denique teipsum 
 
 Concute, num qua tibi vitiorum inseverit olim 
 Natura, aut etiam consuetude mala : namque 
 Neglectis urenda filix innascitur agris. Horat. 1. s. iii. 37. 
 Ante palatum eorum quam os instituimus. Gaudemus, si quid licentius 
 dixerint. Verba ne Alexandrinis quidem permittenda deliciis risu et osculo 
 excipimus. Fit ex his consuetude, deinde natura. Discunt ha?c miseri, 
 antequam sciunt vitia esse Quintil. lib. i. c. 2. 
 
 Tanta est corruptela mala consuetudinis, ut ab ea tanquam igniculi ex- 
 tinguantur a natura dati, exorianturque et confirmentur contraria vitia. 
 Cicero, 3. T. Q. 2. 
 
 ' Eiia^teffi yxg ol vrjt.iiff'roi <ray a.v9-auirav , ov% OUTUS ItraivsTv */ n//,Zv Taut tx TUV 
 
 rai ftnSii ofioiot nl; yivsu/rtv S>n;. Isocrales Ep. ad Timoth. p. 746. ed. Lange.
 
 72 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. 
 
 gave to the holy Babe the name in which the treasures of 
 mercy were deposited, and exalted " this name above all 
 names," we are taught that the purpose of his counsel was, 
 to exalt and magnify his mercy above all his other works ; 
 he being delighted with this excellent demonstration of it, 
 in the mission, and manifestation, and crucifixion, of his Son ; 
 he hath changed the ineffable name into a name utterable by 
 man, and desirable by all the world ; the majesty is all arrayed 
 in robes of mercy, the tetragrammaton, g or adorable mystery 
 of the patriarchs, is made fit for pronunciation and expression, 
 when it becometh the name of the Lord's Christ. And if 
 Jehovah be full of majesty and terror, the name Jesus is full 
 of sweetness and mercy. It is God clothed with circumstances 
 of facility and opportunities of approximation. The great 
 and highest name of God could not be pronounced truly, till 
 it came to be finished with a guttural, that made up the name 
 given by this angel to the holy Child ; nor God received or 
 entertained by men, till he was made human and sensible by 
 the adoption of a sensitive nature, like vowels pronunciable 
 by the intertexture of a consonant. Thus was his person made 
 tangible, and his name utterable, and his mercy brought home 
 to our necessities, and the mystery made explicate, at the 
 circumcision of this holy Babe. 
 
 9. But now God's mercy was at full sea, now was the 
 time when God made no reserves to the effusion of his mercy. 
 For to the patriarchs, and persons of eminent sanctity and em- 
 ployment in the elder ages of the world, God, according to 
 the degrees of his manifestation or present purpose, would 
 give them one letter of this ineffable name. For the reward 
 that Abraham had in the change of his name was, that he 
 had the honour done him to have one of the letters of 
 Jehovah put into it ; and so had Joshua, when he was a type 
 of Christ, and the prince of the Israelitish armies : and when 
 God took away h one of these letters, it was a curse. But 
 
 * Nomen enim Jesu Hebraice prolatum nihil aliud est nisi Tir^a^a^/taTa* 
 vocatum per Schin. Videat, cui animus est, multa de mysterio hujus nominis 
 apud Galatinum. Ad eundem sensum fuit vaticinium Sibyllas : 
 
 Aj Ton y&g fii'yai.oia Qiau TO~S av&guvrtiffit 
 "H|s; ffagxnifogas, SuriroTf of&eiotsf&tns yrft 
 litfftt^o. <puvr,iiru $if>uv, ro S" uifuroy li ivrif, 
 
 h Isa. xii. 11. in casu Idumeae; Duma vocatur, dempto H.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE CIRCUMCISION. 73 
 
 now he communicated all the whole name to this holy Child, 
 and put a letter more to it, to signify that he was the glory of 
 God, ''the express image of his Father's person," God eter- 
 nal: and then manifested to the world in his humanity, that 
 all the intelligent world, who expected beatitude, and had 
 treasured all their hopes in the ineffable name of God, might 
 find them all, with ample returns, in this name of Jesus, 
 which God "hath exalted above every name," even above 
 that by which God, in the Old Testament, did represent the 
 greatest awfulness of his majesty. This miraculous name is 
 above all the powers of magical enchantments, the nightly rites 
 of sorcerers, the secrets of Memphis, the drugs ofThessaly, the 
 silent and mysterious murmurs of the wise Chaldees, and the 
 spells of Zoroastres. This is the name at which the devils 
 did tremble, and pay their enforced and involuntary adora- 
 tions, by confessing the Divinity, and quitting their possessions 
 and usurped habitations. If our prayers be made in this name, 
 God opens the windows of heaven, and rains down benedic- 
 tion : at the mention of this name, the blessed apostles, and 
 Hermione, the daughter of St. Philip, and Philotheus, the son 
 of Theophila, and St. Hilarion, and St. Paul the Eremite, and 
 innumerable other lights, who followed hard after the Sun of 
 Righteousness, wrought great and prodigious miracles: "Signs, 
 and wonders, and healings, were done by the name of the holy 
 Child Jesus." This is the name which we should engrave in 
 our hearts, and write upon our foreheads, and pronounce with 
 our most harmonious accents, and rest our faith upon, and 
 place our hopes in, and love, with the overflowings of charity, 
 and joy, and adoration. And as the revelation of this name 
 satisfied the hopes of all the world, so it must determine our 
 worshippings, and the addresses of our exterior and interior 
 religion ; it being that name whereby God and God's 
 mercies are made presential to us, and proportionate objects 
 of our religion and affections. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 Most holy and ever-blessed Jesu, who art infinite in essence, 
 glorious in mercy, mysterious in thy communications, 
 affable and presential in the descents of thy humanity;
 
 74 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 I adore thy glorious name, whereby thou hast shut up the 
 abysses, and opened the gates of heaven, restraining the 
 power of hell, and discovering and communicating the 
 treasures of thy Father's mercies. O Jesu, be thou a Jesus 
 unto me, and save me from the precipices and ruins of sin, 
 from the expresses of thy Father's wrath, from the miseries 
 and insufferable torments of accursed spirits, by the power 
 of thy majesty, by the sweetnesses of thy mercy, and sacred 
 influences and miraculous glories of thy name. I adore 
 and worship thee in thy excellent obedience and humility, 
 who hast submitted thy innocent and spotless flesh to the 
 bloody covenant of circumcision. Teach me to practise so 
 blessed arid holy a precedent, that I may be humble, and 
 obedient to thy sacred laws, severe and regular in my reli- 
 gion, mortified in my body and spirit, of circumcised heart 
 and tongue ; that what thou didst represent in symbol and 
 mystery, I may really express in the exhibition of an exem- 
 plar, pious, and mortified life, cutting off all excrescences 
 of my spirit, and whatsoever may minister to the flesh, or 
 any of its ungodly desires ; that now thy holy name is 
 called upon me, I may do no dishonour to the name, nor 
 scandal to the institution, but may do thee honour and 
 worship, and adorations of a pure religion, O most holy 
 and ever-blessed Jesu. Amen. 
 
 DISCOURSE II. 
 
 Of the Virtue of Obedience. 
 
 I. THERE are certain excellences, either of habit, or con- 
 sideration, which spiritual persons use to call general ways ; 
 being a dispersed influence into all the parts of good life, 
 either directing the single actions to the right end, or ma- 
 naging them with right instruments, and adding special 
 excellences and formalities to them, or morally inviting to 
 the repetition of them. But they are like the general medi- 
 caments in physic, or the prime instruments in mathematical 
 disciplines : such as are the consideration of the Divine pre- 
 sence, the example of Jesus, right intention : and such also
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 75 
 
 is the virtue of obedience, which perfectly unites our actions 
 to God, and conforms us to the Divine will, which is the 
 original of goodness ; and sanctifies and makes a man an 
 holocaust to God, which contains in it eminently all other 
 graces, but especially those graces whose essence consists in 
 a conformity of a part or the whole, (such are faith, humility, 
 patience, and charity ;) which gives quietness and tranquillity 
 to the spirit, and is an antepast of Paradise, (where their 
 jubilee is the perpetual joys of obedience, and their doing is 
 the enjoying the Divine pleasure ;) which adds an excellence 
 and lustre to pious actions, and hallows them which are in- 
 different, and lifts up some actions from their unhallowed 
 nature to circumstances of good and of acceptation. If a 
 man says his prayers, or communicates out of custom, or 
 without intuition of the precept and Divine commandment, 
 the act is like a ship returning from her voyage without her 
 venture and her burden, as unprofitable as without stowage. 
 But. if God commands us either te eat or to abstain, to sleep 
 or to be waking, to work or to keep a Sabbath ; these ac- 
 tions, which are naturally neither good nor evil, are sanctified 
 by the obedience, and ranked amongst actions of the greatest 
 excellence. And this also was it which made Abraham's offer 
 to kill his son, and the Israelites' spoiling the Egyptians, to 
 become acts laudable, and not unjust: they were acts of 
 obedience, and therefore had the same formality and essence 
 with actions of the most spiritual devotions. God's command 
 is all our rule for practice ; and our obedience, united to the 
 obedience of Jesus, is all our title to acceptance. 
 
 2. But by obedience, I do not here mean the exterior 
 execution of the work ; for so, obedience is no grace, distinct 
 from the acting any or all the commandments : but besides 
 the doing of the thing, (for that also must be presupposed,) 
 it is a sacrifice of our proper will to God, a choosing the duty, 
 because God commands it. For beasts also carry burdens, 
 and do our commands by compulsion ; and the fear of slaves, 
 and the rigrour of taskmasters, made the number of bricks to 
 
 O ' 
 
 be completed, when Israel groaned, and cried to God for help. 
 But sons, that labour under the sweet paternal regiment of 
 their fathers, and the influence of love, they love the precept, 
 and do the imposition, with the same purposes and compliant 
 affections with which the fathers made it. When Christ
 
 76 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 commanded us to renounce the world, there were some that 
 did think it was a hard saying, and do so still ; and the young 
 rich man forsook him upon it : but Ananias and Sapphira, 
 upon whom some violences were done by custom, or the 
 excellent sermons of the apostles, sold their possessions too ; 
 but it was so against their will, that they retained part of it. 
 But St. Paul did not only forsake all his secular fortunes, but 
 " counted all to be dross, that he might gain Christ;" he 
 gave his will, made an offertory of that, as well as of his 
 goods, choosing the act which was enjoined. This was the 
 obedience the holy Jesus paid to his heavenly Father, so 
 voluntary, that it was " meat to him to do his Father's 
 will."* 
 
 3. And this was intended always by God, " My son, give 
 me thy heart ; " and particularly by the holy Jesus : for, in 
 the saddest instance of all his precepts, even that of suffering 
 persecution, we are commanded to " rejoice, and to be ex- 
 ceeding glad ." And so did those holy martyrs, in the primi- 
 tive ages, who, upon just grounds, when God's glory, or the 
 edification of the Church, had interest in it, b they offered 
 themselves to tyrants, and dared the violence of the most 
 cruel and bowelless hangmen. And this is the best oblation 
 we can present to God. " To offer gold, c is a present fit to 
 be made by young beginners in religion, not by men in 
 Christianity ; yea, Crates the Theban threw his gold away, 
 and so did Antisthenes : but to offer our will to God, to give 
 ourselves, is the act of an apostle, the proper act of Chris- 
 tians." And, therefore, when the apostles made challenge of 
 a reward for leaving all their possessions, Christ makes no 
 reply to the instance, nor says, " You who have left all ; " but, 
 " You who have followed me in the regeneration, shall sit 
 upon twelve thrones, and judge the twelve tribes of Israel : " 
 meaning, that the quitting the goods was nothing ; but the 
 obedience to Christ, that they followed Jesus in the regene- 
 ration, going themselves in pursuit of him, and giving them- 
 selves to him, that was it which entitled them to a throne. 
 
 4. And this, therefore, God enjoins, that our offerings to 
 him may be entire and complete ; that we pay him a holo- 
 
 * John, iv. 34. b S. Hieron. Epist. ad Licin. Hispan. 
 
 Idem in xix. Matth. 28.
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 77 
 
 caust ; that we do his work without murmuring ; and that 
 his burden may become easy, when it is borne up by the 
 wings of love and alacrity of spirit. For, in effect, this 
 obedience of the will is, in true speaking and strict theology, 
 nothing else but that charity which gives excellence to alms, 
 and energy to faith, and acceptance to all graces. But I 
 shall reduce this to particular and more minute considera- 
 tions. 
 
 5. First : We shall best know, that our will is in the 
 obedience, by our prompt undertaking, 6 by our cheerful 
 managing, by our swift execution ; for all degrees of delay 
 are degrees of immorigerousness and unwillingness. And 
 since time is extrinsical to the act, and alike to every part of 
 it, nothing determines an action but the opportunity without, 
 and the desires and willingness within. And, therefore, he 
 who deliberates beyond his first opportunity, and exterior 
 determination and appointment of the act, brings fire and 
 wood, but wants a lamb for the sacrifice ; and unless he offer 
 up his Isaac, his beloved will, he hath no ministry prepared 
 for God's acceptance. He that does not repent to-day, puts 
 it to the question, whether he will repent at all or no. He 
 that defers restitution, when all the circumstances are fitted, 
 is not yet resolved upon the duty. And when he does it, if 
 he does it against his will, he does but do honorary penance 
 with a paper upon his hat, and a taper in his hand ; it may 
 satisfy the law, but not satisfy his conscience ; it neither 
 pleases himself, and less pleases God. A sacrifice without 
 a heart was a sad and ominous presage in the superstition of 
 the Roman augurs, and so it is in the service of God ; for 
 what the exhibition of the work is to man, that the presenta- 
 tion of the will is to God. It is but a cold charity to a naked 
 beggar to say, " God help thee," and do nothing; give him 
 clothes, and he feels your charity. But God, who is the 
 searcher of the heart, his apprehension of actions relative 
 to him is of the inward motions and addresses of the will ; 
 and, without this, our exterior services are like the paying 
 
 d Fidelis obediens nescit moras, fugit crastinam, ignorat tarditatem, 
 praecipit praecipientem, parat oculos visui, aures auditui, linguam voei, 
 manus operi, itineri pedes : totum se colligit, ut imperantis colligat voluu- 
 tatem. S. Bernard. S^rm. de Obedient. 
 
 Et barbaris cunctatio servilis, statim eisequi regium. .Tacit, lib. vi. 
 An ml. 32.
 
 78 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 of a piece of money, in which we have defaced the image : 
 it is not current. 
 
 6. Secondly : But besides the willingness to do the acts 
 of express command, the readiness to do the intimations and 
 tacit significations of God's pleasure is the best testimony in 
 the world that our will is in the obedience. Thus did the 
 holy Jesus undertake a nature of infirmity, and suffer a death 
 of shame and sorrow, and became obedient from the circum- 
 cision even unto the death of the cross; not staying for a 
 command, but because it was his Father's pleasure mankind 
 should be redeemed. For, before the susccption of it, he 
 was not a person subjicible to a command : it was enough, 
 that he understood the inclinations and designs of his Fa- 
 ther's mercies. And therefore God hath furnished us with 
 instances of uncoinmanded piety to be a touchstone of our 
 obedience. He that does but his endeavour about the express 
 commands, hath a bridle in his mouth, and is restrained by 
 violence ; but a willing spirit is like a greedy eye, devours all 
 it sees, and hopes to make some proportionable returns and 
 compensations of duty for his infirmity, by taking in the inti- 
 mations of God's pleasure. When God commands chastity, 
 he that undertakes a holy celibate, hath great obedience to 
 the command of chastity. God bids us give alms of our 
 increase ; he obeys this with great facility, that " sells all his 
 goods, and gives them to the poor." And, provided our 
 hastiness to snatch at too much does not make us let go our 
 duty, like the indiscreet loads of too forward persons, too big, 
 or too inconvenient and uncombined, there is not in the world 
 a greater probation of our prompt obedience than when we 
 look further than the precise duty, swallowing that and more 
 with our ready and hopeful purposes ; nothing being so able 
 to do miracles as love, and yet nothing being so certainly 
 accepted as love, though it could do nothing in productions 
 and exterior ministries. 
 
 7. Thirdly : But God requires that our obedience should 
 have another excellence to make it a becoming present to the 
 Divine acceptance ; our understanding must be sacrificed too, 
 and become an ingredient of our obedience. We must also 
 believe, that whatsoever God commands is most fitting to be 
 commanded, is most excellent in itself, and the best for us to 
 do. The first gives our affections and desires to God and
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 79 
 
 this also gives our reason, and is a perfection of obedience 
 not communicable to the duties we owe to man. For God 
 only is Lord of this faculty, and, being the fountain of all 
 wisdom, therefore commands our understanding, because he 
 alone can satisfy it. We are bound to obey human laws, but 
 not bound to think the laws we live under are the most 
 prudent constitutions in the world. But God's command- 
 ments are not only " a lantern to our feet, and a light unto 
 our paths," but a rule to our reason, and satisfaction to our 
 understandings ; as being the instruments of our address to 
 God, and conveyances of his grace, and manuductions to 
 eternity. And therefore St. John Climacus defines obedience 
 to be "An unexamined and unquestioned motion, a voluntary 
 death and sepulture of the will, a life without curiosity, a 
 laying aside our own discretion in the midst of the riches of 
 the most excellent understandings." 
 
 8. And certainly there is not in the world a greater 
 strength against temptations, than is deposited in an obe- 
 dient understanding; because that only can regularly pro- 
 duce the same affections, it admits of fewer degrees, and 
 an unfrequent alteration. But the actions proceeding from 
 the appetite, as it is determined by any other principle than 
 a satisfied understanding, have their heightenings and their 
 declensions, and their changes and mutations, according to a 
 thousand accidents. Reason is more lasting than desire, and 
 with fewer means to be tempted ; but affections and motions 
 of appetite, as they are procured by any thing, so may they 
 expire by as great variety of causes. And, therefore, to serve 
 God by way of understanding, is surer, and in itself [unless it 
 be by the accidental increase of degrees] greater, than to 
 serve him upon the motion and principle of passions and 
 desires ; though this be fuller of comfort and pleasure than 
 the other. When Lot lived amongst the impure Sodomites, 
 where his righteous soul was in a continual agony, he had 
 few exterior incentives to a pious life, nothing to enkindle 
 the sensible flame of burning desires toward piety ; but in the 
 midst of all the discouragements of the world, nothing was 
 left him but the way and precedency of a truly-informed 
 reason and conscience. Just so is the way of those wise 
 souls who live in the midst of " a crooked and perverse ge- 
 neration : " where piety is out of countenance, where austerity
 
 80 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 is ridiculous, religion under persecution, no examples to 
 lead us on ; there the understanding is left to be the guide, 
 and it does the work the surest; for this makes the duty of 
 many to be certain, regular, and chosen, constant, integral, 
 and perpetual : but this way is like the life of an unmarried 
 or a retired person, less of grief in it, and less of joy. But 
 the way of serving God with the affections, and with the 
 pleasures and entertainments of desires, is the way of the 
 more passionate and imperfect, not in a man's power to choose 
 or to procure ; but comes by a thousand chances, meeting 
 with a soft nature, credulous or weak, easy or ignorant, 
 softened with fears, or invited by forward desires. 
 
 9. Those that did live amidst the fervours of the primitive 
 charity, and were warmed by their fires, grew inflamed by 
 contact and vicinity to such burning and shining lights. 
 And they therefore grew to high degrees of piety, because 
 then every man made judgment of his own actions by the 
 proportions which he saw before him, and believed all de- 
 scents from those greater examples to be so many degrees 
 from the rule. And he that lives in a college of devout 
 persons, will compare his own actions with the devotion and 
 customs of that society, and not with the remissness of per- 
 sons he hears of in story, but what he sees and lives with. 
 But if we live in an age of indevotion, we think ourselves 
 well assoiled if we be warmer than their ice ; every thing 
 which is above our example being eminent and conspicuous, 
 though it be but like the light of a glow-worm, or the sparkling 
 of a diamond, yet, if it be in the midst of darkness, it is a 
 goodly beauty. This I call the way of serving God by desires 
 and affections : and this is altered by example, by public 
 manners, by external works, by the assignment of offices, by 
 designation of conventions for prayer, by periods and revolu- 
 tions of times of duty, by hours and solemnities; so that a 
 man shall owe his piety to these chances, which, although 
 they are graces of God, and instruments of devotion, yet they 
 are not always in our power ; and therefore they are but 
 accidental ministries of a good life, and the least constant or 
 durable. But when the principle of our piety is a conformity 
 of our understanding to God's laws ; when we are instructed 
 what to do, and therefore do it, because we are satisfied it is 
 most excellent to obey God ; this M r ill support our piety
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 81 
 
 against objections, lead it on in despite of disadvantages : 
 this chooses God with reason, and is not determined from 
 without. And as it is in some degree necessary for all times, 
 so it is the greatest security against the change of laws and 
 princes, and religions, and ages : when all the incentives of 
 affection and exterior determinations of our piety shall cease, 
 and perhaps all external offices, and " the daily sacrifice," 
 and piety itself, shall fail from the face of the land ; then the 
 obedience, founded in the understanding, is the only lasting 
 strength is left us to make retreat to, and to secure our 
 conditions. Thus, from the composition of the will and 
 affections with our exterior acts of obedience to God, our 
 obedience is made willing, swift, and cheerful ; but from the 
 composition of the understanding, our obedience becomes 
 strong, sincere, and persevering ; and this is that which 
 St. Paul calls " our reasonable service." 
 
 10. Fourthly : To which if we add, that our obedience be 
 universal, we have all the qualifications which make the 
 duty to be pious and prudent. The meaning is, v that we 
 obey God in all his sanctions, though the matter be in com- 
 mon account small and inconsiderable, and give no indulgence 
 to ourselves to recede from the rule, in any matter what- 
 soever. For the veriest minute of obedience is worth our 
 attention, as being by God esteemed the trial of our obe- 
 dience in a greater affair. " He that is unjust in a little, will 
 be unjust in a greater," 6 said our blessed Saviour. And since 
 to God all matter is alike, and no more accrues to him in an 
 hecatomb than in a piece of gum, in an ascetic severity than 
 in a secular life, God regards not the matter of a precept, 
 but the obedience, which in all instances is the same ; and he 
 that will prevaricate, when the matter is trifling, and, by 
 consequence, the temptations to it weak and impotent, and 
 soon confuted, will think he may better be excused, when 
 the temptations are violent and importunate : as it commonly 
 happens in affairs of greater importance. He that will lie to 
 save sixpence, will not stick at it, when a thousand pound is 
 the purchase ; and, possibly, there is more contempt and 
 despite done to the divine authority, when we disobey it in 
 such particulars wherein the obedience is most easy and the 
 
 Luke, xvi. 10. 
 VOL. II. L
 
 82 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 temptations less troublesome. I do not say there is more 
 injustice or more malice in a small disobedience than in a 
 greater; but there is either more contempt, or more negli- 
 gence and dissolution of discipline, than in the other. 
 
 11. And it is no small temptation of the devil, soliciting 
 of us not to be curious of scruples and grains, nor to disturb 
 our peace for lighter disobediences ; persuading us that some- 
 thing must be indulged to public manners, something to the 
 civilities of society, something to nature, and to the ap- 
 proaches of our passions, and the motions of our first desires ; 
 but that " we be not over-righteous." And true it is, that 
 sometimes such surreptions and smaller indecencies are there- 
 fore pardoned, and lessened almost to a nullity, because they 
 dwell in the confines of things lawful and honest, and are not 
 so notorious as to be separated from permissions by any 
 public, certain, and universal cognizance ; and therefore may 
 pass upon a good man, sometimes without observation. But 
 it is a temptation, when we think of neglecting them by a 
 predetermined incuriousness, upon pretence they are small. 
 But this must be reduced to more regular conclusions. 
 
 12. First : Although smaller disobediences, expressed in 
 slight misbecoming actions, when they come by surprise and 
 sudden invasion, are, through the mercies of God, dashed in 
 the very approach, their bills of accusation are thrown out, 
 and they are not esteemed as competent instruments of sepa- 
 ration from God's love ; yet when a smaller sin comes by 
 design, and is acted with knowledge and deliberation, (for 
 then it is properly an act of disobedience,) " malitia supplet 
 defectum setatis," the malice of the agent heightens the small- 
 ness of the act, and makes up the iniquity. To drink libe- 
 rally once, and something more freely than the strict rules of 
 Christian sobriety and temperance permit, is pardoned the 
 easier when, without deliberation and by surprise, the person 
 was abused, who intended not to transgress a minute, but by 
 little and little was mistaken in his proportions: but if a man 
 by design shall estimate his draughts and his good fellowship, 
 and shall resolve upon a little intemperance, thinking, because 
 it is not very much, it is therefore none at all, that man hath 
 mistaken himself into a crime ; and although a little wound 
 upon the finger is very curable, yet the smallest prick upon 
 tire heart is mortal : so is a design and purpose of the
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 83 
 
 smallest disobedience in its formality, as malicious and de- 
 structive, as in its matter it was pardonable and excusable. 
 
 13. Secondly : Although every lesser disobedience, when 
 it comes singly, destroys not the love of God ; (for, although 
 it may lessen the habit, yet it takes not away its natural 
 being, nor interrupts its acceptation, lest all the world should 
 in all instants of time be in a damnable condition ;) yet when 
 these smaller obliquities are repeated, and no repentance 
 intervenes, this repetition combines and unites the lesser, till 
 they be concentred, and by their accumulation make a crime : f 
 and therefore a careless reiterating, and an incurious walking 
 in misbecoming actions, is deadly and damnable in the re- 
 turn, though it was not so much at the setting forth. Every 
 idle word is to be accounted for, but we hope in much 
 mercy ; and yet he that gives himself over to immoderate 
 talking, s will swell his account to a vast and mountainous 
 proportion, and call all the lesser escapes into a stricter judg- 
 ment. He that extends his recreation an hour beyond the 
 limits of Christian prudence, and the analogy of its severity 
 and employment, is accountable to God for that improvi- 
 dence and waste of time ; but he that shall mispend a day, 
 and because that sin is not scandalous like adultery, or cla- 
 morous like oppression, or unusual like bestiality, or crying 
 for revenge like detaining the portion of orphans, shall there- 
 fore mispend another day, without revocation of the first by 
 an act of repentance and redemption of it, and then shall 
 throw away a week, still adding to the former account upon 
 the first stock, will at last be answerable for a habit of idle- 
 ness, and will have contracted a vain and impertinent spirit. 
 For since things, which in their own kind are lawful, become 
 sinful by the degree ; if the degree be heightened by inten- 
 tion, or become great, like a heap of sand by a coacervation 
 of the innumerable atoms of dust, the actions are as damnable 
 as any of the natural daughters and productions of hell, 
 
 f QUJE humanse fragilitati, quamvis parva, tamen crebra subrepunt, si 
 collecta contra nos fuerint, ita nos gravabunt et oppriment, sicut unum ali- 
 quod grande peccatum. S. Aug. lib. 1. horn. 50. Idem lib. de Poenit. Pec- 
 cata venialia si multiplicentur, decorem nostrum ita exterminant, ut a coclestis 
 sponsi amplexibus nos separent. 
 
 f rXaWjj pam'to. gnpia. Tgoo-Tgifiirai. SEsch. Prom. 329. 
 'A%u.Xivuy tfrafJMTcav rA; $u<r i rii%iK. Euiip. Bacch. 385.
 
 84 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 when they are entertained without scruple, and renewed 
 without repentance, and continued without dereliction. 
 
 14. Thirdly : Although some inadvertencies of our life 
 and lesser disobediences accidentally become less hurtful, 
 and because they are entailed upon the infirmities of a good 
 man, and the less wary customs and circumstances of society, 
 are also consistent with the state of grace ; yet all affection 11 
 to the smallest sins becomes deadly and damnable. " He 
 that loves his danger, shall perish in it," saith the wise man ; 
 and every friendly entertainment of an indecency invites in a 
 greater crime ; for no man can love a small sin, but there are 
 in the greater crimes of its kind more desirable flatteries, and 
 more satisfactions of sensuality, than in those suckers and 
 sprigs of sin. At first, a little disobedience is proportionable 
 to a man's temper, and his conscience is not fitted to the 
 bulk of a rude crime : but when a man hath accepted the 
 first insinuation of delight and swallowed it, that little sin is 
 past, and needs no more to dispute for entrance ; then the 
 next design puts in, and stands in the same probability to 
 succeed the first, and greater than the first had to make the 
 entry. However, to love any thing that God hates, is direct 
 enmity with him ; and whatsoever the instance be, it is abso- 
 lutely inconsistent with charity, and therefore incompetent 
 with the state of grace. So that if the sin be small, it is not 
 a small thing that thou hast given thy love to it ; every such 
 person perishes like a fool, cheaply and ingloriously. 
 
 15. Fourthly : But it also concerns the niceness and pru- 
 dence of obedience to God, to stand at further distance from 
 a vice, than we usually attend to. For many times virtue 
 and vice diifer but one degree ; ' and the neighbourhood is so 
 dangerous, that he who desires to secure his obedience and 
 duty to God, will remove further from the danger. For 
 there is a rule of justice, to which if one degree more of 
 severity be added, it degenerates into cruelty; and a little 
 more mercy is remissness and want of discipline, introduces 
 licentiousness, and becomes unmercifulness as to the public, 
 and unjust as to the particular. Now this consideration is 
 
 b Nullum peccatum est adeo ?eniale, quod non fiat criminale, dura placet. 
 Dist. 25. sect. Nunc autem, ex S. August. 
 
 i Cum fas atque nefas exiguo fine libidinum 
 Disceriiuut avidi. Jforaf. lib. i. Od. xviii.
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 85 
 
 heightened, if we observe, that virtue and vice consist not in 
 an indivisible point ; but there is a latitude for either, which 
 is not to be judged by any certain rules drawn from the 
 nature of the thing, but to be estimated in proportion to the 
 persons and other accidental circumstances. He that is bur- 
 dened with a great charge, for whom he is bound, under a 
 curse and the crime of infidelity, to provide, may go further 
 in the acquisition, and be more provident in the use of his 
 money, than those persons, for whom God hath made more 
 ample provisions, and hath charged them with fewer burdens 
 and engagements economical. And yet no man can say, 
 that just beyond such a degree of care stands covetousness, 
 and thus far on this side is carelessness ; and a man may be 
 in the confines of death, before he be aware. Now, the only 
 way to secure our obedience and duty in such cases, is to 
 remove further off, and not to dwell upon the confines of the 
 enemy's country. My meaning is, that it is not prudent nor 
 safe for a man to do whatsoever he lawfully may do. 
 
 16. For besides that we are often mistaken in our judg- 
 ments concerning the lawfulness or unlawfulness of actions, 
 he that will do all that he thinks he may lawfully do, if ever 
 he does change his station, and increase in giving himself 
 liberty, will quickly arrive at doing' things unlawful. It is 
 good to keep a reserve of our liberty, and to restrain ourselves 
 within bounds narrower than the largest sense of the com- 
 mandment, that when our affections wander and enlarge 
 themselves (as some time or other they will do), then they 
 may enlarge beyond the ordinary, and yet be within the 
 bounds of lawfulness. That of which men make a scruple 
 and a question at. first, after an habitual resolution of it, stirs 
 no more ; but then their question is of something beyond it. 
 When a man hath accustomed himself to pray seven times 
 a day, it will a little trouble his peace if he omits one or two 
 of those times ; but if it be resolved then, that he may please 
 God with praying devoutly, though but thrice every day, 
 after he hath digested the scruples of this first question, pos- 
 sibly some accidents may happen, that will put his con- 
 science and reason to dispute, whether three times be indis- 
 pensably necessary : and still, if he be far within the bounds 
 of lawfulness, 'tis well ; but if he be at the margin of it, his 
 next remove may be into dissolution and unlawfulness. He
 
 86 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 that resolves to gain all that he may lawfully this year, it is 
 odds but, next year, he will be tempted to gain something 
 unlawfully. He that, because a man may be innocently 
 angry, will never restrain his passion, in a little time will be 
 intemperate in his anger, and mistake both his object and 
 the degree. Thus facetiousness and urbanity, entertained 
 with an open hand, will turn into jestings that are uncomely. 
 
 17. If you will be secure, remove your tent, dwell further 
 off. God hath given us more liberty than we may safely 
 use ; and although God is so gracious as to comply much 
 with our infirmities, yet if we do so too, as God's goodness in 
 indulging liberty to us was to prevent our sinning, our com- 
 plying with ourselves will engage us in it: but if we im- 
 prison and confine our affections into a narrower compass, 
 then our extravagances may be imperfect, but will not easily 
 be criminal. The dissolution of a scrupulous and strict per- 
 son, is not into a vice, but into a less degree of virtue. He 
 that makes a conscience of loud laughter, will not easily be 
 drawn into the wantonnesses of balls and revellings, and the 
 longer and more impure carnivals. This is the way to secure 
 our obedience ; and no men are so curious of their health, as 
 they that are scrupulous of the air they breathe in . 
 
 But now, for our obedience to man, that hath distinct 
 considerations, and apart. 
 
 18. First : All obedience to man is for God's sake ; for 
 God, imprinting his authority upon the sons of men, k like 
 the sun reflecting upon a cloud, produces a parhelius, or a 
 representation of his own glory, though in great distances 
 and imperfection : it is the Divine authority, though charac- 
 tered upon a piece of clay, and imprinted upon a weak and 
 imperfect man. And, therefore, obedience to our superiors 
 must be universal, in respect of persons, " to all superiors." 
 This precept is expressly apostolical : " Be subject to eveiy 
 constitution and authority of man, for the Lord's sake." 1 It 
 is for God's sake, and, therefore, to every one, " Whether it 
 be to the king, as supreme, or to his ministers in subordina- 
 tion." That is for civil government. For ecclesiastical, this : 
 
 ^"Exayroi rut J| iSnai/; t&io* n y'ltas TO /3avX/ov u*aXa/3aVrf, Slow* avroTi 
 9T<tri/>x{ iTifrnffocy xai ro'ivui eis fj.iv ro ivyin; xxi TO a<ri).iKoy axeus ivri'rgi'X't*, Ix 
 uos "rovrovs tfoiovv xuniytiti ro yiio{. Eustath. ad Iliad, i. 
 
 1 1 Pet. xiii. 2.
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 87 
 
 " Obey them, that have the rule over you, and submit your- 
 selves ; for they watch for your souls, as they that must give 
 account."" 1 All, upon whom any ray of the Divine authority 
 is imprinted, whether it be in greater or smaller characters, 
 are, in proportion to their authority, to be obeyed : to all 
 upon the same ground ; for " there is no power but of God. " n 
 So that no infirmity of person, no undervaluing circumstance, 
 no exterior accident, is an excuse for disobedience : and to 
 obey the Divine authority, passing through the dictates of a 
 wise, excellent, and prudent governor, but to neglect the 
 impositions of a looser head, is to worship Christ only upon 
 the mount Tabor, and in the glories of his transfiguration, 
 and to despise him upon mount Calvary, and in the clouds of 
 his inglorious and humble passion : " Not only to the good 
 and gentle," so St. Peter, " but to the harsh and rigid." 
 And it was by Divine Providence, that all those many and 
 stricter precepts of obedience to governors in the New Testa- 
 ment were verified by instances of tyrants, persecutors, idola- 
 ters, and heathen princes ; and for others, amongst whom 
 there was variety of disposition, there is no variety of impo- 
 sition, but all excuses are removed, and all kinds of governors 
 drawn into the sanction and sacredness of authority. 
 
 19. Secondly : Not only " to all governors," but " in all 
 things," we must obey. " Children, obey your parents in all 
 things :"P and " Servants, obey your masters in all things." 
 And this also is upon the same ground ; do it " as unto 
 Christ; as unto the Lord, and not unto men." q But then 
 this restrains the universality of obedience, that it may run 
 within its own channel; "as unto the Lord," therefore, 
 nothing against the Divine commandment. For if God 
 speaks to us by man, transmitting laws for conservation of 
 civil society, for ecclesiastical policy, for justice and personal 
 advantages, for the interests of virtue and religion, for dis- 
 countenancing of vice, we are to receive it with the same 
 veneration, as if God spake himself to us immediately. But 
 because, by his terror upon mount Sinai, he gave testimony, 
 
 m Heb. xiii. 7. 
 n Rom. xiii. 1. 
 
 Regum timendorum in proprios greges, 
 Reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis, 
 Cuncta supercilio moventis. /fur. lib. iii. Od. i. 
 Ubi supra. P Col. iii. 20, 22. ' 1 Ephes. vi. 5, 7.
 
 88 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 how great favour it is to speak to us by the ministration of 
 our brethren, it were a strange impudence, when we desire a 
 proportionable and gentle instrument of Divine commands, 
 we should, for this very proportion, despise the minister; 
 like the frogs in the apologue, insulting upon their wooden 
 king. But then, if any thing come contrary to a Divine 
 law, know " it is the voice of Jacob," of the supplanter, not 
 of the right heir ; and though we must obey man for God's 
 sake, yet we must never disobey God for man's sake. In all 
 things else we find no exception ; but according as the supe- 
 riors intend the obligation, and express it by the signature of 
 laws, customs, interpretations, permissions, and dispensations ; 
 that is, so far as the law is obligatory in general, and not 
 dispensed with in particular, so far obedience is a duty in all 
 instances of acts, where no sin is ingredient. 
 
 20. Thirdly : And here also the smallness and cheapness 
 of the duty does not tolerate disobedience ; for the despising 
 the smallest injunction is an act of as formal and direct 
 rebellion, as when the prevarication is in a higher instance. 
 It is here as in Divine laws, but yet with some difference : 
 for small things do so little co-operate to the end of human 
 laws, that a smaller reason does, by way of interpretation and 
 tacit permission, dispense, than can in a Divine sanction, 
 though of the lowest offices. Because God commands duties 
 not for the end, to which they of themselves do co-operate ; 
 but to make sacred his authority ; and that we, by our obe- 
 dience, may confess him to be Lord : but, in human laws, the 
 authority is made sacred, not primarily for itself, but princi- 
 pally, that the laws, made in order to the conservation of 
 societies, may be observed. So that, in the neglect of the 
 smallest of Divine ordinances, we as directly oppose God's 
 great purpose and intendment, as in greater matters ; God's 
 dominion and authority (the conservation of which was his 
 principal intention) is alike neglected : but, in omitting a 
 human imposition ofsmall concernment, the case is different ; r 
 it is certain, there is not any considerable violence done to 
 the public interest by a contemptible omission of a law : the 
 thing is not small, if the commonwealth be not safe, and all 
 her great ends secured ; but if they be, then the authority is 
 
 r De minimis non curat lex.
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 89 
 
 inviolate, unless a direct contempt were intended ; for its 
 being was in order to that end : not for itself, as it is in the 
 case of Divine laws, but that the public interest be safe. 
 
 21. And therefore, as great matters of human laws may 
 be omitted for great reasons, so may smaller matters for 
 smaller reasons, but never without reason : for, " causelessly" 
 and " contemptuously" are all one. But in the application of 
 the particulars, either the laws themselves, or custom, or the 
 prudence of a sincere righteous man, or of a wise and dis- 
 interested person, is to be the judge. But let no man's con- 
 fidence increase, from the smallness of the matter to a con- 
 tempt of the authority; for there are some sins, whose ma- 
 lignity is accidentally increased by the slightness of the sub- 
 ject matter ; such are blasphemy, perjury, and the contempt 
 of authority. To blaspheme God for the loss of an asper or 
 a penny, to be forsworn in judgment for the rescuing of a 
 few maravides or a five-groats' fine, is a worse crime than to 
 be perjured for the saving ten thousand pounds; and to de- 
 spise authority, when the obedience is so easy as the wearing 
 of a garment or doing of a posture, is a greater and more im- 
 pudent contempt, than to despise authority imposing a great 
 burden of a more considerable pressure, where human in- 
 firmity may tempt to a disobedience, and lessen the crime. 
 And let this caution also be inserted, that we do not at 
 all neglect small impositions, if there be direct and signal in- 
 junction in the particular instance. For as a great body of 
 light, transmitting his rays through a narrow hollowness, 
 does, by that small pyramis, represent all the parts of its 
 magnitude and glory : so it may happen, that a public inter- 
 est, and the concernments of authority, and the peace of a 
 Church, and the integral obedience of the subjects, and the 
 conservation of a community, may be transferred to us by an 
 instance, in its own nature, inconsiderable ; such as are wear- 
 ing of a cognizance, remembering of a word, carrying a 
 branch in time of war, and things of the same nature : and, 
 therefore, when the hand of authority is stretched out and 
 held forth upon a precept, and designs the duty upon par- 
 ticular reason, or with actual intuition, there is not the same 
 facility of being dispensed with, as in the neglected and 
 unconsidered instances of other duties. 
 
 This only I desire to be observed ; that if death, or any
 
 90 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 violent accident, imprisonment, loss of livelihood, or intole- 
 rable inconveniences be made accidentally consequent to the 
 observing of a law merely human, the law binds not in the 
 particular instance. No man is bound to be a martyr for a 
 ceremony, or to die rather than break a canon, or to suffer 
 confiscation of goods for the pertinacious keeping of a civil 
 constitution. And it is not to be supposed, that a lawgiver 
 would have decreed a rite, and bound the lives of the sub- 
 jects to it, which are of a far greater value than a rite ; not 
 only because it were tyrannical and unreasonable, but because 
 the evil of the law were greater than the good of it ; it were 
 against the reason of all laws, and destroys the privileges of 
 nature, and it puts a man into a condition as bad as the want 
 of all laws ; for nothing is civilly or naturally worse than 
 death, to which the other evils arrive in their proportion. 
 This is to be understood in particular and positive precepts, 
 introduced for reasons particular, that is, less than those are, 
 which combine all societies, and which are the cement of all 
 bodies political ; I mean, laws ritual in the Church, and acci- 
 dental and emergent in the state. And that, which is the 
 best sign to distinguish these laws from others, is also the 
 reason of the assertion. Laws, decreed with a penalty to 
 the transgressors, cannot bind to an evil greater than that 
 penalty. If it be appointed, that we use a certain form of 
 liturgy, under the forfeiture of five pounds for every omission, 
 I am bound in conscience to obey it, where I can : but I am 
 supposed legally to be disabled, if any tyrant power shall 
 threaten to kill me if I do, or make me pay an hundred 
 pounds, or any thing greater than the forfeiture of the law. 
 For all the civil and natural power of the law is by its 
 coercion, and the appendant punishment. The law operates 
 by rewards and punishments, by hope and fear ; and it is un- 
 imaginable that the law, under a less penalty, can oblige us, 
 in any case or accident, to suffer a greater. For the com- 
 pulsion of the tyrant is greater than the coercion of the law- 
 giver; aud the prince thinking the penalty annexed to be 
 band sufficient, intended no greater evil to the transgressor 
 than the expressed penalty, and therefore much less would 
 he have them, that obey the law by any necessity, be forced 
 to a greater evil : for then, disobedience should escape better 
 than obedience. True it is, every disobeying person, that
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 91 
 
 pays the penalty, is not quite discharged from all his obliga- 
 tion ; but it is then, when his disobeying is criminal upon 
 some other stock besides the mere breach of the law, as 
 contempt, scandal, or the like : for the law binds the con- 
 science indirectly, and by consequence ; that is, in plain lan- 
 guage, God commands us to obey human laws, and the 
 penalty will not pay for the contempt, because that is a sin 
 against God ; it pays for the violation of the law, because 
 that was all the direct transgression against man. 3 And then 
 who shall make him recompense, for suffering more than the 
 law requires of him ? Not the prince ; for it is certain, the 
 greatest value he set upon the law, was no bigger than the 
 penalty ; and the commonwealth is supposed to be sufficiently 
 secured in her interest by the penalty, or else the law was 
 weak, impotent, and unreasonable. Not God ; for it is not 
 an act of obedience to him ; for he binds us no further to 
 obey human laws, than the lawgiver himself intends or de- 
 clares ; who cannot reasonably be supposed so over careful, 
 as to bind hay with cords of silk and gold, or sumptuary laws 
 with the threads of life ; nor a father commanding his child 
 to wait on him every meal, be thought to intend his obliga- 
 tion, even though the house be ready to fall on his head, or 
 when he is to pass a sudden or unfordable flood, before he 
 can get to him. And that it may appear man ought not, it is 
 certain God himself doth not oblige us, in all cases and in all 
 circumstances, to observe every of his positive precepts. 
 For, " assembling together" 4 is a duty of God's commanding, 
 which we are " not to neglect : " but if death waits at the 
 door of these assemblies, we have the practice of the primi- 
 tive and best Christians, to warrant us to serve God in retire- 
 ments, and cells, and wildernesses, and leave " the assembling 
 together" till better opportunities. If I receive more benefit, 
 or the commonwealth, or the Church and religion, any greater 
 advantage, by my particular obedience in these circum- 
 stances, (which cannot easily be supposed, will be,) it is a 
 great act of charity to do it, and then to suffer for it : but if 
 
 Lucius Veratius pro delectamento habuit os hominis liberi palma verberare. 
 Eum servus sequebatur crumenatn plenam assium gestans, et quemcunque per- 
 cusserat, jussit statim numerari 25 asses, qui pro naulcta huic offense ex lege xn." 
 Tab. imponebantur. A. Gel. lib. xx. c. I. 
 
 Heb. x. 25.
 
 22 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 it be no more," that is if it be not expressly commanded to 
 be done, (though with loss of life or confiscation,) it is a 
 good charity to save my own life, or my own estate : and 
 though the other may be better, yet I am not in all cases 
 obliged to do that, which is simply the best. It is a tolerable 
 infirmity, and allowed amongst the very first permissions of 
 nature, that I may preserve my life, unless it be in a very 
 few cases, which are therefore clearly to be expressed, or else 
 the contrary is to be presumed, as being a case most favour- 
 able. And it is considerable, that nothing is worse than 
 death, but damnation, or something that partakes of that in 
 some of its worst ingredients ; such as is a lasting torment, or 
 a daily great misery in some other kind. And therefore, 
 since no human law can bind a man to a worse thing than 
 death, if obedience brings me to death, I cannot be worse, 
 when I disobey it; and I am not so bad, if the penalty of 
 death be not expressed. And so for other penalties, in their 
 own proportions. 
 
 This discourse is also to be understood concerning the 
 laws of peace, not of war ; not only because every disobe- 
 dience in war may be punished with death (according as the 
 reason may chance), but also, because little things may be of 
 great and dangerous consequence. But in peace it is ob- 
 servable, that there is no human, positive, superinduced law, 
 but by the practice of all the world, (which, because the per- 
 mission of the prince is certainly included in it, is the surest 
 interpretation,) it is dispensed withal, by ordinary necessities, 
 by reason of lesser inconveniences and common accidents : 
 thus the not saying of our office daily, is excused by the 
 study of divinity ; the publishing the bans of matrimony, by 
 an ordinary incommodity ; the fasting days of the Church, by 
 a little sickness or a journey ; and therefore much rather if 
 my estate, and most of all if my life, be in danger with it : 
 and to say that, in these cases, there is no interpretative per- 
 mission to omit the particular action, is to accuse the laws 
 and the lawgiver, the one of unreasonableness, the other of 
 uncharitableness. 
 
 22. Fourthly : These considerations are upon the execu- 
 tion of the duty ; but even towards man our obedience must 
 
 u Vide Part ii. Disc. x. n. 11.
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 93 
 
 have a mixture of the will and choice, like as onr injunction 
 of obedience to the Divine command. " With good will 
 doing service " (saith the apostle), for it is impossible to 
 secure the duty of inferiors but by conscience and good will ; 
 unless provision could be made against all their secret arts, 
 and concealments, and escapings ; which, as no providence 
 can foresee, so no diligence can cure. It is but an " eye- 
 service," whatsoever is compelled and involuntary. Nothing 
 rules a man in private, but God and his own desires ; and 
 they give laws in a wilderness, and accuse in a cloister, and 
 do execution in a closet, if there be any prevarication. 
 
 23. Fifthly : But obedience to human laws goes no fur- 
 ther : we are not bound to obey with a direct and particular 
 act of understanding, as in all Divine sanctions ; for so long 
 as our superiors are fallible, though it be highly necessary 
 we conform our wills to their innocent laws, yet it is not a 
 duty, we should think the laws most prudent or convenient; 
 because all laws are not so : but it may concern the interest 
 of humility and self-denial, to be subject to an inconvenient, 
 so it be not a sinful command : for so we must choose an 
 affliction, when God offers it, and give God thanks for it ; 
 and yet we may cry under the smart of it, and call to God 
 for ease and remedy. And yet it were well, if inferiors would 
 not be too busy in disputing the prudence of their governors, 
 and the convenience of their constitutions : whether they be 
 sins or no in the execution, and to our particulars, we are 
 concerned to look to ; I say, as to our particulars ; for an 
 action may be a sin in the prince commanding it, and yet 
 innocent in the person executing : as in the case of unjust 
 wars, in which the subject, who cannot, ought not to be a 
 judge, yet must be a minister; and it is notorious in the case 
 of executing an unjust sentence, in which not the execu- 
 tioner, but the judge, is the only unjust person ; x and he that 
 serves his prince in an unjust war, is but the executioner of 
 an unjust sentence : but whatever goes further, does but un- 
 dervalue the person, slight the government, and unloose the 
 golden cords of discipline. For we are not intrusted in pro- 
 viding for degrees, so we secure the kind and condition of 
 
 x Is damnum dat, qui jubet dare: ejus vero nulla culpa est, cui parere 
 necesse fit. Ulpian, lib. 130.
 
 94 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 our actions. And since God, having derived rays and beams 
 of majesty, and transmitted it in parts upon several states of 
 men, y hath fixed human authority and dominion in the 
 golden candlestick of understanding, he that shall question 
 the prudence of his governor, or the wisdom of his sanction, 
 does unclasp the golden rings that tie the purple upon the 
 prince's shoulder ; he tempts himself with a reason to dis- 
 obey, and extinguish the light of majesty by overturning the 
 candlestick, and hiding the opinion of his wisdom and under- 
 standing. And let me say this ; he that is confident of his 
 own understanding and reasonable powers, (and who is more 
 than he, that thinks himself wiser than the laws?) needs no 
 other devil in the neighbourhood, no tempter but himself to 
 pride and vanity, which are the natural parents of dis- 
 obedience. 
 
 24. But a man's disobedience never seems so reasonable* 
 as when the subject is forbidden to do an act of piety, com- 
 manded, indeed, in the general, but unconimanded in certain 
 circumstances. And forward piety and assiduous devotion, 
 a great and indiscreet mortifier, is often tempted to think no 
 authority can restrain the fervours and distempers of zeal in 
 such holy exercises ; and yet it is very often as necessary to 
 restrain the indiscretions of a forward person, as to excite 
 the remissness of the cold and frozen. Such persons were 
 the Sarabaites, spoken of by Cassian, a who were greater 
 labourers and stricter mortifiers, than the religious in families 
 and colleges ; and yet they endured no superior, nor laws. But 
 such customs as these are humiliation without humility; hum- 
 bling the body, and exalting the spirit ; or, indeed, sacrifices, 
 and no obedience. It was an argument of the great wisdom 
 of the fathers of the desert : b when they heard of the prodigious 
 severities exercised by Simeon Stylites upon himself, they 
 sent one of the religious to him, with power to inquire what 
 was his manner of living, and what warrant he had for such 
 a rigorous undertaking, giving in charge to command him to 
 
 y Mi ?/ ymvfi, *a oixceia Xsyrf. Laert. 
 
 1 Modum autem tenere in eo difficile est, quod bonum esse credideris. 
 Sen. ep. 23. 
 
 Colht. xviii. c. 17. 
 
 b Apxid Euagrium. De eodem Stylite consulat lector Epiph. lib. i. c. 13. 
 Theod. et 7. Synod, gener. et Baron, ad A.D. 432.
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 95 
 
 give it over, and to live in a community with them, and, 
 according to the common institution of those religious fami- 
 lies. The messenger did so : and immediately Simeon re- 
 moved his foot from his pillar, with a purpose to descend ; 
 but the other, according to his commission, called to him to 
 stay, telling him his station and severity was from God. 
 And he that in so great a piety was humble and obedient, 
 did not undertake that strictness out of singularity, nor did it 
 transport him to vanity ; for that he had received from the 
 fathers to make judgment of the man, and of his institution : 
 whereas if, upon pretence of the great holiness of that course, 
 he had refused the command, the spirit of the person was to 
 be declared caitive and imprudent, and the man driven from 
 his troublesome and ostentatious vanity. 
 
 25. Our fasts, our prayers, our watchings, our intentions 
 of duty, our frequent communions, and all exterior acts of 
 religion, are to be guided by our superior, if he sees cause to 
 restrain or assuage any excrescence. For a wound may heal 
 too fast, and then the tumour of the flesh is proud, not 
 healthful ; and so may the indiscretions of religion swell to 
 vanity, when we think they grow towards perfection : but 
 when we can endure the caustics and correctives of our 
 spiritual guides, in those things in which we are most apt to 
 please ourselves, then our obedience is regular and humble ; 
 and in other things there is less of danger. There is a story 
 told of a very religious person, whose spirit, in the ecstasy of 
 devotion, was transported to the clarity of a vision ; and he 
 seemed to converse personally with the holy Jesus, feeling 
 from such intercourse great spiritual delights and huge satis- 
 factions. In the midst of these joys, the bell called to 
 prayers ; and he, used to the strictness, and well instructed in 
 the necessities of obedience, went to the church, and having 
 finished his devotions, returned, and found the vision in the 
 same posture of glories and entertainment ; which also said to 
 him, " Because thou hast left me, thou hast found me ; for if 
 thou hadst not left me, I had presently left thee." Whatever 
 the story be, I am sure it is a good parable; for the way to 
 increase spiritual comforts is, to be strict in the offices of 
 
 c Cassian. Collat. iv. Abbat. Dam. c. 20. et S. Basil. Exbort. ad Vitam 
 Monast. S. Greg. lib. xxxy. Moral, c. 13. S. Bern. De Ord. Vit et 
 Morum lust it. c. 1.
 
 96 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 humble obedience ; and we never lose any thing of our joy, 
 by laying it aside to attend a duty : and Plutarch reports 
 more honour of Agesilaus' prudence and modesty, than of 
 his gallantry and military fortune ; d for he was more honour- 
 able by obeying the decree of the Spartan senate, recalling 
 him from the midst of his triumphs, than he could have 
 been by finishing the war with prosperous success and dis- 
 obedience. 
 
 26. Our obedience, being guided by these rules, is urged 
 to us by the consignation of Divine precepts and the loud 
 voice of thunder, even sealed by a signet of God's right 
 hand, the signature of greatest judgments. For God did, 
 with greater severity, punish the rebellion of Korah and his 
 company, than the express murmurs against himself; nay, 
 than the high crime of idolatry : for this crime God visited 
 them with a sword ; but for disobedience and mutiny against 
 their superiors, God made the earth to swallow some of 
 them, and fire from heaven to consume the rest ; to shew 
 that rebellion is to be punished by the conspiration of heaven 
 and earth, as it is hateful and contradictory both to God and 
 man. And it is not amiss to observe, that obedience to man, 
 being as it is " for God's sake," and yet to a person clothed 
 with the circumstances and the same infirmities with our- 
 selves, is a greater instance of humility, than to obey God 
 immediately, whose authority is divine, whose presence is 
 terrible, whose power is infinite, and not at all depressed by 
 exterior disadvantages or lessening appearances : just as it is 
 both greater faith and greater charity to relieve a poor saint, 
 for Jesus' sake, than to give any thing to Christ himself, if 
 he should appear in all the robes of glory and immediate 
 address. For it is to God and to Christ, and wholly for their 
 sakes, and to them that the obedience is done, or the charity 
 expressed ; but themselves are persons whose awfulness, 
 majesty, and veneration, would rather force than invite obe- 
 dience or alms. But when God and his holy Son stand 
 behind the cloud, and send their servants to take the homage 
 or the charity, it is the same as if it were done to them, but 
 receives the advantage of acceptation, by the accidental 
 
 d Titus Manlius securi percussit filiura, postquam bostem gloriose vicerat 
 in interdicts pugna. A. Cell. lib. ix. c. 13.
 
 OF OBEDIENCE. 97 
 
 adherences of faith and humility to the several actions re- 
 spectively. When a king comes to rebels in person, it strikes 
 terror and veneration into them, who are too apt to neglect 
 and despise the persons of his ministers, whom they look upon 
 as their fellow-subjects, and consider not in the exultation of 
 a deputed majesty. Charles the Fifth found a happy expe- 
 rience of it at Gaunt, in Flanders, whose rebellion he appeased 
 by his presence, which he could hardly have done by his army. 
 But if the king's authority be as much revered in his deputy, 
 as it is sacred in his own person, it is the greater humility and 
 more confident obedience. And as it is certain that he is the 
 most humble that submits to his inferiors, so, in the same 
 proportion, the lower and meaner the instrument upon which 
 God's authority is borne, the higher is the grace that teaches 
 us to stoop so low. I do not say, that a sin against human 
 laws is greater than a prevarication against a Divine com- 
 mandment ; as the instances may be, the distance is next to 
 infinite, and to touch the earth with our foot within the 
 octaves of Easter, or to taste flesh upon days of abstinence, 
 (even in those places, and to those persons, where they did or 
 do oblige,) have no consideration, if they be laid in balance 
 against the crimes of adultery, or blasphemy, or oppression : 
 because these crimes cannot stand with the reputation and 
 sacredness of Divine authority ; but those others may, in 
 most instances, very well consist with the ends of govern- 
 ment, which are severally provided for in the diversity of 
 sanctions respectively. But if we make our instances to 
 other purposes, we find, that to mutiny in an army, or to 
 keep private assemblies in a monarchy, are worse than a 
 single thought or morose delectation in a fancy of impurity; 
 because those others destroy government, more than these 
 destroy charity of God, or obedience. But then, though the 
 instances may vary the conclusion, yet the formal reason is 
 alike, and disobedience to man is a disobedience against 
 God ; for God's authority, and not man's, is imprinted upon 
 the superior ; and it is like sacred fire in an earthen censer, 
 as holy as if.it were kindled with the fanning of a cherub's 
 wing, or placed just under the propitiatory upon a golden 
 altar ; and it is but a gross conceit which cannot distinguish 
 religion from its porter, Isis from the beast that carried it: so 
 that, in all disobedience to men, in proportion to the greatness 
 
 VOL. II. M
 
 98 OF OBEDIENCE. 
 
 of the matter, or the malice of the person, or his contradiction 
 to the ends of government and combinations of society, we 
 may use the words by which the prophet upbraided Israel, 
 " Is it not enough that you are grievous unto men, but will 
 you grieve my God also ?"' It is a contempt of the Divinity, 
 and the affront is transmitted to God himself, when we de- 
 spise the power which God hath ordained, and all power of 
 every lawful superior is such ; the Spirit of God being witness 
 in the highest measure, " rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, 
 and stubbornness as idolatry. " f It is spoken of rebellion 
 against God, 8 and all rebellion is so ; for " he that despiseth 
 you, despiseth me," h saith the blessed Jesus ; that is menace 
 enough in the instance of spiritual regiment. And, " You are 
 gathered together against the Lord," saith Moses to the re- 
 bellious princes in the conspiracy of Dathan ; that is for the 
 temporal. And to encourage this duty, I shall use no other 
 words than those of Achilles in Homer, " They that obey in 
 this world, are better than they that command in hell."' 
 
 A Prayer for the Grace of Holy Obedience. 
 
 O Lord and blessed Saviour Jesus, by whose obedience many 
 became righteous, and reparations were made of the ruins 
 brought to human nature by the disobedience of Adam; 
 thou earnest into the world with many great and holy 
 purposes concerning our salvation, and hast given us a 
 great precedent of obedience, which, that thou mightest 
 preserve to thy heavenly Father, thou didst neglect thy 
 life, and becamest obedient even to the death of the cross. 
 O, let me imitate so blessed example, and, by the merits 
 of thy obedience, let me obtain the grace of humility and 
 abnegation of all my own desires in the clearest renuncia- 
 tion of my will ; that I may will and refuse in conformity 
 
 e Isaiab, vii. 13. f 1 Samuel, xr. 23. 
 
 t 'Hu.7* Si vaXXttt toftut xai X.O./.HI Strut, xa>.)jrres eurot \ffri, 
 utiiv ilxaia, 6tov xa.ira, ful^nrtf. 
 
 Plutarch, in Themist, 
 
 1 Bt/>.//i>;v x* i<ra0vg0; fain Stir'v-uit >.X 
 *A3j( *<*. axA.fl, if ft* fiio>ros rel.vs tin, 
 'H Tafit vittviffi xefraipSif&iveifit a.vif<riti.Qd. X. 488.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE PRESENTATION, &C. 99 
 
 to thy sacred laws and holy purposes ; that I may do all 
 thy will cheerfully, choosingly, humbly, confidently, and 
 continually ; and thy will may be done upon me with much 
 mercy and fatherly dispensation of thy providence. Amen. 
 
 II. 
 
 Lord, let my understanding adhere to, and be satisfied in, the 
 excellent wisdom of thy commandments ; let my affections 
 dwell in their desires, and all my other faculties be set on 
 daily work for performance of them : and let my love to 
 obey thee make me dutiful to my superiors, upon whom 
 the impresses of thy authority are set by thine own hand ; 
 that I may never despise their persons, nor refuse their 
 injunctions, nor choose mine own work, nor murmur at 
 their burdens, nor dispute the prudence of the sanction, 
 nor excuse myself, nor pretend difficulties or impossibili- 
 ties ; but that I may be indifferent in my desires, and re- 
 signed to the will of those whom thou hast set over me ; 
 that since all thy creatures obey thy word, I alone may not 
 disorder the creation, and cancel those bands and interme- 
 dial links of subordination, whereby my duty should pass 
 to thee and thy glory, but that my obedience being united 
 to thy obedience, I may also have my portion in the glories 
 of thy kingdom, O Lord and blessed Saviour Jesus. Amen. 
 
 Considerations upon the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. 
 
 1. THE holy Virgin mother, according to the law of Moses, 
 at the expiration of a certain time, came to the temple to be 
 purified. Although, in her sacred parturition, she had con- 
 tracted no legal impurity, yet she exposed herself to the 
 public opinion and common reputation of an ordinary condi- 
 tion : and still amongst all generations, she is, in all circum- 
 stances, accounted blessed, and her reputation no tittle altered, 
 save only that it is made the more sacred, by this testimony 
 of'her humility. But this we are taught from the consequence 
 of this instance ; that if an end, principally designed in any 
 duty, should be supplied otherwise in any particular person,
 
 100 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE PRESENTATION 
 
 the duty is nevertheless to be observed ; and then the obe- 
 dience and public order is reason enough for the observation, 
 though the proper end of its designation be wanting in the 
 single person. Thus is fasting designed for mortification* of 
 the flesh, and killing all its unruly appetites ; and yet married 
 persons, who have another remedy, and a virgin, whose 
 temple is hallowed by a gift and the strict observances of 
 chastity, may be tied to the duty : and if they might not, 
 then fasting were nothing else but a publication of our impure 
 desires, and an exposing the person to the confidence of a 
 bold temptation, whilst the young men did observe the faster 
 to be tempted from within. But the holy Virgin, from these 
 acts, (of which, in signification, she had no need, because she 
 sinned not in the conception, nor was impure in the produc- 
 tion), expressed other virtues besides obedience ; such as 
 were humble thoughts of herself, devotion and reverence to 
 public sanctions, religion and charity, which were like the 
 pure leaves of the whitest lily, fit to represent the beauties of 
 her innocence, but were veiled and shadowed by that sacra- 
 mental of the Mosaic law. 
 
 2. The holy Virgin received the greatest favour that any 
 of the daughters of Adam ever did ; and knowing from 
 whence, and for whose glory she had received it, returns the 
 holy Jesus in a present to God again ; for she had nothing so 
 precious as himself to make oblation of: and besides that 
 " every first-born among the males was holy to the Lord;" 
 this child had an eternal and essential sanctity : and until he 
 came into the world, and was made apt for her to make 
 a present of him, there was never in the world any act of 
 adoration proportionable to the honour of the great God ; 
 but now there was, and the holy Virgin made it when she 
 presented the holy child Jesus. And now, besides that we 
 are taught to return to God whatsoever we have received 
 from him, if we unite our offerings and devotions to this holy 
 present, we shall, by the merit/ and excellence of this oblation, 
 exhibit to God an offertory, in which he cannot but delight, 
 for the combination's sake and society of his holy Son. 
 
 3. The holy mother brought five sides, and a pair of 
 turtle-doves, to redeem the Lamb of God from the anathema; 
 
 Vide Rodriquez in Explic. Bullae Cruciatse ; and Sir Thomas More against 
 Tindal.
 
 OF JESUS IN THE TEMPLE. 101 
 
 because every first-born was to be sacrificed to God, or re- 
 deemed if it was clean : it was the poor man's price, and the 
 holy Jesus was never set at the greater prices when he was 
 estimated upon earth. For he that was Lord of the king- 
 dom chose his portion among the poor of this world, that he 
 might advance the poor to the riches of his inheritance ; and 
 so it was from his nativity hither. For, at his birth he was 
 poor; at his circumcision, poor, and in the likeness of a sinner; 
 at his presentation, poor, and like a sinner and a servant, for 
 he chose to be redeemed with an ignoble price. The five 
 sides were given to the priest for the redemption of the child ; 
 and if the parents were not able, he was to be a servant of the 
 temple, and to minister in the inferior offices to the priest ; 
 and this was God's seizure and possession of him : for although 
 all the servants of God are his inheritance, yet the ministers 
 of religion, who derive their portion of temporals from his 
 title, who live upon the corban, and eat the meat of the altar, 
 which is God's peculiar, and come nearer to his holiness by 
 the addresses of an immediate ministration, are God's own 
 upon another and a distinct challenge. But because Christ 
 was to be the prince of another ministry, and the chief priest 
 of another order, he was redeemed from attending the Mosaic 
 rites, which he came to abolish, that he might do his Father's 
 business in establishing the evangelical. Only remember, 
 that the ministers of religion are but God's usufructuaries : 
 as they are not lords of God's portion, and therefore must 
 dispense it like stewards, not like masters ; so the people are 
 not their patrons in paying, nor they their beneficiaries in 
 receiving tithes, or other provisions of maintenance ; they 
 owe for it to none but to God himself: and it would also be 
 considered, that, in all sacrilegious detentions of ecclesiastical 
 rights, God is the person principally injured. 
 
 4. The turtle-doves b were offered also with the significa- 
 tion of another mystery. In the sacred rites of marriage, 
 although the permissions of natural desires are such as are 
 most ordinate to their ends, the avoiding fornication, the 
 alleviation of economical cares and vexations, and the pro- 
 duction of children, and mutual comfort and support ; yet 
 the apertures and permissions of marriage have such restraints 
 
 b Sed pudicitia illis prima, et neutri nota adulteria : conjugii fidem non 
 violant Pint, lib. x. c. 33.
 
 102 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE PRESENTATION 
 
 of modesty and prudence, that all transgression of the just 
 order to such ends is a crime : and besides these, there may 
 be degrees of inordination or obliquity of intention, or too 
 sensual complacency, or unhandsome preparations of mind, 
 or unsacramental thoughts ; in which particulars, because we 
 have no determined rule but prudence, and the analogy of 
 the rite, and the severity of our religion, which allow in some 
 cases more, in some less, and always uncertain latitudes, for 
 aught we know there may be lighter transgressions, some 
 thing that we know not of: and for these at the purification 
 of the woman, it is supposed the offering was made, and the 
 turtles, by being an oblation, did deprecate a supposed irre- 
 gularity ; but by being a chaste and marital emblem, they 
 professed the obliquity (if any were) was within the protection 
 of the sacred bands of marriage, and therefore so excusable 
 as to be expiated by a cheap offering. And what they did in 
 hieroglyphic, Christians must do in the exposition ; be strict 
 observers of the main rites and principal obligations, and not 
 neglectful to deprecate the lesser unhandsomenesses of the 
 too sensual applications. 
 
 5. God had, at that instant, so ordered, that, for great 
 ends of his own and theirs, two very holy persons, of diverse 
 sexes and like piety, Simeon and Anna, the one who lived an 
 active and secular, the other a retired and contemplative life, 
 should come into the temple by revelation and direction of 
 the Holy Spirit, and see him whom they and all the world did 
 look for, " the Lord's Christ, the consolation of Israel." 
 They saw him, they rejoiced, they worshipped, they prophe- 
 sied, they sang hymns; and old Simeon did comprehend and 
 circumscribe in his arms him that filled all the world, and 
 was then so satisfied, that he desired to live no longer : God 
 had verified his promise, had shewn him the Messias, had 
 filled his heart with joy, and made his old age honourable ; 
 and now, after all this sight, no object could be pleasant but 
 the joys of Paradise. For as a man, who hath stared too 
 freely upon the face and beauties of the sun, is blind and dark 
 to objects of a less splendour, and is forced to shut his eyes, 
 that he may, through the degrees of darkness, perceive the 
 inferior beauties of more proportioned objects : so was old 
 Simeon ; his eyes were so filled with the glories of this reve- 
 lation, that he was willing to close them in his last night, that
 
 OF JESUS IN THE TEMPLE. 103 
 
 he might be brought into the communications of eternity ; 
 and lie could never more find comfort in any other object this 
 world could minister. For such is the excellence of spiritual 
 things, when they have once filled the corners of our hearts, 
 and made us highly sensible and apprehensive of the interior 
 beauties of God and of religion, all things of this world are 
 flat and empty, and unsatisfying vanities, as unpleasant as 
 the lees of vinegar to a tongue filled with the spirit of high 
 Italic wines. And until we are so dead to the world as to 
 apprehend no gust or freer complacency in exterior objects, 
 we never have entertained Christ, or have had our cups over- 
 flow with devotion, or are filled with the Spirit. When our 
 chalice is filled with holy oil, with the anointing from above, 
 it will entertain none of the waters of bitterness ; or if it 
 does, they are thrust to the bottom : they are the lowest of 
 our desires, and therefore only admitted because they are 
 natural and constituent. 
 
 6. The good old prophetess, Anna, had lived long in 
 chaste widowhood, in the service of the temple, in the con- 
 tinual offices of devotion, in fasting and prayer ; and now 
 came the happy instant in which God would give her a great 
 benediction, and an earnest of a greater. The returns of 
 prayer, and the blessings of piety, are certain ; and though 
 not dispensed according to the expectances of our narrow 
 conceptions, yet shall they so come, at such times and in 
 such measures, as shall crown the piety, and satisfy the 
 desires, and reward the expectation. It was in the temple, 
 the same place where she had for so many years poured out 
 her heart to God, that God poured forth his heart to her, sent 
 his Son from his bosom, and there she received his benedic- 
 tion. Indeed in such places God does most particularly ex- 
 hibit himself, and blessing goes along with him, wherever he 
 goes. In holy places God hath put his holy name, and to 
 holy persons God does oftentimes manifest the interior and 
 more secret glories of his holiness ; provided they come 
 thither, as old Simeon and Anna did, by the motions of the 
 Holy Spirit, not with designs of vanity, or curiosity, or sen- 
 suality ; for such spirits as those come to profane and dese- 
 crate the house, and unhallow the person, and provoke the 
 Deity of the place, and blast us with unwholesome airs.
 
 104 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE PRESENTATION, &C. 
 
 7. But " Joseph and Mary wondered at those things 
 which were spoken," and treasured them in their hearts, and 
 they became matter of devotion and mental prayer, or medi- 
 tation. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O eternal God, who by the inspirations of thy Holy Spirit 
 didst direct thy servants, Simeon and Anna, to the temple, 
 at the instant of the presentation of the holy child Jesus, 
 that so thou mightest verify thy promise, and manifest thy 
 Son, and reward the piety of holy people who longed for 
 redemption by the coming of the Messias; give me the 
 perpetual assistance of the same Spirit to be as a monitor 
 and a guide to me, leading me to all holy actions, and to 
 the embracements and possessions of thy glorious Son ; 
 and remember all thy faithful people, who wait for the 
 consolation and redemption of the Church from all her 
 miseries and persecutions, and at last satisfy their desires 
 by the revelations of thy mercies and salvation. Thou 
 hast advanced thy holy Child, and set him up for a sign of 
 thy mercies, and a representation of thy glories. Lord, let 
 no act, or thought, or word of mine, ever be in contradic- 
 tion to this blessed sign ; but let it be for the ruin of all my 
 
 vices, and all the powers the devil employs against the 
 Church, and for the raising up all those virtues and graces 
 which thou didst design me in the purposes of eternity : 
 but let my portion never be amongst the incredulous, or 
 the scornful, or the heretical, or the profane, or any of 
 those who stumble at this stone, which thou hast laid for 
 the foundation of thy Church, and the structures of a vir- 
 tuous life. Remember me with much mercy and compas- 
 sion, when the sword of sorrows or afflictions shall pierce 
 my heart; first transfix me with love, and then all the 
 troubles of this world will be consignations to the joys of a 
 better : which grant for the mercies and the name's sake 
 of thy holy child Jesus. Amen.
 
 OF MEDITATION. 105 
 
 DISCOURSE III. 
 
 Of Meditation. 
 
 1. IF, in the definition of meditation, I should call it an 
 unaccustomed and unpractised duty, I should speak a truth, 
 though somewhat inartificially : for not only the interior 
 beauties and brighter excellences are as unfelt as ideas and 
 abstractions are, but also the practice and common know- 
 ledge of the duty itself are strangers to us, like the retire- 
 ments of the deep, or the undiscovered treasures of the 
 Indian hills. And this is a very great cause of the dryness 
 and expiration of men's devotion, because our souls are so 
 little refreshed with the waters and holy dews of meditation. 
 We go to our prayers by chance, or order, or by determina- 
 tion of accidental occurrences ; and we recite them, as we 
 read a book ; and sometimes we are sensible of the duty, and 
 a flash of lightning makes the room bright, and our prayers 
 end, and the lightning is gone, and we as dark as ever. We 
 draw our water from standing pools, which never are filled 
 but with sudden showers, and therefore we are dry so often : 
 whereas if we would draw water from the fountains of our 
 Saviour, and derive them through the channel of diligent and 
 prudent meditations, our devotion would be a continual cur- 
 rent, and safe against the barrenness of frequent droughts. 
 
 2. For meditation is an attention and application of spirit 
 to Divine things ; a searching out all instruments to a holy 
 life, a devout consideration of them, and a production of 
 those affections which are in a direct order to the love of 
 God and a pious conversation. Indeed meditation is all that 
 great instrument of piety, whereby it is made prudent, and 
 reasonable, and orderly, and perpetual. For, supposing our 
 memory instructed with the knowledge of such mysteries and 
 revelations as are apt to entertain the spirit, the understand- 
 ing is first and best employed in the consideration of them, 
 and then the will in their reception, when they are duly pre- 
 pared and so transmitted ; and both these in such manner, 
 and to such purposes, that they become the magazine and
 
 106 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 great repositories of grace, and instrumental to all designs of 
 virtue. 
 
 3. For the understanding is not to consider the matter of 
 any meditation in itself, or as it determines in natural excel- 
 lences or unworthiness respectively, or with a purpose to 
 furnish itself with notion and riches of knowledge ; for that 
 is like the winter sun : it shines, but warms not ; but in such 
 order as themselves are put in the designations of theology, 
 in the order of Divine laws, in their spiritual capacity, and as 
 they have influence upon holiness : for the understanding 
 here is something else besides the intellectual power of the 
 soul, it is the spirit ; that is, it is celestial in its application, 
 as it is spiritual in its nature ; and we may understand it well 
 by considering the beatifical portions of soul and body in their 
 future glories. For therefore, even our bodies in the resur- 
 rection shall be spiritual, because the operation of them shall 
 be in order to spiritual glories, and their natural actions (such 
 as are seeing and speaking) shall have a spiritual object and 
 supernatural end ; and here, as we partake of such excel- 
 lences and co-operate to such purposes, men are more or less 
 spiritual. And so is the understanding taken from its first 
 and lowest ends of resting in notion and ineffective contem- 
 plation, and is made spirit ; that is, wholly ruled and guided 
 by God's Spirit to supernatural ends and spiritual employ- 
 ments : so that it understands and considers the motions of 
 the " heavens, to declare the glory of God," the prodigies and 
 alterations in the firmament, to demonstrate his handy work ; 
 it considers the excellent order of creatures, that we may not 
 disturb the order of creation, or dissolve the golden chain of 
 subordination. Aristotle and Porphyry, and the other Greek 
 philosophers, studied the heavens, to search out their natural 
 causes and production of bodies ; the wiser Chaldees and 
 Assyrians studied the same things, that they might learn 
 their influences upon us, and make predictions of contin- 
 gencies ; the more moral Egyptian described his theorems 
 in hieroglyphics and fantastic representments, to teach prin- 
 ciples of policy, economy, and other prudences of morality 
 and secular negotiation : but the same philosophy, when 
 it is made Christian, considers as they did, but to greater 
 purposes, even that from the book of the creatures we ma r
 
 OF MEDITATION. 107 
 
 glorify the Creator, and hence derive arguments of worship 
 and religion : this is Christian philosophy. 
 
 4. I instance only in considerations natural to spiritual 
 purposes ; but the same is the manner in all meditation, 
 whether the matter of it be nature or revelation. For if we 
 think of hell, and consider the infinity of its duration, and 
 that its flames last as long as God lasts, and thence con- 
 jecture, upon the rules of proportion, why a finite creature 
 may have an infinite, unnatural duration ; or think by what 
 ways a material fire can torment an immaterial substance ; or 
 why the devils, who are intelligent and wise creatures, should 
 be so foolish as to hate God, from whom they know every 
 rivulet of amability derives ; this is to study, not to meditate : 
 for meditation considers any thing that may best make us to 
 avoid the place, and to quit a vicious habit, or master and 
 rectify an untoward inclination, or purchase a virtue, or 
 exercise one ; so that meditation is an act of the understand- 
 ing put to the right use. 
 
 5. For the holy Jesus, coming to redeem us from the 
 bottomless pit, did it by lifting us up out of the puddles of 
 impurity and the unwholesome waters of vanity ; " he re- 
 deemed us from our vain conversation ;" and our understand- 
 ings had so many vanities, that they were made instruments 
 of great impiety. The unlearned and ruder nations had fewer 
 virtues ; but they had also fewer vices than the wise empires, 
 that ruled the world with violence and wit together. The 
 softer Asians 3 had lust and intemperance in a full chalice ; 
 but their understandings were ruder than the finer Latins ; 
 for these men's understandings distilled wickedness as through 
 a limbeck, and the Romans drank spirits and the sublimed 
 quintessences of villany ; whereas the other made themselves 
 drunk with the lees and cheaper instances of sin : so that the 
 understanding is not an idle and useless faculty; but naturally 
 drives to practice, and brings guests into the inward cabinet 
 of the will, and there they are entertained and feasted. And 
 those understandings, which did not serve the baser end of 
 vices, yet were unprofitable for the most part, and furnished 
 their inward rooms with glasses and beads, and trifles fit for 
 
 . lib. iv.
 
 108 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 an American mart. From all these impurities and vanities 
 Jesus hath redeemed all his disciples, and not only thrown 
 out of his temples all the impure rites of Flora and Cybele, 
 but also the trifling and unprofitable ceremonies of the more 
 sober deities ; not only vices, but useless and unprofitable 
 speculations ; and hath consecrated our head into a temple, 
 our understanding to spirit, our reason to religion, our study 
 to meditation : and this is the first part of the sanctification 
 of ou spirit. 
 
 6. And this was the cause, holy Scripture commands the 
 duty of meditation in proportion still to the excellences of 
 piety and a holy life, to which it is highly and aptly instru- 
 mental. " Blessed is the man, that meditates in the law of 
 the Lord, day and night. " b And the reason of the proposi- 
 tion, and the use of the duty, is expressed to this purpose : . 
 " Thy words have I hid in my heart, that I should not sin 
 against thee." c The placing and fixing those Divine con- 
 siderations in our understandings, and hiding them there, are 
 designs of high Christian prudence, that they, with advan- 
 tage, may come forth in the expresses of a holy life. For 
 what in the world is more apt and natural to produce humi- 
 lity, than to meditate upon the low stoopings and descents of 
 the holy Jesus, to the nature of a man, to the weaknesses of 
 a child, to the poverties of a stable, to the ignobleness of a 
 servant, to the shame of the cross, to the pains of cruelty, to 
 the dust of death, to the title of a sinner, and to the wrath of 
 God ? By this instance, poverty is made honourable, and 
 humility is sanctified and made noble, and the contradictions 
 of nature are amiable, and fitted for a wise election. Thus 
 hatred of sin, shame of ourselves, confusion at the sense of 
 human misery, the love of God, confidence in his promises, 
 desires of heaven, holy resolutions, resignation of our own 
 appetites, conformity to Divine will, oblations of ourselves, 
 repentance and mortification, are the proper emanations from 
 meditation of the sordidness of sin, our proneness to it, our 
 daily miseries as issues of Divine vengeance, the glories of 
 God, his infinite unalterable veracity, the satisfactions in the 
 vision of God, the rewards of piety, the rectitude of the laws 
 of God, and perfection of his sanctions, God's supreme and 
 
 b Psalm i. 2. Psalm cxix. 11.
 
 OF MEDITATION. 109 
 
 paternal dominion, and his certain malediction of sinners: 
 and when any one of these considerations is taken to pieces, 
 and so placed in the rooms of application that a piece of 
 duty is conjoined to a piece of the mystery, and the whole 
 office to the purchase of a grace or the extermination of a 
 vice, it is like opening our windows to let in the sun and the 
 wind ; and holiness is as proportioned an effect to this prac- 
 tice, as glory is to a persevering holiness, by way of reward 
 and moral causality. 
 
 7. For all the affections that are in man are either natu- 
 ral, or by chance, or by the incitation of reason and discourse. 
 Our natural affections are not worthy the entertainments of a 
 Christian ; they must be supernatural and divine, that put us 
 into the hopes of perfection and felicities : and these other, 
 that are good, unless they come by meditation, they are but 
 accidental, and set with the evening sun. But if they be 
 produced upon the strengths of pious meditation, they are as 
 perpetual as they are reasonable, and excellent in proportion 
 to the piety of the principle. A garden, that is watered with 
 short and sudden showers, is more uncertain in its fruits and 
 beauties, than if a rivulet waters it with a perpetual distilling 
 and constant humectation : and just such are the short 
 emissions and unpremeditated resolutions of piety, begotten 
 by a dash of holy rain from heaven, whereby God sometimes 
 uses to call the careless but to taste what excellences of piety 
 they neglect ; but if they be not produced by the reason of 
 religion, and the philosophy of meditation, they have but the 
 life of a fly or a tall gourd ; they come into the world, only 
 to say they had a being ; you could scarce know their length, 
 but by measuring the ground they cover in their fall. 
 
 8. For since we are more moved by material and sensible 
 objects than by things merely speculative and intellectual, 
 and generals, even in spiritual things, are less perceived and 
 less motive than particulars ; meditation frames the under- 
 standing part of religion to the proportions of our nature and 
 our weakness, by making some things more circumstantiate 
 and material, and the more spiritual to be particular, and 
 therefore the more applicable : and the mystery is made like 
 the Gospel to the apostles : " Our eyes do see, and our ears 
 do hear, and our hands do handle, thus much of the word of 
 life," as is prepared for us in the meditation.
 
 110 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 9. First : And, therefore, every wise person, that intends 
 to furnish himself with affections of religion, or detestation 
 
 O ' 
 
 against a vice, or glorifications of a mystery, still will propor- 
 tion the mystery, and fit it with such circumstances of fancy 
 and application as, by observation of himself, he knows 
 aptest to make impression. It was a wise design of Mark 
 Antony, when he would stir up the people to revenge the 
 death of Caesar ; he brought his body to the pleading-place, 
 he shewed his wounds, held up the rent mantle, and shewed 
 them the garment, that he put on that night, in which he 
 beat the Nervii ; that is, in which he won a victory, for which 
 his memory was dear to them ; he shewed them that wound 
 which pierced his heart, in which they were placed by so dear 
 a love that he made them his heirs, and left to their public 
 use places of delight and pleasure : and then it was natural, 
 when he had made those things present to them, which had 
 once moved their love and his honour, that grief at the loss 
 of so honourable arid so loved a person should succeed ; and 
 then they were lords of all ; their sorrow and revenge seldom 
 slept in two beds. And thus holy meditation produces the 
 passions and desires it intends ; it makes the object present 
 and almost sensible ; it renews the first passions by a fiction 
 of imagination ; it passes from the paschal parlour to Cedron ; 
 it tells the drops of sweat, and measures them, and finds them 
 as big as drops of blood, and then conjectures at the great- 
 ness of our sins ; it fears in the midst of Christ's agonies, it 
 hears his groans, it spies Judas's lantern afar off, it follows 
 Jesus to Gabbatha, and wonders at his innocence and their 
 malice, and feels the strokes of the whip, and shrinks the 
 head, when the crown of thorns is thrust hard upon his holy 
 brows ; and, at last, goes step by step with Jesus, and carries 
 part of the cross, and is nailed fast with sorrow and compas- 
 sion, and dies with love. For if the soul be the principle of its 
 own actions, it can produce the same effects by reflex acts of 
 the understanding, when it is assisted by the imaginative part, 
 as when it sees the thing acted : only let the meditation be 
 as minute, particular, and circumstantiate, as it may ; for a 
 widow, by representing the caresses of her dead husband's 
 love, produces sorrow, and the new affections of a sad endear- 
 ment. It is too sure, that the recalling the circumstances of 
 a past impurity does re-enkindle the flame, and entertain the
 
 OF MEDITATION. Ill 
 
 fancy with the burnings of an impure fire ; and this happens, 
 not by any advantages of vice, but by the nature of the thing, 
 and the efficacy of circumstances. So does holy meditation 
 produce those impresses and signatures, which are the proper 
 effects of the mystery, if presented in a right line and direct 
 representation. 
 
 10. Secondly : He that means to meditate in the best 
 order to the productions of piety, must not be inquisitive for 
 the highest mysteries ; but the plainest propositions are to 
 him of the greatest use and evidence. For meditation is the 
 duty of all ; and therefore God hath fitted such matter for it, 
 which is proportioned to every understanding ; and the great- 
 est mysteries of Christianity are plainest, and yet most fruitful 
 of meditation, and most useful to the production of piety. 
 High speculations are as barren as the tops of cedars ; but 
 the fundamentals of Christianity are fruitful as the valleys or 
 the creeping vine. For know, that it is no meditation, but it 
 may be an illusion, when you consider mysteries to become 
 more learned, without thoughts of improving piety. Let your 
 affections be as high as they can climb towards God, so your 
 considerations be humble, fruitful, and practically mysterious. 
 " Oh that I had the wings of a dove, that I might fly away 
 and be at rest," said David. The wings of an eagle would 
 have carried him higher, but yet the innocent dove did fur- 
 nish him with the better emblem to represent his humble 
 design ; and lower meditations might sooner bring him to 
 rest in God. It was a saying of jEgidius, " that an old and 
 a simple woman, if she loves Jesus, may be greater than was 
 brother Bonaventure." Want of learning, and disability to 
 consider great secrets of theology, does not at all retard our 
 progress to spiritual perfections ; love to Jesus may be better 
 promoted by the plainer understandings of honest and unlet- 
 tered people, than by the finer and more exalted speculations 
 of great clerks, that have less devotion. For although the 
 way of serving God by the understanding be the best and 
 most lasting, yet it is not necessary the understanding should 
 be dressed with troublesome and laborious notions : the rea- 
 son that is in religion is the surest principle to engage our 
 services, and more perpetual than the sweetnesses and the 
 motives of affection ; but every honest man's understanding 
 is then best furnished with the discourses and the reasonable
 
 112 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 parts of religion, when he knows those mysteries of religion 
 upon which Christ and his apostles did build a holy life, and 
 the superstructures of piety : those are the best materials 
 of his meditation. 
 
 11. So that meditation is nothing else but the using of all 
 those arguments, motives, and irradiations, which God in- 
 tended to be instrumental to piety. It is a composition of 
 both ways ; for it stirs up our affections by reason and the 
 way of understanding, that the wise soul may be satisfied in 
 the reasonableness of the thing, and the affectionate may be 
 entertained with the sweetnesses of holy passion ; that our 
 judgment be determined by discourse, and our appetites made 
 active by the caresses of a religious fancy. And, therefore, 
 the use of meditation is, to consider any of the mysteries of 
 religion with purposes to draw from it rules of life, or affec- 
 tions to virtue, or detestation of vice ; and from hence the 
 man rises to devotion, and mental prayer, and intercourse 
 with God ; and, after that, he rests himself in the bosom of 
 beatitude, and is swallowed up with the comprehensions of 
 love and contemplation. These are the several degrees of 
 meditation. But let us first understand that part of it which 
 is duty ; and then, if any thing succeed of a middle condition 
 between duty and reward, we will consider also how that 
 duty is to be performed, and how the reward is to be managed, 
 that it may prove to be no illusion : therefore I add also this 
 consideration. 
 
 12. Thirdly : Whatsoever pious purposes and deliberations 
 are entertained in the act of meditation, they are carefully to 
 be maintained and thrust forward to actual performances, al- 
 though they were indefinite and indeterminate, and no other 
 ways decreed but by resolutions and determinations of reason 
 and judgment. For God assists every pious action according 
 to its exigence and capacity ; and therefore blesses holy 
 meditations with results of reason, and prepossessions dog- 
 matically decreeing the necessity of virtue, and the conve- 
 nience of certain exercises in order to the purchase of it. 
 He, then, that neglects to actuate such discourses, loses the 
 benefit of his meditation ; he is gone no further than when 
 he first set out, and neglects the inspirations of the Holy 
 Spirit. For if, at any time, it be certain what spirit it is 
 that speaks within the soul, it is most certain that it is the
 
 OF MEDITATION. 113 
 
 good Spirit, that moves us to an act of virtue, in order to 
 acquisition of the habit : and when God's grace hath assisted 
 us so far in our meditation, that we understand our duty, and 
 are moved with present arguments, if we put not forth our 
 hand and make use of them, we do nothing towards our duty; 
 and it is not certain that God will create graces in us as he 
 does the soul. Let every pious person think every conclusion 
 of reason in his meditation to have passed an obligation upon 
 him : and if he hath decreed that fasting so often, and doing 
 so many religious acts, is convenient and conducing to the 
 production of a grace he is in pursuit of; let him know, that 
 every such decree and reasonable proposition is the grace of 
 God, instrumental to piety, part of his assistance, and there- 
 fore in no case to be extinguished. 
 
 13. Fourthly: In meditation, let the understanding be 
 restrained, and under such prudent coercion and confinement 
 that it wander not from one discourse to another till it hath 
 perceived some fruit from the first ; either that his soul be 
 instructed in a duty, or moved by a new argument, or con- 
 firmed in an old, or determined to some exercise and inter- 
 medial action of religion, or hath broke out into some prayers 
 and intercourse with God, in order to the production of a 
 virtue. And this is the mystical design of the spouse in the 
 Canticles of Solomon : " I adjure you, O you daughters of 
 Jerusalem, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that you 
 stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please. " d For it is 
 lightness of spirit to pass over a field of flowers and to fix 
 nowhere, but to leave it without carrying some honey with 
 us, unless the subject be of itself barren and unfruitful ; and 
 then, why was it chosen? or that it is made so by our indis- 
 position, and then indeed it is to be quitted. But (it is St. 
 Chrysostom's simile) as a lamb, sucking the breast of its dam 
 and mother, moves the head from one part to another, till it 
 hath found a distilling fontinel, and then it fixes, till it 
 be satisfied, or the fountain cease dropping; so should we, 
 in meditation, reject such materials as are barren, like the 
 tops of hills, and fix upon such thoughts which nourish and 
 refresh ; and there dwell, till the nourishment be drawn 
 forth, or so much of it as we can then temperately digest. 
 
 d Cant. iii. 5. 
 VOL. II. N
 
 1 14 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 14. Fifthly : In meditation, strive rather for graces than 
 for gifts, for affections in the way of virtue more than the 
 overflowings of sensible devotion ; and, therefore, if thou 
 findest any thing by which thou mayest be better, though 
 thy spirit do not actually rejoice, or find any gust or relish in 
 the manducation, yet choose it greedily. For although the 
 chief end of meditation be affection, and not determinations 
 intellectual ; yet there is choice to be had of the affections : 
 and care must be taken, that the affections be desires of 
 virtue, or repudiations and aversions from something crimi- 
 nal ; not joys and transportations spiritual, comforts, and 
 complacencies ; for they are no part of our duty : sometimes 
 they are encouragements, and sometimes rewards ; sometimes 
 they depend upon habitude and disposition of body, and seem 
 great matters, when they have little in them ; and are more 
 bodily than spiritual, like the gift of tears, and yearning of 
 the bowels ; and sometimes they are illusions and temptations, 
 at which if the soul stoops and be greedy after, they may 
 prove like Hippomene's golden apples to Atalanta, retard 
 our course, and possibly do some hazard to the whole race. 
 And this will be nearer reduced to practice, if we consider 
 the variety of matter which is fitted to the meditation in 
 several states of men travelling towards heaven. 
 
 15. For the first beginners in religion are employed in 
 the mastering of their first appetites, casting out their devils, 
 exterminating all evil customs, lessening the proclivity of 
 habits, and countermanding the too great forwardness of 
 vicious inclinations ; and this, which divines call the purga- 
 tive way, is wholly spent in actions of repentance, mortifica- 
 tion, and self-dental : and therefore, if a penitent person 
 snatches at comforts, or the tastes of sensible devotion, his 
 repentance is too delicate ; it is but a rod of roses and jessa- 
 mine. If God sees the spirit broken all in pieces, and that it 
 needs a little of the oil of gladness for its support and resti- 
 tution to the capacities of its duty, he will give it ; but this is 
 not to be designed, nor snatched at in the meditation : tears 
 of joy are not good expressions nor instruments of repent- 
 ance ; we must not "gather grapes from thorns, nor figs from 
 thistles;" no refreshments to be looked for here, but such 
 only as are necessary for support ; and when God sees they 
 are, let not us trouble ourselves : he will provide them. But
 
 OF MEDITATION. 115 
 
 the meditations which are prompt to this purgative way and 
 practice of first beginners are not apt to produce delicacies, 
 but in the sequel and consequent of it. " Afterwards it brings 
 forth the pleasant fruit of righteousness," but " for the pre- 
 sent, it hath no joy in it," no joy of sense, though much satis- 
 faction to reason. And such are meditations of the fall of 
 angels and man, the ejection of them from heaven, of our 
 parents from paradise, the horror and obliquity of sin, the 
 wrath of God, the severity of his anger, mortification of our 
 body and spirit, self-denial, the cross of Christ, death, and 
 hell, and judgment, the terrors of an evil conscience, the 
 insecurities of a sinner, the unreasonableness of sin, the 
 troubles of repentance, the worm and sting of a burdened 
 spirit, the difficulties of rooting out evil habits, and the utter 
 abolition of sin : if these nettles bear honey, we may fill our- 
 selves ; but such sweetnesses spoil the operations of these 
 bitter potions. Here, therefore, let your addresses to God, 
 and your mental prayers, be affectionate desires of pardon, 
 humble considerations of ourselves, thoughts of revenge 
 against our crimes, designs of mortification, indefatigable 
 solicitations for mercy, expresses of shame and confusion of 
 face ; and he meditates best in the purgative way that makes 
 these affections most operative and high. 
 
 After our first step is taken, and the punitive part of 
 repentance is resolved on, and begun, and put forward into 
 good degrees of progress, we then enter into the illuminative 
 way of religion, and set upon the acquist of virtues, and the 
 purchase of spiritual graces; and, therefore, our meditations 
 are to be proportioned to the design of that employment : 
 such as are considerations of the life of Jesus, examples of 
 saints, reasons of virtue, means of acquiring them, designa- 
 tions of proper exercises to every pious habit, the eight 
 beatitudes, the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost, the pro- 
 mises of the Gospel, the attributes of God, as they are re- 
 vealed to represent God to be infinite, and to make us 
 religious, the rewards of heaven, excellent and select sen- 
 tences of holy persons, to be as incentives of piety. These 
 are the proper matter for proficients in religion. But then 
 the affections producible from these are love of virtue, de- 
 sires to imitate the holy Jesus, affections to saints and holy 
 persons, conformity of choice, subordination to God's will,
 
 116 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 election of the ways of virtue, satisfaction of the understanding 
 in the ways of religion, and resolutions to pursue them in the 
 midst of all discomforts and persecutions ; and our mental 
 prayers or intercourse with God, which are the present ema- 
 nations of our meditations, must be in order to these affec- 
 tions, and productions from those : and in all these, yet 
 there is safety and piety, and no seeking of ourselves, but 
 designs of virtue in just reason and duty to God, and for his 
 sake ; that is, for his commandment. And in all these 
 particulars, if there be such a sterility of spirit, that there be 
 no end served but of spiritual profit, we are never the 
 worse ; all that God requires of us is, that we will live well, 
 and repent in just measure and right manner; and he that 
 doth so, hath meditated well. 
 
 17. From hence, if a pious soul passes to affections of 
 greater sublimity, and intimate and more immediate, abstract- 
 ed and immaterial love, it is well ; only remember, that the 
 love God requires of us is an operative, material, and com- 
 municative love ; " If ye love me, keep my commandments: ' 
 so that still a good life is the effect of the sublimest medita- 
 tion ; and if we make our duty sure behind us, ascend up as 
 high into the mountain as you can, so your ascent may con- 
 sist with the securities of your person, the condition of 
 infirmity, and the interests of your duty. According to the 
 saying of Ildefonsus, " Our empty saying of lauds, and re- 
 citing verses in honour of his name, please not God so well, 
 as the imitation of him does advantage to us : and a devout 
 imitator pleases the spouse better than an idle panegyric." 6 
 Let your work be like his, your duty in imitation of his 
 precept and example, and then sing praises as you list ; no 
 heart is large enough, no voice pleasant enough, no life long 
 enough, nothing but an eternity of duration and a beatifical 
 state can do it well : and therefore holy David joins them 
 both : " Whoso offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth 
 me ; and to him that ordereth his conversation aright I will 
 shew the salvation of God. " f All thanks and praise, without 
 
 Serm. 1. de Assumpt. Ka/ n TUV yrgarQi/iOfiiiiut ifa\uri>,iia. Tiftri iis 8iav oil 
 yiviTKi, ti fin fj.tr a, nu ivS-'uv ty/itvrifi.a.'ras 'x^oya.ymTt, &>/>, yxg xai 6vniro\n>u 
 aipjaxorv, truja; Tga0j' xcti avaB-jftara, /'ejaa-i/Xa/f ^agjjy/at. Ta St fnfiat 
 vSgarftii/ov, ffwa-rru 6i. Hierocl. Needh. p. 24. 
 
 ' Psalm 1. 23.
 
 OF MEDITATION. 117 
 
 a right-ordered conversation, are but the echo of religion, a 
 voice and no substance ; but if those praises be sung by a 
 heart righteous and obedient, that is, singing with the spirit 
 and singing with understanding, that is the music God de- 
 lights^n. 
 
 18. Sixthly : But let me observe and press this caution : 
 It is a mistake, and not a little dangerous, when people, 
 religious and forward, shall too promptly, frequently, and 
 nearly, spend their thoughts in consideration of Divine ex- 
 cellences. God hath shewn thee merit enough to spend all 
 thy stock of love upon him in the characters of his power, 
 the book of the creature, the great tables of his mercy, and 
 the lines of his justice ; we have cause enough to praise his 
 excellences in what we feel of him, and are refreshed with 
 his influence, and see his beauties in reflection, though we do 
 not put our eyes out with staring upon his face. To behold 
 the glories and perfections of God with a more direct intui- 
 tion, is the privilege of angels, who yet cover their faces in 
 the brightness of his presence : it is only permitted to us to 
 consider the back parts of God. And, therefore, those specu- 
 lations are too bold and imprudent addresses, and minister to 
 danger more than to religion, when we pass away from the 
 direct studies of virtue, and those thoughts of God, which 
 are the freer and safer communications of the Deity, which 
 are the means of intercourse and relation between him and 
 us, to those considerations concerning God which are meta- 
 physical and remote, the formal objects of adoration and 
 wonder, rather than of virtue and temperate discourses : for 
 God in Scripture never revealed any of his abstracted per- 
 fections and remoter and mysterious distances, but with a 
 purpose to produce fear in us, and therefore to chide the 
 temerity and boldness of too familiar and nearer intercourse. 
 
 19. True it is, that every thing we see or can consider, 
 represents some perfections of God ; but this I mean, that no 
 man should consider too much, and meditate too frequently, 
 upon the immediate perfections of God, as it were by way of 
 intuition, but as they are manifested in the creatures and in 
 the ministries of virtue : and also, whenever God's perfections 
 be the matter of meditation, we should not ascend upwards 
 into him, but descend upon ourselves, like fruitful vapours 
 drawn up into a cloud, descending speedily into a shower,
 
 118 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 that the effect of the consideration be a design of good life ; 
 and that our loves to God be not spent in abstractions, but in 
 good works and humble obedience. The other kind of love 
 may deceive us ; and therefore so may such kind of con- 
 siderations, which are its instrument. But this I am now 
 more particularly to consider. 
 
 20. For beyond this I have described, there is a degree 
 of meditation so exalted that it changes the very name, and 
 is called contemplation ; and it is in the unitive way of reli- 
 gion, that is, it consists in unions and adherences to God ; it 
 is a prayer of quietness and silence, and a meditation extraor- 
 dinary, a discourse without variety, a vision and intuition of 
 Divine excellences, an immediate entry into an orb of light, 
 and a resolution of all our faculties into sweetnesses, affec- 
 tions, and starings upon the Divine beauty ; and is carried on 
 to ecstasies, raptures, suspensions, elevations, abstractions, 
 and apprehensions beatifical. In all the course of virtuous 
 meditation, the soul is like a virgin invited to make a matri- 
 monial contract; it inquires the condition of the person, his 
 estate and disposition, and other circumstances of amability 
 and desire : but when she is satisfied with these inquiries, 
 and hath chosen her husband, she no more considers particu- 
 lars, but is moved by his voice and his gesture, and runs to 
 his entertainment and fruition, and spends herself wholly in 
 affections, not to obtain, but enjoy, his love. 
 
 Thus it is said. 
 
 21 . But this is a thing not to be discoursed of, but felt : 
 and although, in other sciences, the terms must first be 
 known, and then the rules and conclusions scientifical ; here 
 it is otherwise: for first, the whole experience of this must 
 be obtained, before we can so much as know what it is ; and 
 the end must be acquired first, the conclusion before the 
 premises. They that pretend to these heights, call them the 
 secrets of the kingdom ; but they are such which no man 
 can describe ; such which God hath not revealed in the pub- 
 lication of the Gospel ; such for the acquiring of which there 
 are no means prescribed, and to which no man is obliged, 
 and which are not in any man's power to obtain ; nor such 
 which it is lawful to pray for or desire ; nor concerning which 
 we shall ever be called to an account. 
 
 22. Indeed, when persons have been long softened with
 
 OF MEDITATION. 119 
 
 the continual droppings of religion, and their spirits made 
 timorous and apt for impression by the assiduity of prayer, 
 and perpetual alarms of death, and the continual dyings of 
 mortification ; the fancy, which is a very great instrument of 
 devotion, is kept continually warm and in a disposition and 
 aptitude to take fire, and to flame out in great ascents : and 
 when they suffer transportations beyond the burdens and 
 support of reason, they suffer they know not what, and call it 
 what they please ; and other pious people that hear talk of 
 it, admire that devotion, which is so eminent and beatified ; 
 (for so they esteem it,) and so they come to be called raptures 
 and ecstasies, which, even amongst the apostles, were so 
 seldom that they were never spoken of; for those visions, 
 raptures, and intuitions of St. Stephen, St. Paul, St. Peter, 
 and St. John, were not pretended to be of this kind; 8 not 
 excesses of religion, but prophetical and intuitive revelations, 
 to great and significant purposes, such as may be and are 
 described in story ; but these other cannot : for so Cassian 
 reports, and commends a saying of Antony the Eremite, 
 " That is not a perfect prayer, in which the votary does either 
 understand himself or the prayer;" meaning, that persons emi- 
 nently religious were " divina patientes," as Dionysius Areo- 
 pagita said of his master Hierotheus, patics in devotion, suf- 
 fering ravishments of senses, 11 transported beyond the uses of 
 humanity, into the suburbs of beatifical apprehensions : but 
 whether or no this be any thing besides a too intense and 
 indiscreet pressure of the faculties of the soul to inconveni- 
 ences of understanding, or else a credulous, busy, and un- 
 tamed fancy, they, that think best of it, cannot give a cer- 
 
 f> Acts, x. 10. l-ri'Tifn 'i-r aura tuff-Tans, and chap. xi. 5. *i T5av v \*fra.<ru 
 ttgap/t. Ilaptus vidit visionem, dum oraverat. 
 
 Mentemque priorem 
 
 Expulit, atque bominem toto sibi cedere jussit 
 Pectore. Quod de Apolline diiit Lucanus, v. 168. 
 
 Qualis erat visio sive ecstasis Balaam!, qui visionem Omnipotentis vidit, 
 excidens, sed retectis oculis. Num. xxiv. 4, 16. 
 
 h Max/a; St <yt ii^n Si/a 1 ftiv u-ro vafrif&iiriai olvS-g/writuv, n 5 v-ra 9-i/a; il-aXA.ayJf . 
 Pluto in Phtfdr. c. 48. ed. A st. p. 42. 
 
 TflS at ^nas rtrrdout/ Qiut TiTTec^x fj,i^ti $ 11)1.0 ftivoi, ftwrixtiv ftit lr/5ri's<*Aa'oXX 
 
 >; 3sTf, uatvfau Stri^tfTixnv, Mat/rut " &u foinnx.**, Tiragrnt "Eguro;, &iC. Ibid. 
 
 Eyya out ecu -riot rtai vratnrut It oX/yai TOUTO' art au roty'ia, jrotoin, a. yoioTii, aXXa 
 
 Ifuffti riti, KaCi \v6ou 'fia^atri;, ufffto ci Sief&cir'rti; xai ai ^atffftikiSai' no.} yf auTei \iytuti 
 
 (iit TXX, iffttei St oiSiv, x \iyauiri. Plato in Apol. c. 7. p. 88. ed. Fiscber.
 
 120 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 tainty. There are, and have been, some religious, who have 
 acted madness, and pretended inspirations ; and when these 
 are destitute of a prophetic spirit, if they resolve to serve 
 themselves upon the pretences of it, they are disposed to the 
 imitation, if not to the sufferings, of madness; and it would 
 be a great folly to call such " Dei plenos," full of God, who 
 are no better than fantastic and mad people. 
 
 23. This we are sure of, that many illusions have come in 
 the likeness of visions, and absurd fancies under the pretence 
 of raptures ; and what some have called the spirit of pro- 
 phecy, hath been the spirit of lying ; and contemplation hath 
 been nothing but melancholy and unnatural lengths ; and 
 stillness of prayer hath been a mere dream and hypochon- 
 driacal devotion, and hath ended in pride or despair, or some 
 sottish and dangerous temptation. It is reported of Heron, 
 the monk, that having lived a retired, mortified, and religious 
 life, for many years together, at last he came to that habit of 
 austerity or singularity, that he refused the festival refection 
 and freer meals of Easter, and other solemnities, that he 
 might do more eminently than the rest, and spend his time 
 in greater abstractions and contemplations; but the devil, 
 taking advantage of the weakness of his melancholy and 
 unsettled spirit, gave him a transportation and an ecstasy, in 
 which he fancied himself to have attained so great perfection, 
 that he was as dear to God as a crowned martyr, and angels 
 would be his security for indemnity, though he threw himself 
 to the bottom of a well. He obeyed his fancy and tempta- 
 tion, did so, bruised himself to death, and died possessed 
 with a persuasion of the verity of that ecstasy and trans- 
 portation. 
 
 24. I will not say, that all violences and extravagances of 
 a religious fancy are illusions ; but I say, that they are all 
 unnatural, not hallowed by the warrant of a revelation, 
 nothing reasonable, nothing secure. I am not sure that 
 they ever consist with humility ; but it is confessed that 
 they are often produced by self-love, arrogancy, and the 
 great opinion others have of us. I will not judge the con- 
 dition of those persons who are said to have suffered these 
 extraordinaries ; for I know not the circumstances, or causes, 
 or attendants, or the effects, or whether the stories be true 
 that make report of them ; but I shall only advise, that we
 
 OF MEDITATION. 121 
 
 follow the intimation of our blessed Saviour, that " we sit 
 down in the lowest place, till the master of the feast comes, 
 and bids us sit up higher." If we entertain the inward man 
 in the purgative and illuminative way, that is, in actions of 
 repentance, virtue, and precise duty, that is the surest way 
 of uniting us to God, whilst it is done by faith and obedi- 
 ence ; and that also is love ; and in these peace and safety 
 dwell. And after we have done our work, it is not discretion 
 in a servant to hasten to his meal, and snatch at the refresh- 
 ment of visions, unions, and abstractions ; but first we must 
 gird ourselves, and wait upon the master, and not sit down 
 ourselves, till we all be called at the great supper of the 
 Lamb. 
 
 25. It was, therefore, an excellent desire of St. Bernard, 
 who was as likely as any to have such altitudes of specula- 
 tion, if God had really dispensed them to persons holy, fan- 
 tastic, and religious: " I pray God grant to me peace of 
 spirit, joy in the Holy Ghost, to compassionate others in the 
 midst of my mirth, to be charitable in simplicity, to rejoice 
 with them that rejoice, and to mourn with them that mourn ; 
 and with these I shall be content : other exaltations of devo- 
 tion I leave to apostles and apostolic men ; the high hills are 
 for the harts and the climbing goats ; the stony rocks and 
 the recesses of the earth, for the conies." It is more health- 
 ful and nutritive to dig the earth, and to eat of her fruits, 
 than to stare upon the greatest glories of the heavens, and 
 live upon the beams of the sun : so unsatisfying a thing is 
 rapture and transportation to the soul ; it often distracts the 
 faculties, but seldom does advantage piety, and is full of 
 danger in the greatest of its lustre. If ever a man be more 
 in love with God by such instruments, or more endeared to 
 virtue, or made more severe and watchful in his repentance, 
 it is an excellent grace and gift of God ; but then this is 
 nothing but the joys and comfort of ordinary meditation ; 
 those extraordinary, as they have no sense in them, so are not 
 pretended to be instruments of virtue, but are, like Jona- 
 than's arrows, shot beyond it, to signify the danger the man 
 is in towards whom such arrows are shot. But if the person 
 be made unquiet, inconstant, proud, pusillanimous, of high 
 opinion, pertinacious, and confident in uncertain judgments, 
 or desperate, it is certain they are temptations and illusions :
 
 122 OF MEDITATION. 
 
 so that, as all our duty consists in the ways of repentance 
 and acquist of virtue ; so there rests all our safety, and, by 
 consequence, all our solid joys ; and this is the effect of 
 ordinary, pious, and regular meditations. 
 
 26. If I mistake not, there is a temptation like this, under 
 another name, amongst persons whose religion hath less dis- 
 course and more fancy, and that is a familiarity with God ; 
 which, indeed, if it were rightly understood, is an affection 
 consequent to the illuminative way; that is, an act or an 
 effect of the virtue of religion and devotion, which consists 
 in prayers and addresses to God, lauds, and eucharists, and 
 hymns, and confidence of coming to the throne of grace, 
 upon assurance of God's veracity and goodness infinite : so 
 that familiarity with God, which is an affection of friendship, 
 is the intercourse of giving and receiving blessings and graces 
 respectively ; and it is produced by a holy life, or the being 
 in the state of grace, and is part of every man's inheritance 
 that is a friend of God. But when familiarity with God 
 shall be esteemed a privilege of singular and eminent persons, 
 not communicated to all the faithful, and is thought to be an 
 admission to a nearer intercourse of secrecy with God, it is 
 an effect of pride, and a mistake in judgment concerning the 
 very same thing which the old divines call the unitive way, 
 if themselves that claim it understood the terms of art and 
 the consequents of their own intentions. . 
 
 27. Only I shall observe one circumstance : That famili- 
 arity with God is nothing else but an admission to be of 
 God's family, the admission of a servant, or a son in minority, 
 and implies obedience, duty, and fear on our parts ; care and 
 providence, and love on God's part : and it is not the fa- 
 miliarity of sons, but the impudence of proud equals, to 
 express this pretended privilege in even, unmannerly, and 
 irreverent addresses and discourses : and it is a sure rule, 
 that whatsoever heights of piety, union, or familiarity, any 
 man pretends to, it is of the devil, unless the greater the 
 pretence be, the greater also be the humility of the man. 
 The highest flames are the most tremulous ; and so are the 
 most holy and eminent religious persons more full of awful- 
 ness, and fear, and modesty, and humility : so that, in true 
 divinity and right speaking, there is no such thing as the 
 unitive way of religion, save only in the effects of duty,
 
 OF MEDITATION. 123 
 
 obedience, and the expresses of the precise virtue of religion. 
 Meditations in order to a good life, let them be as exalted as 
 the capacity of the person and subject will endure, up to the 
 height of contemplation ; but if contemplation comes to be 
 a distinct thing, and something besides or beyond a distinct 
 degree of virtuous meditation, it is lost to all sense, and 
 religion, and prudence. Let no man be hasty to eat of the 
 fruits of paradise before his time. 
 
 28. And now I shall not need to enumerate the blessed 
 fruits of holy meditation ; for it is a grace that is instru- 
 mental to all effects, to the production of all virtues, and the 
 extinction of all vices ; and, by consequence, the inhabitation 
 of the Holy Ghost within us is the natural or proper emana- 
 tion from the frequent exercise of this duty ; only it hath 
 something particularly excellent besides its general influence : 
 for meditation is that part of prayer, which knits the soul to 
 its right object, and confirms and makes actual our intention 
 and devotion. Meditation is the tongue of the soul, and the 
 language of our spirit ; and our wandering thoughts in prayer 
 are but the neglects of meditation and recessions from that 
 duty; and according as we neglect meditation, so are our 
 prayers imperfect ; meditation being the soul of prayer, and 
 the intention of our spirit. But, in all other things, medita- 
 tion is the instrument and conveyance ; it habituates our 
 affections to heaven, it hath permanent content, it produces 
 constancy of purpose, despising of things below, inflamed 
 desires of virtue, love of God, self-denial, humility of under- 
 standing, and universal correction of our life and manners. 
 
 THE PRAYEK. 
 
 Holy and eternal Jesus, whose whole life and doctrine was a 
 perpetual sermon of holy life, a treasure of wisdom, and a 
 repository of Divine materials for meditation ; give me 
 grace to understand, diligence and attention to consider, 
 care to lay up, and carefulness to reduce to practice, all 
 those actions, discourses, and pious lessons, and intima- 
 tions by which thou didst expressly teach, or tacitly imply, 
 or mysteriously signify, our duty. Let my understanding 
 become as spiritual in its employment and purposes, as it 
 is immaterial in its nature ; fill my memory, as a vessel of
 
 124 THE DEATH OF THE INNOCENTS, 
 
 election, with remembrances and notions highly compunc- 
 tive, and greatly incentive of all the parts of sanctity. Let 
 thy Holy Spirit dwell in my soul, instructing my know- 
 ledge, sanctifying my thoughts, guiding my affections, 
 directing my will in the choice of virtue ; that it may be 
 the great employment of my life to meditate in thy law, 
 to study thy preceptive will, to understand even the 
 niceties and circumstantials of my duty ; that ignorance 
 may neither occasion a sin nor become a punishment. 
 Take from me all vanity of spirit, lightness of fancy, cu- 
 riosity and impertinency of inquiry, illusions of the devil 
 and fantastic deceptions : let my thoughts be as my reli- 
 gion, plain, honest, pious, simple, prudent, and charitable ; 
 of great employment and force to the production of virtues 
 and extermination of vice; but suffering no transportations 
 of sense and vanity, nothing greater than the capacities of 
 my soul, nothing that may minister to any intemperances 
 of spirit : but let me be wholly inebriated with love ; and 
 that love wholly spent in doing such actions as best please 
 thee, in. the conditions of my infirmity and the securities of 
 humility, till thou shalt please to draw the curtain, and 
 reveal thy interior beauties, in the kingdom of thine eternal 
 glories : which grant, for thy mercy's sake, O holy and 
 eternal Jesu. Amen. 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 
 Of the Death of the Holy Innocents, or the Babes of Beth- 
 lehem, and the Flight of Jesus into Egypt. 
 
 1. ALL this while Herod waited for the return of the wise 
 men, that they might give directions where the child did lie, 
 and his sword might find him out, with a certain and direct 
 execution. But " when he saw, that he was mocked of the 
 wise men, he was exceeding wroth." For it now began to 
 deserve his trouble, when his purposes, which were most 
 secret, began to be contradicted and diverted with a pre- 
 vention, as if they were resisted by an all-seeing and almighty 
 Providence. He began to suspect the hand of Heaven was 
 in it ; and saw there was nothing for his purposes to be
 
 AND FLIGHT OF JESUS INTO EGYPT. 125 
 
 acted, unless he could dissolve the golden chain of predesti- 
 nation. Herod believed the Divine oracles, foretelling that a 
 king should be born in Bethlehem ; and yet his ambition 
 had made him so stupid, that he attempted to cancel the 
 decree of Heaven. For, if he did not believe the prophecies, 
 why was he troubled ? If he did believe them, how could he 
 possibly hinder that event, which God had foretold himself 
 would certainly bring to pass ? 
 
 2. And, therefore, since God already had hindered him 
 from the executions of a distinguishing sword, he resolved to 
 send a sword of indiscrimination and confusion ; hoping, 
 that if he killed all the babes of Bethlehem, this young 
 king's reign also should soon determine. He, therefore, 
 " sent forth, and slew all the children that were in Beth- 
 lehem, and all the coasts thereof, from two years old and 
 under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired 
 of the wise men." For this execution was in the beginning 
 of the second year after Christ's nativity, as in all probability 
 we guess ; a not at the two years' end, as some suppose : be- 
 cause as his malice was subtle, so he intended it should be 
 secure ; and though he had been diligent in his inquiry, and 
 was near the time in his computation, yet he, that was never 
 sparing of the lives of others, would now, to secure his king- 
 dom, rather overact his severity for some months, than, by 
 doing execution but just to the tittle of his account, hazard 
 the escaping of the Messias. 
 
 3. This execution was sad, cruel, and universal : no 
 abatements made for the dire shriekings of the mothers, no 
 tender-hearted soldier was employed, no hard-hearted person 
 was softened by the weeping eyes and pity-begging looks of 
 those mothers, that wondered how it was possible any per- 
 son should hurt their pretty sucklings ; no connivances there, 
 no protections, or friendships, or considerations, or indul- 
 gences; but Herod caused, that his own child, which was at 
 nurse in the coasts of Bethlehem, should bleed to death : 
 which made Augustus Caesar to say, that, " in Herod's 
 house, it were better to be a hog than a child ;" b because the 
 custom of the nation did secure a hog from Herod's knife, but 
 
 Sic ait Glossa ordinaria ; sed Onuphrius in Fastis ait hanc caedem biennio 
 post Christum natum contigisse. 
 b Macrob. Saturnal. lib. ii. c. 4.
 
 126 THE DEATH OF THE INNOCENTS, 
 
 no religion could secure his child. The sword, being thus 
 made sharp by Herod's commission, killed fourteen thousand 
 pretty babes ; as the Greeks, in their calendar, and the Abys- 
 sines of Ethiopia, do commemorate in their offices of liturgy. 
 For Herod, crafty and malicious, that is, perfectly tyrant, 
 had caused all the children to be gathered together ; which 
 the credulous mothers, (supposing it had been to take ac- 
 count of their age and number, in order to some taxing,) 
 hindered not, but unwittingly suffered themselves and their 
 babes to be betrayed to an irremediable butchery. 
 
 4. " Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy 
 the prophet, saying, Lamentation, and weeping, and great 
 mourning ; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not 
 be comforted." All the synonymas of sadness were little 
 enough to express this great weeping, when fourteen thou- 
 sand mothers, in one day, saw their pretty babes pouring 
 forth their blood into that bosom whence, not long before, 
 they had sucked milk ; and, instead of those pretty smiles, 
 which use to entertain the fancy and dear affections of their 
 mothers, nothing but affrighting shrieks, and then ghastly 
 looks. The mourning was great, like " the mourning in the 
 valley of Hinnom, and there was no comforter;" their sorrow 
 was too big to be cured, till it should lie down alone and 
 rest with its own weariness. 
 
 5. But the malice of Herod went also into the hill 
 country ; and hearing that of John, the son of Zacharias, 
 great things were spoken, by which he was designed to a 
 great ministry about this young prince, he attempted in him 
 also to rescind the prophecies, and sent a messenger of 
 death towards him ; but the mother's care had been early 
 with him, and sent him into desert places, where he con- 
 tinued till the time appointed " of his manifestation unto 
 Israel." But, as the children of Bethlehem died in the place 
 of Christ, so did the father of the Baptist die for his child. 
 For " Herod slew Zacharias between the temple and the 
 altar," because he refused to betray his son to the fury 
 
 c Quails apud Lucianum describitur Tyrannicid. '*,">; J ' ?*, fyevfa* 
 xgnrvtur, i revs rvgattevftitovi \x,x.'<nrrui , a revs infiev^tvetreis fefiui, i revs lf>r,eus 
 antf^un, e itvfyigetn rolf ydfteif Itciity et'i vruflitoi ivr.yairf KO.I t" rms fflfayai, xai 
 7 rms fvyai, KO.I xfn/tiirv* afxififiis,ai f>dg /, *aJ vfytis, &C. Bipont. Vol. IV. 
 p. 311.
 
 AND FLIGHT OF JESUS INTO EGYPT. 127 
 
 of that rabid bear. d Though some persons, very eminent 
 amongst the stars of the primitive church, report a tradition, 8 
 that a place being separated in the temple for virgins, Zacha- 
 rias suffered the mother of our Lord to abide there after the 
 birth of her holy Son, affirming her still to be a virgin ; and 
 that for this reason, not Herod, but the scribes and pharisees, 
 did kill Zacharias. 
 
 6. Tertullian reports/ that the blood of Zacharias had so 
 besmeared the stones of the pavement, which was the altar 
 on which the good old priest was sacrificed, that no art or 
 industry could wash the tincture out, the dye and guilt being 
 both indelible : as if, because God did intend to exact of that 
 nation " all the blood of righteous persons, from Abel to 
 Zacharias," who was the last of the martyrs of the synagogue, 
 he would leave a character of their guilt in their eyes, to 
 upbraid their irreligion, cruelty, and infidelity. Some there 
 are, who affirm these words of our blessed Saviour not to 
 relate to any Zacharias who had been already slain, but to 
 be a prophecy of the last of all the martyrs of the Jews, who 
 should be slain immediately before the destruction of the 
 last temple and the dissolution of the nation. Certain it is, 
 that such a Zacharias, the son of Baruch, (if we may believe 
 Josephus,) 8 was slain in the middle of the temple, a little 
 before it was destroyed ; and it is agrejeable to the nature of 
 the prophecy and reproof here made by our blessed Saviour, 
 that (from Abel to Zacharias) should take in " all the 
 righteous blood" from first to last, till the iniquity was com- 
 plete ; and it is not imaginable that the blood of our blessed 
 Lord, and of St. James their bishop, (for whose death many 
 of themselves thought God destroyed their city,) should be 
 left out of the account, which yet would certainly be left out, 
 if any other Zacharias should be meant than he whom they 
 last slew : and in proportion to this, Cyprian de Valera ex- 
 pounds that, which we read in the past tense, to signify the 
 future, " ye slew," i. e. " shall slay ;" according!' to the style 
 often used by prophets, and as the aorist of an uncertain 
 signification will bear. But the first great instance of the 
 
 d Sic Cbrysost. et Petrus Martyr, episc. Alexandr. Niceph. et Cedrenus. 
 e Sic aiunt Origen. tract. 23. in Evang. Matth. S. Basil. Horoil. de Humana 
 Christ! Generatione. Nyssen. in Natali Cbristi. Cyril, adv. Anthropomorphitas. 
 f In Scorpiaco, cap. 8. 8 Lib. iv.
 
 128 THE DEATH OF THE INNOCENTS, 
 
 Divine vengeance for these executions was upon Herod, 
 who, in very few years after, was smitten of God with so 
 many plagues and tortures, that himself alone seemed like an 
 hospital of the incurabili : for he was tormented with a soft 
 slow fire, like that of burning iron or the cinders of yew, in 
 his body ; in his bowels, with intolerable colics and ulcers ; 
 in his natural parts, with worms ; in his feet, with gout ; in 
 his nerves, with convulsions, difficulty of breathing ; and out 
 of divers parts of his body issued out so impure and ulcerous 
 a steam, that the loathsomeness, pain, and indignation, made 
 him once to snatch a knife, with purpose to have killed him- 
 self; but that he was prevented by a nephew of his, that 
 stood there in his attendance. 
 
 7. But as the flesh of beasts grows callous by stripes and 
 the pressure of the yoke ; so did the heart of Herod by the 
 loads of Divine vengeance. God began his hell here ; and 
 the pains of hell never made any man less impious: for 
 Herod, perceiving that he must now die, h first put to death 
 his son Antipater, under pretence that he would have 
 poisoned him ; and that the last scene of his life might, for 
 pure malice and exalted spite, outdo all the rest, because 
 he believed the Jewish nation would rejoice at his death, he 
 assembled all the nobles of the people, and put them in 
 prison, giving in charge to his sister Salome, that, when he 
 was expiring his last, all the nobility should be slain, that 
 his death might be lamented with a perfect and universal 
 sorrow. 
 
 8. But God, that brings to naught the counsels of wicked 
 princes, turned the design against the intendment of Herod ; 
 for when he was dead, and could not call his sister to account 
 for disobeying his most bloody and unrighteous commands, 
 she released all the imprisoned and despairing gentlemen, 
 and made the day of her brother's death a perfect jubilee, 
 a day of joy, such as was that when the nation was delivered 
 from the violence of Haman, in the days of Purim. 
 
 9. And, all this while, God had provided a sanctuary for 
 the holy child, Jesus. For God seeing the secret purposes 
 of blood which Herod had, sent his angel,' " who appeared 
 to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young 
 
 h Atjyai ycto ai xo7rai u^roi^aftittit >.iatro;. ' Mattb. ii. 13.
 
 AND FLIGHT OF JESUS INTO EGYPT. 129 
 
 Child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there 
 until I bring thee word ; for Herod will seek the young Child, 
 to destroy him. Then he arose, and took the young Child 
 and his mother, by night, and departed into Egypt." And 
 they made their first abode in Hermopolis, k in the country of 
 Thebais ; whither, when they first arrived, the child Jesus, 
 being by design or providence carried into a temple, all the 
 statues of the idol-gods fell down, like Dagon at the presence 
 of the ark, and suffered their timely and just dissolution and 
 dishonour, according to the prophecy of Isaiah : " Behold, 
 the Lord shall come into Egypt, and the idols of Egypt shall 
 be moved at his presence." 1 And in the life of the prophet 
 Jeremy, written by .fcpiphanius, it is reported, " that he told 
 the Egyptian priests, that then their idols should be broken 
 in pieces, when a holy virgin, with her child, should enter 
 into their country : " which prophecy possibly might be the 
 cause that the Egyptians did, besides their vanities, worship 
 also an infant in a manger, and a virgin in her bed. 
 
 10. From Hermopolis to Maturea went these holy pil- 
 grims, in pursuance of their safety and provisions ; where, it 
 was reported, they dwelt in a garden of balsam, till Joseph, 
 being, at the end of seven years (as it is commonly believed), 
 ascertained by an angel of the death of Herod, and com- 
 manded to return to the land of Israel, he was obedient to 
 the heavenly vision, and returned. But hearing that Arche- 
 laus did reign in the place of his father, and knowing that 
 the cruelty and ambition of Herod was hereditary, or entailed 
 upon Archelaus, being also warned to turn aside into the 
 parts of Galilee, which was of a distinct jurisdiction, go- 
 verned indeed by one of Herod's sons, but not by Archelaus, 
 thither he diverted ; and there that holy family remained in 
 the city of Nazarelh, whence the holy Child had the appella- 
 tive of a Nazarene. 
 
 k Euseb. de Demonstr. c. 20. S. Athanas. lib. de Incarnat. Verbi. Pallad. 
 in Vita S. Apollon. 
 
 1 Isa. xix. 1. Dorotheas in Sjnopsi. Pallad. in Vita S. Apollon. 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 130 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE DEATH 
 
 Ad SECTION VI. 
 
 Considerations upon the Death of the Innocents, and the Flight 
 of the Holy Jesus into Egypt. 
 
 1. HEROD, having called the wise men, and received in- 
 formation of their design, and the circumstances of the child, 
 pretended religion too, and desired them to bring him word,- 
 when they had found the babe, " that he might come and 
 worship him ;" meaning to make a sacrifice of him to whom 
 he should pay his adoration ; and, instead of investing the 
 young Prince with a royal purple, he would have stained his 
 swaddling-bands with his blood. It is ever dangerous when 
 a wicked prince pretends religion ; his design is then foulest, 
 by how much it needs to put on a fairer outside ; but it was 
 an early policy in the world, and it concerned men's interests 
 to seem religious, when they thought that to be so was an 
 abatement of great designs. When Jezebel designed the 
 robbing and destroying Naboth, she sent to the elders to 
 proclaim a fast ; for the external and visible remonstrances of 
 religion leave in the spirits of men a great reputation of the 
 seeming person, and therefore they will not rush into a 
 furious sentence against his actions, at least not judge them 
 with prejudice against the man towards whom they are so 
 fairly prepared, but do some violence to their own under- 
 standing, and either disbelieve their own reason, or excuse 
 the fact, or think it but an error, or a less crime, or the inci- 
 dences of humanity ; or, however, are so long in decreeing 
 against him whom they think to be religious, that the rumour 
 is abated, or the stream of indignation is diverted by other 
 laborious arts intervening before our zeal is kindled ; and so 
 the person is unjudged, or, at least, the design secured. 
 
 2. But in this, human policy was exceedingly infatuated : 
 and though Herod had trusted his design to no keeper but 
 himself, and had pretended fair, having religion for the word, 
 and " called the wise men privately," and intrusted them 
 with no employment but a civil request, an account of the 
 success of their journey, which they had no reason, or desire, 
 to conceal ; yet his heart was opened to the eye of Heaven, 
 and the sun was not more visible than his dark purpose was
 
 OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS, &C. 131 
 
 to God ; and it succeeded accordingly : the Child was sent 
 away, the wise men warned not to return, Herod was mocked 
 and enraged ; and so his craft became foolish and vain : and 
 so are all counsels intended against God, or any thing of 
 which he himself hath undertaken the protection. For, 
 although we understand not the reasons of security, because 
 we see not that admirable concentring of infinite things in 
 the Divine Providence, whereby God brings his purposes to 
 act by ways unlocked for, and sometimes contradictory; yet 
 the public and perpetual experience of the world hath given 
 continual demonstrations, that all evil counsels have come to 
 naught ; that the succeeding of an impious design is no ar- 
 gument that the man is prosperous ; that the curse is then 
 surest when his fortune spreads the largest ; that the contra- 
 diction and impossibilities of deliverance to pious persons are 
 but an opportunity and engagement for God to do wonders, 
 and to glorify his power, and to exalt his mercy, by the 
 instances of miraculous or extraordinary events. And as the 
 afflictions happening to good men are alleviated by the 
 support of God's good Spirit, and enduring them here are 
 but consignations to an honourable amends hereafter ; so the 
 succeeding prosperities of fortunate impiety, when they meet 
 with punishment in the next, or in the third age, or in the 
 deletion of a people five ages after, are the greatest argu- 
 ments of God's providence, who keeps wrath >tn store, and 
 forgets not to " do judgment for all them that are oppressed 
 with wrong." It was laid up with God, and was perpetually 
 in his eye, being the matter of a lasting, durable, and unre- 
 mitted anger. 
 
 3. But God had care of the holy Child; he sent his 
 angel to warn Joseph, with the Babe and his mother, to fly 
 into Egypt. Joseph and Mary instantly arise ; and without 
 inquiry how they shall live there, or when they shall return, 
 or how be secured, or what accommodations they shall have 
 in their journey, at the same hour of the night begin the 
 pilgrimage with the cheerfulness of obedience, and the se- 
 curities of faith, and the confidence of hope, and the joys of 
 love, knowing themselves to be recompensed for all the 
 trouble they could endure ; that they were instruments of the 
 safety of the holy Jesus ; that they then were serving God ; 
 that they were encircled with the securities of the Divine
 
 132 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE DEATH 
 
 Providence : and, in these dispositions, all places were alike ; 
 for every region was a paradise, where they were in company 
 with Jesus. And, indeed, that man wants many degrees of 
 faith and prudence who is solicitous for the support of his 
 necessities, when he is doing the commandment of God. a 
 If he commands thee to offer a sacrifice, himself will provide 
 a lamb, or enable thee to find one ; and he would remove 
 thee into a state of separation, where thy body needs no 
 supplies of provision, if he meant thou shouldest serve him 
 without provisions. He will certainly take away thy need, 
 or satisfy it; b he will feed thee himself, as he did the 
 Israelites ; or take away thy hunger, as he did to Moses ; or 
 send ravens to feed thee, as he did to Elias ; or make chari- 
 table people minister to thee, as the widow to Elijah ; or give 
 thee his own portion, as he maintained the Levites ; or make 
 thine enemies to pity thee, as the Assyrians did the captive 
 Jews. For whatsoever the world hath, and whatsoever can 
 be conveyed by wonder or by providence, all that is thy 
 security for provisions, so long as thou doest the work of 
 God. And remember, that the assurance of blessing, and 
 health, and salvation, is not made by doing what we list, or 
 being where we desire, but by doing God's will, and being in 
 the place of his appointment. We may be safe in Egypt, if 
 we be there in obedience to God ; and we may perish among 
 the babes of Bethlehem, if we be there by our own election. 
 4. Joseph and Mary did not argue against the angel's 
 message, because they had a confidence of their charge, who, 
 with the breath of his mouth, could have destroyed Herod, 
 though he had been abetted with all the legions marching 
 under the Roman eagles ; but they, like the two cherubims 
 about the propitiatory, took the child between them, and 
 fled, giving way to the fury of persecution, which possibly, 
 when the materials are withdrawn, might expire, and die like 
 fire, which else would rage for ever. Jesus fled, undertook a 
 sad journey, in which the roughness of the ways, his own 
 tenderness, the youth of his mother, the old age of his sup- 
 posed father, the smallness of their viaticum and accommo- 
 dation for their voyage, the no-kindred they were to go to, 
 
 * rtv; Qieivs t%t rif Qikovst ag'iffTti* ficttrmrit i;0/ So^a/f. 
 
 Eurip. llelend. 766. 
 b Heb. xiii. 5, 6.
 
 OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS, &C. 133 
 
 hopeless of comforts and exterior supplies, were so many cir- 
 cumstances of poverty, and lesser strokes of the persecution ; 
 things that himself did choose to demonstrate the verity of 
 his nature, the infirmity of his person, the humility of his 
 spirit, the austerity of his undertaking, the burden of his 
 charge ; and by which he did teach us the same virtues he 
 then expressed, and also consigned this permission to all his 
 disciples in future ages, that they also may fly from their 
 persecutors, when the case is so that their work is not done ; 
 that is, they may glorify God with their lives more than with 
 their death. And of this they are ascertained by the argu- 
 ments of prudent account : for sometimes we are called to 
 glorify God by dying, and the interest of the Church and the 
 faith of many may be concerned in it ; then we must abide 
 by it. In other cases it is true that Demosthenes said, in 
 apology for his own escaping from a lost field, " A man that 
 runs away, may fight again." And St. Paul made use of a 
 guard of soldiers to rescue him from the treachery of the 
 Jewish rulers; and of a basket to escape from the inquisition 
 of the governor of Damascus ; and the primitive Christians, 
 of grots and subterraneous retirements ; and St. Athanasius, 
 of a fair lady's house ; and others, of deserts and graves ; as 
 knowing it was no shame to fly, when their Master himself 
 had fled, that his time and his work might be fulfilled ; and 
 when it was, he then laid his life down. 
 
 5. It is hard to set down particular rules that may inde- 
 finitely guide all persons in the stating of their own case ; 
 because all things that depend upon circumstances are alter- 
 able unto infinite. But as God's glory and the good of the 
 Church are the great considerations to be carried before us all 
 the way, and in proportions to them we are to determine and 
 judge our questions ; so also our infirmities are allowable in 
 the scrutiny : for I doubt not but God intended it a mercy 
 and a compliance with human weakness when he gave us 
 this permission, as well as it was a design to secure the 
 opportunities of his service, and the consummation of his 
 own work by us. And since our fears, and the incommodi- 
 ties of flight, and the sadness of exile, and the insecurities 
 and inconveniences of a strange and new abode, are part of
 
 134 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE DEATH 
 
 the persecution provided that God's glory be not certainly 
 and apparently neglected, nor the Church evidently scan- 
 dalized by our flight all interpretations of the question in 
 favour of ourselves, and the declension of that part which 
 may tempt us to apostasy, or hazard our confidence, and the 
 choosing the lesser part of the persecution, is not against the 
 rule of faith, and always hath in it less glory, but oftentimes 
 more security. 
 
 6. But thus far Herod's ambition transported him, even 
 to resolutions of murder of the highest person, the most 
 glorious and the most innocent, upon earth ; and it represents 
 that passion to be the most troublesome and vexatious thing 
 that can afflict the sons of men. Virtue hath not half so 
 much trouble in it ; it sleeps quietly, without startings and 
 affrighting fancies ; it looks cheerfully ; smiles with much 
 serenity ; and, though it laughs not often, yet it is ever de- 
 lightful in the apprehensions of some faculty ; it fears no 
 man, nor no thing, nor is it discomposed ; and hath no con- 
 cernments in the great alterations of the world, and enter- 
 tains death like a friend, and reckons the issues of it as the 
 greatest of its hopes. But ambition is full of distractions : it 
 teems with stratagems, as Rebecca with struggling twins ; 
 and is swelled with expectation, as with a tympany ; and 
 sleeps sometimes, as the wind in a storm, still and quiet for 
 a minute, that it may burst out into an impetuous blast, till 
 the cordage of his heart-strings crack ; fears, when none is 
 nigh ; and prevents things which never had intention ; and 
 falls under the inevitability of such accidents, which either 
 could not be foreseen or not prevented. It is an infinite 
 labour to make a man's self miserable ; and the utmost 
 acquist is so goodly a purchase that he makes his days full 
 of sorrow, to enjoy the troubles of a three years' reign ; for 
 Herod lived but three years, or five at the most, after the 
 flight of Jesus into Egypt. And therefore there is no greater 
 unreasonableness in the world, than in the designs of am- 
 bition : for it makes the present certainly miserable, un- 
 satisfied, troublesome, and discontent, for the uncertain 
 acquist of an honour, which nothing can secure ; and besides 
 a thousand possibilities of miscarrying, it relies upon no 
 greater certainty than our life ; and when we are dead all the 
 world sees who was the fool. But it is a strange caitiveness
 
 OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS, &C. 135 
 
 and baseness of disposition of men, so furiously and un- 
 satiably to run after perishing and uncertain interests, in 
 defiance of all the reason and religion of the world ; and yet 
 to have no appetite to such excellences which satisfy reason, 
 and content the Spirit, and create great hopes, and ennoble 
 our expectation, and are advantages to communities of men 
 and public societies, and which all wise men teach, and all 
 religion commands. 
 
 7. And it is not amiss to observe, how Herod vexed him- 
 self extremely upon a mistake. d The child Jesus was born a 
 King, but it was a King of all the world ; not confined within 
 the limits of a province, like the weaker beauties of a torch, 
 to shine in one room ; but, like the sun, his empire was over 
 all the world ; and if Herod would have become but his tribut- 
 ary, and paid him the acknowledgments of his Lord, he 
 should have had better conditions than under Caesar, and yet 
 have been as absolute in his own Jewry as he was before : e 
 " His kingdom was not of this world ; " and he, that gives 
 heavenly kingdoms to all his servants, would not have stooped 
 to have taken up Herod's petty coronet. But as it is a very 
 vanity which ambition seeks, so it is a shadow that disturbs 
 and discomposes all its motions and apprehensions. 
 
 8. And the same mistake caused calamities to descend 
 upon the Church ; for some of the persecutions commenced 
 upon pretence Christianity was an enemy to government : 
 but the pretence was infinitely unreasonable, and therefore 
 had the fate of senseless allegations, it disbanded presently ; 
 for no external accident did so incorporate the excellence of 
 Christ's religion into the hearts of men, as the innocency of 
 the men, their inoffensive deportment, the modesty of their 
 designs, their great humility and obedience, a life expressly 
 in enmity and contestation against secular ambition. And it 
 is to be feared, that the mingling human interests with 
 religion will deface the image Christ hath stamped upon it. 
 
 d Dubia pro certis solent timere reges. Senec. (Edip. 700. 
 e Hostis Herodes impie, 
 
 Christum venire quid times 1 
 
 Non auferet terrestria, 
 
 Qui regna dat coelestia. 
 
 Qui sceptra duro ssevus imperio regit, 
 
 Timet tiinentes, metus in authorem cadit. Senec. (Edip. 705.
 
 136 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE DEATH 
 
 Certain it is, the medal is much abated by so impure alloy, 
 while the Christian prince serves his end of ambition, and 
 bears arms upon his neighbour's country, for the service of 
 religion, making Christ's kingdom to invade Herod's rights : 
 and, in the state ecclesiastical, secular interests have so deep 
 a portion, that there are snares laid to tempt a persecution, 
 and men are invited to sacrilege/ while the revenues of a 
 church are a fair fortune for a prince. I make no scruple to 
 find fault with painters that picture the poor saints with rich 
 garments ; for, though they deserved better, yet they had but 
 poor ones : and some have been tempted to cheat the saint, 
 not out of ill-will to his sanctity, but love to his shrine, and 
 to the beauty of the clothes with which some imprudent per- 
 sons have, of old time, dressed their images. So it is in the 
 fate of the Church : persecution and the robes of Christ were 
 her portion and her clothing ; and when she is dressed up in 
 gawdy fortunes, it is no more than she deserves ; but yet 
 sometimes it is occasion, that the devil cheats her of her 
 holiness, and the men of the world sacrilegiously cheat her of 
 her riches : and then, when God hath reduced her to that 
 poverty he first promised and intended to her, the persecu- 
 tion ceases, and sanctity returns, and God curses the sacri- 
 lege, and stirs up men's minds to religious donatives ; and all 
 is well, till she grows rich again. And if it be dangerous in 
 any man to be rich, and discomposes his steps in his journey 
 to eternity ; it is not then so proportionable to the analogy of 
 Christ's poverty, and the inheritance of the Church, to be 
 sedulous in acquiring great temporalities, and putting princes 
 in jealousy, and states into care for securities, lest all the 
 temporal should run into ecclesiastical possession. 
 
 9. If the Church have, by the active piety of a credulous, 
 a pious, and less observant age, been endowed with great 
 possessions, she hath rules enough, and poor enough, and 
 necessities enough, to dispend what she hath with advan- 
 tages to religion : but then, all she gets by it is the trouble 
 of an unthankful, a suspected, and unsatisfying dispensation ; 
 and the Church is made, by evil persons, a scene of ambition
 
 OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS, &C. 137 
 
 and stratagem ; g and to get a German bishopric is to be a 
 prince ; and to defend with niceness and suits of law every 
 custom or lesser rite, even to the breach of charity and the 
 scandal of religion, is called a duty : and every single person 
 is bound to forgive injuries, and to quit his right rather than 
 his charity ; but if it is not a duty in the Church also, in 
 them whose life should be excellent to the degree of ex- 
 ample, I would fain know, if there be not greater care taken 
 to secure the ecclesiastical revenue than the public charity 
 and the honour of religion in the strict piety of the clergy ; 
 for as the not engaging in suits may occasion bold people to 
 wrong the Church, so the necessity of engaging is occasion of 
 losing charity, and of great scandal. I find not fault with 
 a free revenue of the Church ; it is, in some sense, necessary 
 to governors, and to preserve the consequents of their author- 
 ity : but I represent, that such things are occasion of much 
 mischief to the Church, and less holiness ; and, in all cases, 
 respect should be had to the design of Christianity, to the 
 prophecies of Jesus, to the promised lot of the Church, to the 
 dangers of riches, to the excellences, and advantages, and 
 rewards of poverty ; and if the Church have enough to per- 
 form all her duties and obligations cheerfully, let her, of all 
 societies, be soonest content. If she have plenty, let her use 
 it temperately and charitably ; if she have not, let her not be 
 querulous and troublesome. But however it would be thought 
 upon, that, though in judging the quantum of the Church's 
 portion, the world thinks every thing too much, yet we must 
 be careful we do not judge every thing too little ; and if our 
 fortune be safe between envy and contempt, it is much mercy. 
 If it be despicable, it is safe for ecclesiastics, though it may 
 be accidentally inconvenient or less profitable to others ; but 
 if it be great, public experience hath made remonstrance 
 that it mingles with the world, and dirties those fingers 
 which are instrumental in consecration and the more solemn 
 rites of Christianity. 
 
 s Vide quae dixit Ammian. Marcell. lib. xvii. ; et Epistolas S. Gregorii 
 M. lib. iv. ep. 32, 34, 36; et lib. vi. ep. 30; lib. vii. indict. 1, ep. 30; et 
 Concil. Africanum, quo monitus est Caelestinus papa, Ne fumosum typhum 
 seculi in ecclesiam, quie lucem simplicitatis et Immilitatis diem Deum videre 
 cupientibus praefert, videatnur inducere.
 
 138 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE DEATH 
 
 10. Jesus fled from the persecution ; as he did not stand 
 it out, so he did not stand out against it. He was careful to 
 transmit no precedent or encouragement of resisting tyran- 
 nous princes, when they offer violence to religion and our 
 lives. He would not stand disputing for privileges, nor 
 calling in auxiliaries from the Lord of Hosts, who could have 
 spared him many legions of angels, every single spirit being 
 able to have defeated all Herod's power ; but he knew it was 
 a hard lesson to learn patience, and all the excuses in the 
 world would be sought out to discourage such a doctrine, by 
 which we are taught to die, or lose all we have, or suffer 
 inconveniences, at the will of a tyrant : we need no authentic 
 examples, much less doctrines, to invite men to war, from 
 which we see Christian princes cannot be restrained with the 
 engagements and peaceful theorems of an excellent and a 
 holy religion, nor subjects kept from rebelling by the interests 
 of all religions in the world, nor by the necessities and rea- 
 sonableness of obedience, nor the endearments of all public 
 societies of men ; one word, or an intimation from Christ, 
 would have sounded an alarm, and put us into postures of 
 defence, when all Christ's excellent sermons, and rare exem- 
 plar actions, cannot tie our hands. But it is strange now, 
 that, of all men in the world, Christians should be such 
 fighting people, or that Christian subjects should lift up a 
 thought against a Christian prince, when they had no intima- 
 tion of encouragement from their Master, but many from him 
 to endear obedience, and humility, and patience, and charity ; 
 and these four make up the whole analogy, and represent the 
 chief design and meaning, of Christianity, in its moral 
 constitution. 
 
 11. But Jesus, when himself was safe, could also have 
 secured the poor babes of Bethlehem, with thousands of 
 diversions and avocations of Herod's purposes, or by dis- 
 covering his own escape in some safe manner, not unknown 
 to the Divine wisdom ; but yet it did not so please God. 
 He is Lord of his creatures, and hath absolute dominion over 
 our lives, and he had an end of glory to serve upon these 
 babes, and an end of justice upon Herod : and to the children 
 he made such compensation, that they had no reason to com- 
 plain that they were so soon made stars, when they shone
 
 OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS, &C. 139 
 
 in their little orbs and participations of eternity : for so the 
 sense of the Church 11 hath been, that they having died the 
 death of martyrs, though incapable of making the choice, 
 God supplied the defects of their will by his own entertain- 
 ment of the thing ; that as the misery and their death, so 
 also their glorification, might have the same author in the 
 same manner of causality, even by a peremptory and uncon- 
 ditioned determination in these particulars. This sense is 
 pious, and nothing unreasonable, considering that all circum- 
 stances of the thing make the case particular ; but the imma- 
 ture death of other infants is a sadder story : for though I 
 have no warrant or thought that it is ill with them after 
 death, and in what manner or degree of well-being it is, 
 there is no revelation ; yet I am not of opinion that the 
 securing of so low a condition as theirs, in all reason, is like 
 to be, will make recompense, or is an equal blessing with 
 the possibilities of such an eternity as is proposed to them 
 who, in the use of reason and a holy life, glorify God with a 
 free obedience ; and if it were otherwise, it were no blessing 
 to live till the use of reason ; and fools and babes were in 
 the best, because in the securest, condition, and certain ex- 
 pectation of equal glories. 
 
 12. As soon as Herod was dead (for the Divine vengeance 
 waited his own time for his arrest), the angel presently brought 
 Joseph word. The holy family was full of content and indif- 
 ference, not solicitous for return, not distrustful of the Divine 
 providence, full of poverty, and sanctity, and content, waiting 
 God's time, at the return of which God delayed not to recall 
 them from exile ; " out of Egypt he called his Son," and 
 directed Joseph's fear and course, that he should divert to a 
 place in the jurisdiction of Philip, where the heir of Herod's 
 cruelty, Archelaus, had nothing to do. And this very series 
 of providence and care God expresses to all his sons by 
 adoption ; and will determine the time, and set bounds to 
 every persecution, and punish the instruments, and ease our 
 pains, and refresh our sorrows, and give quietness to our 
 fears, and deliverance from our troubles, and sanctify it all, 
 
 h ./Etas necdum habilis ad pugnam, idonea ezstitit ad coronam ; et ut 
 appareret innocentes esse qui propter Christum necantur, infantia innocens 
 occisa est. S. Cyprian. Athenagoras dixit infantes resurrecturos, sed noa 
 ventures in judiciunu
 
 140 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE DEATH, &C. 
 
 and give a crown at last, and all in his good time, if we wait 
 the coming of the angel, and in the mean time do our duty 
 with care, and sustain our temporals with indifference : and 
 in all our troubles and displeasing accidents we may call to 
 mind that God, by his holy and most reasonable providence, 
 hath so ordered it, that the spiritual advantages we may 
 receive from the holy use of such incommodities are of great 
 recompense and interest ; and that, in such accidents, the 
 holy Jesus, having gone before us in precedent, does go 
 along with us by love and fair assistances ; and that makes 
 the present condition infinitely more eligible than the great- 
 est splendour of secular fortune. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O blessed and eternal God, who didst suffer thy holy Son to 
 fly from the violence of an enraged prince, and didst choose 
 to defend him in the ways of his infirmity by hiding him- 
 self, and a voluntary exile ; be thou a defence to all thy 
 faithful people, whenever persecution arises against them ; 
 send them the ministry of angels to direct them into ways 
 of security, and let thy holy Spirit guide them in the paths 
 of sanctity, and let thy providence continue in custody over 
 their persons, till the times of refreshment and the day of 
 redemption shall return. Give, O Lord, to thy whole 
 Church, sanctity and zeal, and the confidences of a holy 
 faith, boldness of confession, humility, content, and re- 
 signation of spirit, generous contempt of the world, and 
 unmingled desires of thy glory and the edification of thy 
 elect; that no secular interests disturb her duty, or dis- 
 compose her charity, or depress her hopes, or, in any 
 unequal degree, possess her affections and pollute her 
 spirit: but preserve her from the snares of the world and 
 the devil, from the rapine and greedy desires of sacrilegious 
 persons ; and, in all conditions, whether of affluence or 
 want, may she still promote the interests of religion : that 
 when plenteousness is within her palaces, and peace in her 
 walls, that condition may then be best for her ; and when 
 she is made as naked as Jesus to his passion, then poverty 
 may be best for her : that, in all estates, she may glorify 
 thee ; and, in all accidents and changes, thou inayest
 
 OF THE DISPUTATION WITH THE DOCTORS. 141 
 
 sanctify and bless her, and at last bring her to the eternal 
 riches and abundances of glory, where no persecution shall 
 disturb her rest. Grant this for sweet Jesus' sake, who 
 suffered exile and hard journeys, and all the inconveniences 
 of a friendless person, in a strange province; to whom, 
 with thee and the eternal Spirit, be glory for ever, and 
 blessing in all generations of the world, and for ever and 
 ever. Amen. 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 
 Of the younger Years of Jesus, and his Disputation with 
 the Doctors in the Temple. 
 
 } . FROM the return of this holy family to Judaea, and their 
 habitation in Nazareth, till the blessed child Jesus was twelve 
 years of age, we have nothing transmitted to us out of any 
 authentic record ; but that they went to Jerusalem, every 
 year, at the feast of the Passover. And when Jesus was 
 twelve years old, and was in the holy city, attending upon 
 the paschal rites and solemn sacrifices of the law, his parents, 
 having fulfilled their days of festivity, went homeward, sup- 
 posing the Child had been in the caravan, among his friends; 
 and so they erred for the space of a whole day's journey ; 
 " and when they sought him, and found him not, they re- 
 turned to Jerusalem," full of fears and sorrow. 
 
 2. No fancy can imagine the doubts, the apprehensions, 
 the possibilities of mischief, and the tremblings of heart, 
 which the holy Virgin-mother felt thronging about her fancy 
 and understanding, but such a person who hath been tempted 
 to the danger of a violent fear and transportation, by appre- 
 hension of the loss of a hope greater than a miracle ; her 
 discourses with herself could have nothing of distrust, but 
 much of sadness and wonder; and the indetermination of 
 her thoughts was a trouble great as the passion of her love. 
 Possibly an angel might have carried him, she knew not 
 whither : or, it may be, the son of Herod had gotten the prey 
 which his cruel father missed ; or he was sick, or detained 
 out of curiosity and wonder, or any thing but what was right.
 
 142 OF THE DISPUTATION WITH THE DOCTORS. 
 
 And by this time she was come to Jerusalem ; and having 
 spent three days in her sad and holy pursuit of her lost 
 jewel, despairing of the prosperous event of any human dili- 
 gence, as, in all other cases, she had accustomed, she made 
 her address to God ; and entering into the temple to pray, 
 God, that knew her desires, prevented her with the blessings 
 of goodness ; and there her sorrow was changed into joy and 
 wonder ; for there she found her holy Son, " sitting in the 
 midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them 
 questions." 
 
 3. "And, when they saw him, they were amazed," and 
 so were "all that heard him, at his understanding and an- 
 swers ;" beyond his education, beyond his experience, beyond 
 his years, and even beyond the common spirits of the best 
 men, discoursing up to the height of a prophet, with the 
 clearness of an angel, and the infallibility of inspiration : for 
 here it was verified, in the highest and most literal significa- 
 tion, that, "out of the mouths of babes God had ordained 
 strength ;" but this was the strength of argument, and science 
 of the highest mysteries of religion and secret philosophy. 
 
 4. Glad were the parents of the Child to find him illus- 
 trated with a miracle, concerning which, when he had given 
 them such an account, which they understood not, but yet 
 Mary laid up in her heart, as that this was part of his em- 
 ployment and his Father's business, " he returned with them 
 to Nazareth, and was subject to his parents ;" where he lived 
 in all holiness, and humility, shewing great signs of wisdom, 
 endearing himself to all that beheld his conversation ; did 
 nothing less than might become the great expectation which 
 his miraculous birth had created of him; for " he increased 
 in wisdom and stature, and favour with God and man," still 
 growing in proportion to his great beginnings to a miraculous 
 excellence of grace, sweetness of demeanour, and excellence 
 of understanding. 
 
 5. They that love to serve God in hard questions, use to 
 dispute whether Christ did truly, or in appearance only, in- 
 crease in wisdom. For being personally united to the Word, 
 and being the eternal wisdom of the Father, it seemed to 
 them that a plenitude of wisdom was as natural to the whole 
 person as to the Divine nature. But others, fixing their 
 belief upon the words of the story, which equally affirms
 
 OF THE DISPUTATION WITH THE DOCTORS. 143 
 
 Christ as properly to have " increased in favour with God as 
 with man, in wisdom as in stature," they apprehend no in- 
 convenience in affirming it to belong to the verity of human 
 nature, to have degrees of understanding as well as of other 
 perfections : and, although the humanity of Christ made up 
 the same person with the divinity, yet they think the divinity 
 still to be free, even in those communications which were 
 imparted to his inferior nature ; and the Godhead might as 
 well suspend the emanation of all the treasures of wisdom 
 upon the humanity for a time, as he did the beatifical vision, 
 which most certainly was not imparted in the interval of his 
 sad and dolorous passion. But, whether it were truly or in 
 appearance, in habit or in exercise of act, by increase of 
 notion or experience, it is certain the promotions of the holy 
 Child were great, admirable, and as full of wonder as of 
 sanctity, and sufficient to entertain the hopes and expecta- 
 tions of Israel with preparations and dispositions, as to satisfy 
 their wonder for the present, so to accept him at the time of 
 his publication ; they having no reason to be scandalized at 
 the smallness, improbability, and indifferency, of his first 
 beginnings. 
 
 6. But the holy Child had also an employment, which he 
 undertook in obedience to his supposed father, for exercise 
 and example of humility, and for the support of that holy 
 family which was dear in the eyes of God, but not very 
 splendid by the opulency of a free and indulgent fortune. He 
 wrought in the trade of a carpenter ; and when Joseph died, 
 which happened before the manifestation of Jesus unto Israel, 
 he wrought alone, and was no more called the carpenter's 
 son, but the carpenter himself. "Is not this the carpenter, 
 the son of Mary?" 1 said his offended countrymen. And in 
 this condition the blessed Jesus did abide till he was thirty 
 years old ; for he that came to fulfil the law would not suffer 
 one tittle of it to pass unaccomplished ; for, by the law of the 
 nation and custom of the religion, no priest was to officiate, 
 or prophet was to preach, before he was thirty years of age. 
 
 Mark, vi. 3.
 
 144- CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 Ad SECTION VII. 
 
 Considerations upon the Disputation of Jesus with the Doctors 
 in the Temple. 
 
 1. JOSEPH and MARY, being returned into Kazareth, were 
 sedulous to enjoy the privileges of their country, the oppor- 
 tunities of religion, the public address to God, in the rites of 
 festivals and solemnities of the temple : they had been long 
 grieved with the impurities and idol rites which they with 
 sorrow had observed to be done in Egypt, and being deprived 
 of the blessings of those holy societies and employments they 
 used to enjoy in Palestine, at their return came to the offices 
 of their religion with appetites of fire, and keen as the evening 
 wolf; and all the joys which they should have received in 
 respersion and distinct emanations, if they had kept their 
 anniversaries at Jerusalem, all that united they received in the 
 duplication of their joys at their return, and in the fulfilling 
 themselves with the refection and holy viand of religion. 
 For so God uses to satisfy the longings of holy people, when 
 a persecution has shut up the beautiful gates of the temple, 
 or denied to them opportunities of access : although" God 
 hears the prayers they make with their windows towards 
 Jerusalem, with their hearts opened with desires of the 
 public communions, and sends them a prophet with a private 
 meal, as Habakkuk came to Daniel ; yet he fills their hearts, 
 when the year of jubilee returns, and the people sing " In 
 convertendo," the song of joy for their redemption. For as, 
 of all sorrows, the deprivations and eclipses of religion are 
 the saddest, and of the worst and most inconvenient conse- 
 quence ; so, in proportion, are the joys of spiritual plenty 
 and religious returns : the communion of saints being like 
 the primitive corban, a repository to feed all the needs of the 
 Church, or like a taper joined to a torch, itself is kindled, 
 and increases the other's flames. 
 
 2. They failed not to go to Jerusalem : for all those holy 
 prayers and ravishments of love, those excellent meditations 
 and intercourses with God, their private readings and dis- 
 courses, were but entertainments and satisfaction of their
 
 DISPUTATION WITH THE DOCTORS. 145 
 
 necessities, they lived with them during their retirements; 
 but it was a feast, when they went to Jerusalem, and the 
 freer and more indulgent refection of the spirit ; for, in 
 public solemnities, God opens his treasures, and pours out 
 his grace more abundantly. Private devotions, and secret 
 offices of religion, are like refreshing of a garden with the 
 distilling and petty drops of a water-pot; but addresses to 
 the temple, and serving God in the public communion of 
 saints, is like rain from heaven, where the offices are de- 
 scribed by a public spirit, heightened by the greater portions 
 of assistance, and receive advantages by the adunations and 
 symbols of charity, and increment by their distinct title to 
 promises appropriate even to their assembling, and mutual 
 support, by the piety of example, by the communication of 
 counsels, by the awfulness of public observation, and the 
 engagements of holy customs. 14 For religion is a public 
 virtue ; it is the ligature of souls, and the great instrument 
 of the conservation of bodies politic ; and is united in a 
 common object, the God of all the world ; and is managed 
 by public ministries, by sacrifice, adoration, and prayer, in 
 which, with variety of circumstances indeed, but with infinite 
 consent and union of design, all the sons of Adam are taught 
 to worship God ; and it is a publication of God's honour, 
 its very purpose being to declare to all the world how great 
 things God hath done for us, whether in public donatives or 
 private missives; so that the very design, temper, and con- 
 stitution of religion, is to be a public address to God : and, 
 although God is present in closets, and there also distils his 
 blessings, in small rain : yet to the societies of religion and 
 publication of worship as we are invited by the great blessings 
 and advantages of communion, so also we are, in some pro- 
 portions, more straitly limited by the analogy and exigence 
 of the duty. b It is a persecution, when we are forced from 
 public worshippings ; no man can hinder our private addresses 
 to God ; every man can build a chapel in his breast, and 
 
 Habet semper privilegium suum, ut sacratius fiat quod publica lege 
 celebratur, quam quod privata institutioue dependitur. Leo de Jejun. 7. 
 Mentis. Publica praefereuda sunt privatis, et tune est efficacior sanctiorqua 
 devotio, quando in operibus pietatis totius ecclesise unus est animus et unus 
 sensus. Idem, Serin. 4. 
 
 b Ileb. x. 25. 
 
 VOL. II. P
 
 146 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 himself be the priest, and his heart the sacrifice, and every 
 foot of glebe he treads on be the altar : and this no tyrant 
 can prevent. If, then, there can be persecution in the offices 
 of religion, it is the prohibition of public profession and 
 communions ; and, therefore, he that denies to himself the 
 opportunities of public rites and conventions is his own 
 persecutor. 
 
 3. But when Jesus was "twelve years old," and his parents 
 had finished their offices, and returned filled with the pleasures 
 of religion, they missed the Child, and " sought him amongst 
 their kindred," but there " they found him not ;" for whoso- 
 ever seeks Jesus, must seek him in the offices of religion, in 
 the temple, not amongst the engagements and pursuit of 
 worldly interests: " I forgat also mine own father's house," 
 said David, the father of this holy Child ; and so must we, 
 when we run in an inquiry after the Son of David. But our 
 relinquishing must not be a dereliction of duty, but of en- 
 gagement ; our affections toward kindred must always be 
 with charity, and according to the endearments of our rela- 
 tion, but without immersion, and such adherences as either 
 contradict or lessen our duty towards God. 
 
 4. It was a sad effect of their pious journey, to lose the 
 joy of their family and the hopes of all the world : but it 
 often happens that, after spiritual employments, God seems 
 to absent himself, and withdraw the sensible effects of his 
 presence, that we may seek him with the same diligence, 
 and care, and holy fears, with which the holy Virgin-mother 
 sought the blessed Jesus. And it is a design of great mercy 
 in God to take off the light from the eyes of a holy person, 
 that he may not be abused with complacences, and too 
 confident opinions and reflections upon his fair performances. 
 For we usually judge of the well or ill of our devotions and 
 services by what we feel ; and we think God rewards every 
 thing in the present, and by proportion to our own expecta- 
 tions ; and if we feel a present rejoicing of spirit, all is well 
 with us ; the smoke of the sacrifice ascended right in a holy 
 cloud : but if we feel nothing of comfort, then we count it a 
 prodigy and ominous, and we suspect ourselves ; and most 
 commonly we have reason. Such irradiations of cheerfulness 
 are always welcome ; but it is not always anger that takes 
 them away : the cloud removed from before the camp of
 
 DISPUTATION WITH THE DOCTORS. 147 
 
 Israel, and stood before the host of Pharaoh ; but this was a 
 design of ruin to the Egyptians, and of security to Israel : 
 and if those bright angels that go with us to direct our 
 journeys, remove out of our sight and stand behind us, it is 
 not always an argument that the anger of the Lord is gone 
 out against us ; but such decays of sense and clouds of spirit 
 are excellent conservators of humility, and restrain those 
 intemperances and vainer thoughts which we are prompted 
 to in the gaiety of our spirits. 
 
 5. But we often give God cause to remove, and, for a 
 while, to absent himself; and his doing of it sometimes, 
 upon the just provocations of our demerits, makes us, at 
 other times, with good reason, to suspect ourselves, even in 
 our best actions. But sometimes we are vain, or remiss ; or 
 pride invades us in the darkness and incuriousness of our 
 spirits ; and we have a secret sin, which God would have us 
 to inquire after ; and, when we suspect every thing, and 
 condemn ourselves with strictest and most angry sentence, 
 then, it may be, God will, with a ray of light, break through 
 the cloud ; if not, it is nothing the worse for us : for although 
 the visible remonstrance and face of things, in all the absences 
 and withdrawing? of Jesus, be the same, yet, if a sin be the 
 cause of it, the withdrawing is a taking away his favour and 
 his love ; but, if God does it to secure thy piety, and to 
 inflame thy desires, or to prevent a crime, then he withdraws 
 a gift only, nothing of his love, and yet the darkness of the 
 spirit and sadness seem equal. It is hard, in these cases, to 
 discover the cause, as it is nice to judge the condition, of the 
 effect ; and therefore it is prudent to ascertain our condition, 
 by improving our care and our religion ; and, in all accidents, 
 to make no judgment concerning God's favour by what we 
 feel, but by what we do. 
 
 6. When the holy Virgin, with much religion and sadness, 
 had sought her joy, at last she " found him, disputing among 
 the doctors, hearing them, and asking them questions ;" and 
 besides, that he now first opened a fontinel, and there sprang 
 out an excellent rivulet from his abyss of wisdom, he con- 
 signed this truth to his disciples : That they, who mean to 
 be doctors and teach others, must, in their first accesses and 
 degrees of discipline, learn of those, whom God and public 
 order hath set over us, in the mysteries of religion.
 
 148 HISTORY OF THE PREACHING OF JOHN, &C. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 Blessed and most holy Jesus, fountain of grace and comfort, 
 treasure of wisdom and spiritual emanations, be pleased to 
 abide with me for ever, by the inhabitation of thy interior 
 assistances and refreshments ; and give me a corresponding 
 love, acceptable and unstained purity, care and watchful- 
 ness over my ways, that I may never, by provoking thee to 
 anger, cause thee to remove thy dwelling, or draw a cloud 
 before thy holy face : but if thou art pleased, upon a design 
 of charity or trial, to cover my eyes, that I may not behold 
 the bright rays of thy favour, nor be refreshed with spiritual 
 comforts ; let thy love support my spirit by ways insensible ; 
 and, in all my needs, give me such a portion as may be 
 instrumental and incentive to performance of my duty ; 
 and, in all accidents, let me continue to seek thee by 
 prayers, and humiliation, and frequent desires, and the 
 strictness of a holy life ; that I may follow thy example, 
 pursue thy footsteps, be supported by thy strength, guided 
 by thy hand, enlightened by thy favour, and may, at last, 
 after a persevering holiness and an unwearied industry, 
 dwell with thee in the regions of light and eternal glory, 
 where there shall be no fears of parting from the habita- 
 tions of felicity, and the union of fruition of thy presence, 
 O blessed and most holy Jesus. Amen. 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 Of the Preaching of John the Baptist, preparative to the 
 Manifestation of Jesus. 
 
 1. WHEN Herod had drunk so great a draught of blood at 
 Bethlehem, and sought for more from the hill country, 
 Elizabeth carried her son into the wilderness, there, in the 
 desert places and recesses, to hide him from the fury of that 
 beast ; where she attended him with as much care and tender- 
 ness as the affections and fears of a mother could express, in 
 the permission of those fruitless solitudes. The child was
 
 HISTORY OF THE PREACHING OF JOHN, &C. 149 
 
 about eighteen months old when he first fled to sanctuary;' 
 but, after forty days, his mother died ; and his father Zacharias, 
 at the time of his ministration, which happened about this 
 time, was killed in the court of the temple ; so that the child 
 was exposed to all the dangers and infelicities of an orphan, 
 in a place of solitariness and discomfort, in a time when a 
 bloody king endeavoured his destruction. But, " when his 
 father and mother were taken from him, the Lord took him 
 up." For, according to the tradition of the Greeks, b God 
 deputed an angel to be his nourisher and guardian, as he had 
 formerly done to Ishmael/ who dwelt in the wilderness; and 
 to Elias, d when he fled from the rage of Ahab; so to this 
 child, who came in the spirit of Elias, to make demonstra- 
 tion that there can be no want where God undertakes the 
 care and provision. 
 
 2. The entertainment that St. John's proveditore, the 
 angel, gave him, was such as the wilderness did afford, and 
 such as might dispose him to a life of austerity ; for there he 
 continued spending his time in meditations, contemplation, 
 prayer, affections, and colloquies with God, eating flies and 
 wild honey, not clothed in soft, but a hairy garment, 6 and a 
 leathern girdle, till he was thirty years of age. And then, 
 " being the fifteenth year of Tiberius, Pontius Pilate being 
 governor of Judaea, the word of God came unto John in the 
 wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, 
 preaching" and baptizing. 
 
 3. This John, according to the prophecies of him, and 
 designation of his person by the Holy Ghost, was the fore- 
 runner of Christ, sent to dispose the people for his entertain- 
 ment, and " prepare his ways ;" and therefore it was neces- 
 sary his person should be so extraordinary and full of sanctity, 
 and so clarified by great concurrences and wonder in the 
 circumstances of his life, as might gain credit and reputation 
 to the testimony he was to give concerning his Lord, the 
 Saviour of the world. And so it happened. 
 
 
 
 Xiceph. lib. i. c. 14. b S. Chrys. Horn, de Nativ. S. Jo. Baptistse. 
 c Gen. xii. 17. d j Kings, xix. 5. 
 
 e Vestis erat curvi setis conserta cameli, 
 Contra luxuriem molles duraret ut artus, 
 Arceretque graves compunctc corpore somnos Paulinut.
 
 150 HISTORY OF THE PREACHING OF JOHN, &C. 
 
 4. For as the Baptist, while he was in the wilderness, 
 hecame the pattern of solitary and contemplative life, a school 
 of virtue, and example of sanctity and singular austerity ; so, 
 at his emigration from the places of his retirement, he seemed, 
 what indeed he was, a rare and excellent personage : and the 
 wonders which were great at his birth, the prediction of his 
 conception by an angel, which never had before happened 
 but in the persons of Isaac and Sampson, the contempt of 
 the world which he bore about him, his mortified counte- 
 nance and deportment, his austere and eremitical life, his 
 vehement spirit and excellent zeal in preaching, created so 
 great opinions of him among the people, that all held him 
 for a prophet in his office, for a heavenly person in his own 
 particular, and a rare example of sanctity arid holy life to all 
 others : and all this being made solemn and ceremonious by 
 his baptism, he prevailed so, that he made excellent and apt 
 preparations for the Lord's appearing ; for " there went out 
 to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the regions round 
 about Jordan, and were baptized of him, confessing their 
 sins." 
 
 5. The Baptist having, by so heavenly means, won upon 
 the affections of all men, his sermons and his testimony 
 concerning Christ were the more likely to be prevalent and 
 accepted ; and the sum of them was " repentance and dere- 
 liction of sins," and " bringing forth the fruits of good life ;" 
 in the promoting of which doctrine he was a severe repre- 
 hender of the Pharisees and Sadducees ; he exhorted the 
 people to works of mercy ; the publicans to do justice and to 
 decline oppression ; the soldiers to abstain from plundering, 
 and doing violence or rapine : and, publishing that " he was 
 not the Christ, that he only baptized with water, but the 
 Messias should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire," 
 he finally denounced judgment and great severities to all the 
 world of im penitents, even abscission and fire unquenchable. 
 And from this time forward, viz. " From the days of John 
 the Baptist, the kingdom of heaven suffered violence, and 
 the violent take it by force." For now the Gospel began to 
 dawn, and John was like the morning star, or the blushings 
 springing from the windows of the East, foretelling the 
 approach of the Sun of Righteousness : and as St. John 
 Baptist laid the first rough, hard, and unhewn stone of this
 
 CONSIDERATIONS, &C. 151 
 
 building in mortification, self-denial, and doing violence to 
 our natural affections ; so it was continued by the Master- 
 builder himself, who propounded the glories of the crown of 
 the heavenly kingdom to them only who should climb the 
 cross to reach it. Now it was, that multitudes should throng 
 and crowd to enter in at the strait gate, and press into the 
 kingdom ; and the younger brothers should snatch the inhe- 
 ritance from the elder, the unlikely from the more likely, the 
 Gentiles from the Jews, the strangers from the natives, the 
 publicans and harlots from the Scribes and Pharisees, who, 
 like violent persons, shall, by their importunity, obedience, 
 watchfulness, and diligence, snatch the kingdom from them 
 to whom it was first offered ; and " Jacob shall be loved, and 
 Esau rejected." 
 
 Ad SECTION VIII. 
 
 Considerations upon the Preaching of John the Baptist. 
 
 1. FROM the disputation of Jesus with the doctors to the 
 time of his manifestation to Israel, which was eighteen years, 
 the holy child dwelt in Nazareth, in great obedience to his 
 parents, in exemplar modesty, singular humility ; working 
 with his hands in his supposed father's trade, for the support 
 of his own and his mother's necessities, and that he might 
 bear the curse of Adam, that, " in the sweat of his brow he 
 should eat his bread :" all the while, " he increased in favour 
 with God and man," sending forth excellent testimonies of a 
 rare spirit and a wise understanding in the temperate instances 
 of such a conversation, to which his humility and great obe- 
 dience had engaged him. But, all this while, the stream ran 
 under ground : and though little bubblings were discerned in 
 all the course, and all the way men looked upon him as upon 
 an excellent person, diligent in his calling, wise and humble, 
 temperate and just, pious and rarely tempered ; yet, at the 
 manifestation of John the Baptist, he brake forth like the 
 stream from the bowels of the earth, or the sun from a cloud, 
 and gave us a precedent, that we should not shew our lights 
 to minister to vanity, but then only when God, and public
 
 152 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 order, and just dispositions of .men, call for a manifestation; 
 and yet the ages of men have been so forward in prophetical 
 ministries, and to undertake ecclesiastical employment, that 
 the viciousness, and indiscretions, and scandals, the church 
 of God feels as great burdens upon the tenderness of her 
 spirit, are, in great part, owing to the neglect of this instance 
 of the prudence and modesty of the holy Jesus. 
 
 2. But now the time appointed was come ; the Baptist 
 comes forth upon the theatre of Palestine, a forerunner of the 
 office and publication of Jesus, and, by the great reputation 
 of his sanctity, prevailed upon the affections and judgment of 
 the people, who, with much ease, believed his doctrine, when 
 they had reason to approve his life ; for the good example of 
 the preacher is always the most prevailing homily, his life is 
 his best sermon. He that will raise affections in his auditory, 
 must affect their eyes ; for we seldom see the people weep, if 
 the orator laughs loud and loosely; and there is no reason to 
 think, that his discourse should work more with me than 
 himself. If his arguments be fair and specious, I shall think 
 them fallacies, while they have not faith with him ; and what 
 necessity for me to be temperate, when he that tells me so 
 sees no such need, but hopes to go to heaven without it? or, 
 if the duty be necessary, I shall learn the definition of tem- 
 perance, and the latitudes of my permission, and the bounds 
 of lawful and unlawful, by the. exposition of his practice; if 
 he binds a burden upon my shoulders, it is but reason I 
 should look for him to bear his portion too. " Good works 
 convince more than miracles;"" and the power of ejecting 
 devils is not so great probation that Christian religion came 
 from God, as is the holiness of the doctrine, and its efficacy 
 and productions upon the hearty professors of the institution. 
 St. Pachomius, when he wore the military girdle under Con- 
 stantine the emperor, came to a city of Christians, who, 
 having heard that the army in which he then marched was 
 almost starved for want of necessary provisions, of their own 
 charity relieved them speedily and freely. He, wondering at 
 their so free and cheerful dispensation, inquired what kind of 
 people these were whom he saw so bountiful. It was an- 
 swered, they were Christians, whose profession it is to hurt 
 
 S. Chrys. Orat. de. S. Babyla.
 
 PREACHING OF JOHN. 153 
 
 no man, and to do good to every man. The pleased soldier 
 was convinced of the excellence of that religion which 
 brought forth men so good and so pious, and loved the 
 mother for the children's sake ; threw away his girdle, and 
 became Christian, and religious, and a saint. And it was 
 Tertullian's great argument in behalf of Christians, " See 
 how they love one another, how every man is ready to die 
 for his brother:" it was a living argument, and a sensible 
 demonstration of the purity of the fountain from whence 
 such limpid waters did derive. But so John the Baptist 
 made himself a fit instrument of preparation ; and so must 
 all the Christian clergy be fitted for the dissemination of the 
 Gospel of Jesus. 
 
 3. The Baptist had, till this time, that is, about thirty 
 years, lived in the wilderness under the discipline of the 
 Holy Ghost, under the tuition of angels, in conversation with 
 God, in great mortification and disaffections to the world ; 
 his garments rugged and uneasy; his meat plain, necessary, 
 and without variety ; his employment prayers and devotion ; 
 his company wild beasts, in ordinary, in extraordinary, mes- 
 sengers from heaven : and all this, not undertaken of neces- 
 sity, to subdue a bold lust, or to punish a loud crime, but 
 to become more holy and pure from the lesser stains and 
 insinuations of too free infirmities, and to prepare himself 
 for the great ministry of serving the holy Jesus in his pub- 
 lication. Thirty years he lived in great austerity ; and it 
 was a rare patience and exemplar mortification: we use 
 nut to be so pertinacious in any pious resolutions, but our 
 purposes disband upon the sense of the first violence ; we 
 are free and confident of resolving to fast when our bellies 
 are full ; b but, when we are called upon by the first necessities 
 of nature, our zeal is cool, and dissoluble into air upon the 
 first temptation ; and we are not upheld in the violences of a 
 short austerity without faintings and repentances to be re- 
 pented of, and " inquirings after the vow is past," and 
 searching for excuses and desires to reconcile our nature and 
 our conscience ; unless our necessity be great, and our sin 
 clamorous, and our conscience laden, and no peace to be 
 
 b Satiatis et expletis jucundius est carere (juam frui. Cicero de Senect. 
 c. 47.
 
 154 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 had without it ; and it is well, if, upon any reasonable 
 grounds, we can be brought to suffer contradictions of 
 nature for the advantages of grace. But it would be re- 
 membered, that the Baptist did more upon a less necessity ; 
 and, possibly, the greatness of the example may entice us on 
 a little further than the customs of the world, or our own 
 indevotions, would engage us. 
 
 4. But, after the expiration of a definite time, John 
 came forth from his solitude, and served God in societies. 
 He served God, and the content of his own spirit, by his 
 conversing with angels and dialogues with God, so long 
 as he was in the wilderness ; and it might be some trouble 
 to him to mingle with the impurities of men, amongst whom 
 he was sure to observe such recesses from perfection, such 
 violation of all things sacred, so great despite done to all 
 ministries of religion, that to him, who had no experience or 
 neighbourhood of actions criminal, it must needs be to his 
 sublimed and clarified spirit more punitive and afflictive than 
 his hairen shirt and his ascetic diet was to his body ; but 
 now himself, that tried both, was best able to judge which 
 state of life was of greatest advantage and perfection. 
 
 5. " In his solitude he did breathe more pure inspiration ; 
 heaven was more open, God was more familiar," and fre- 
 quent in his visitations. In the wilderness his company was 
 angels, his employment meditations and prayer, his tempt- 
 ations simple and from within, from the impotent and lesser 
 rebellions of a mortified body, his occasions of sin as few as 
 his examples, his condition such, that, if his soul were at all 
 busy, his life could not easily be other than the life of angels; 
 for his work and recreation, and his visits, and his retire- 
 ments, could be nothing but the variety and differing circum- 
 stances of his piety : his inclinations to society made it 
 necessary for him to repeat his addresses to God ; for his 
 being a sociable creature, and yet in solitude, made that his 
 conversing with God, and being partaker of Divine commu- 
 nications, should be the satisfaction of his natural desires 
 and the supply of his singularity and retirement ; the dis- 
 comforts of which made it natural for him to seek out for 
 some refreshment, and, therefore, to go to heaven for it, he 
 
 c In solitudine aer purior, coelura apertius, familiarior Deus. Orig.
 
 PREACHING OF JOHN'. 155 
 
 having rejected the solaces of the world already. And all 
 this, besides the innocences of his silence, d which is very 
 great, and to be judged of in proportion to the infinite ex- 
 travagances of our language, there being no greater per- 
 fection here to be expected, 6 than " not to offend in our 
 tongue." " It was solitude and retirement in which Jesus 
 kept his vigils ; the desert places heard him pray; in a privacy 
 he was born ; in the wilderness he fed his thousands ; upon 
 a mountain apart he was transfigured ; upon a mountain he 
 died ; and from a mountain he ascended to his Father : " in 
 which retirements his devotion certainly did receive the ad- 
 vantage of convenient circumstances, and himself in such 
 
 O 7 
 
 dispositions twice had the opportunities of glory. 
 
 6. And yet, after all these excellences, the Spirit of God 
 called the Baptist forth to a more excellent ministry : for, in 
 solitude, pious persons might go to heaven by the way of 
 prayers and devotion ; but, in society, they might go to 
 heaven by the way of mercy, and charity, and dispensations 
 to others. In solitude there are fewer occasions of vices, 
 but there is also the exercise of fewer virtues ; and the 
 temptations, though they be not from many objects, yet are, 
 in some circumstances, more dangerous, not only because 
 the worst of evils, spiritual pride,' does seldom miss to creep 
 upon those goodly oaks, like ivy, and suck their heart out, 
 and a great mortifier, without some complacences in himself, 
 or affectations or opinions, or something of singularity, is 
 almost as unusual as virgin purity and unstained thoughts 
 in the Bordelli, (S. Hierom had tried it, and found it so by 
 experience, and he it was that said so;) but also, because 
 whatsoever temptation does invade such retired persons, 
 they have privacies enough to act it in, g and no eyes upon 
 them but the eye of Heaven, no shame to encounter withal, 
 no fears of being discovered : and we know by experience, 
 that a witness of our conversation is a reat restraint to the 
 
 d II/.XiV ya.o a.vou<r/>iffi fcloftaxit XKXU* ffiyr,, f&si).iffra. 5' iffri ffutygevof TJOTOV 
 ffr.uilti. Carcinus. 
 
 e James, iii. Petrus Cellensis, lib. iv. ep. 12. 
 
 f In solitudine cito obrepit superbia. Ep. 4. 
 
 t Non minorem flagitiis occasionem secreta prsebuerint Quint. 
 
 Maxima pars peccatorum tollitur, si peccaturis testis asistat. Senec. 
 
 Malum quod nemo videt, nemo arguit ; ubi non timetur reprebensor, securius 
 accedit tentator, et liberius perpetiatur iniquitas S. Bern.
 
 156 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 inordination of our actions. Men seek out darknesses and 
 secrecies to commit a sin ; and " the evil that no man sees, 
 no man reproves ; and that makes the temptation bold and 
 confident, and the iniquity easy and ready : " so that, as they 
 have not so many tempters as they have ahroad, so neither 
 have they so many restraints ; their vices are not so many, 
 but they are more dangerous in themselves, and to the world 
 safe and opportune. And as they communicate less with the 
 world, so they do less charity and fewer offices of mercy : 
 no sermons there but when solitude is made popular, and the 
 city removes into the wilderness ; no comforts of a public 
 religion, or visible remonstrances of the communion of saints ; 
 and of all the kinds of spiritual mercy, only one can there 
 properly be exercised ; and of the corporal, none at all. 
 And this is true in lives and institutions of less retirement, 
 in proportion to the degree of the solitude : and, therefore, 
 church-story reports of divers very holy persons, who left 
 their wildernesses and sweetnesses of devotion in their re- 
 tirement, to serve God in public by the ways of charity and 
 exterior offices. Thus St. Antony and Acepsamas came forth 
 to encourage the fainting people to contend to death for the 
 crown of martyrdom ; h and the Aphraates, in the time of 
 Valens, the Arian emperor, came abroad to assist the church 
 in the suppressing the flames kindled by the Arian faction. 
 And, upon this ground, they that are the greatest admirers 
 of eremitical life call the episcopal function " the state of 
 perfection," and a degree of ministerial and honorary excel- 
 lence beyond the pieties and contemplations of solitude, 
 because of the advantages of gaining souls, and religious 
 conversation, and going to God by doing good to others. 
 
 7. John the Baptist united both these lives ; and our 
 blessed Saviour, who is the great precedent of sanctity and 
 prudence, hath determined this question in his own instance ; 
 for he lived a life common, sociable, humane, charitable, and 
 public ; and yet, for the opportunities of especial devotion, 
 retired to prayer and contemplation, but came forth speedily ; 
 for the devil never set upon him but in the wilderness, and 
 
 h Euseb. Hist lib. vi. c. 3. Theod. lib. iv. c. 23, 24. Nihil est illi principi 
 Deo, qui orunem bane mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat acceptius, quain 
 concilia caetusque hominum jure sociati, quae cmtates appellantur. Cicer.Somn. 
 Scipion. c. 4.
 
 PREACHING OF JOHN. 157 
 
 by the advantage of retirement. For as God hath many, so 
 the devil hath some, opportunities of doing his work in our 
 solitariness. But Jesus reconciled both ; and so did John 
 the Baptist, in several degrees and manners: 1 and from both 
 we are taught, that solitude is a good school, and the world is 
 the best theatre ; the institution is best there, but the practice 
 here; the wilderness hath the advantage of discipline, and 
 society opportunities of perfection ; privacy is the best for 
 devotion, and the public for charity. In both, God hath 
 many saints and servants ; and from both, the devil hath had 
 some. 
 
 8. His sermon was an exhortation to repentance and an 
 holy life : he gave particular schedules of duty to several 
 states of persons ; sharply reproved the Pharisees for their 
 hypocrisy and impiety ; it being worse in them, because 
 contrary to their rule, their profession, and institution ; gently 
 guided others into the ways of righteousness, calling them 
 " the straight ways of the Lord," that is, the direct and 
 shortest way to the kingdom : for of all lines the straight 
 is the shortest, and as every angle is a turning out of the 
 way, so every sin is an obliquity, arid interrupts the journey. 
 By such discourses, and a baptism, he disposed the spirits 
 of men for the entertaining the Messias, and the homilies 
 of the Gospel. For John's doctrine was to the sermons of 
 Jesus as a preface to a discourse ; and his baptism was to 
 the new institution and discipline of the kingdom as the 
 vigils to a holy day, of the same kind in a less degree. 
 But the whole economy of it represents to us, that repent- 
 ance is the first intromission into the sanctities of Christian 
 religion. The Lord treads upon no paths that are not 
 hallowed and made smooth by the sorrows and cares of 
 contrition, and the impediments of sin cleared by dereliction 
 and the succeeding fruits of emendation. But as it related 
 to the Jews, his baptism did signify, by a cognation to their 
 usual rites and ceremonies of ablution, and washing Gentile 
 proselytes, that the Jews had so far receded from their duty 
 and that holiness which God required of them by the law, 
 that they were in the state of strangers, no better than 
 heathens ; and, therefore, were to be treated, as themselves
 
 158 CONSIDERATIONS, &C. 
 
 received Gentile proselytes, by a baptism and a new state of 
 life, before they could be fit for the reception of the Messias, 
 or be admitted to his kingdom. 
 
 9. It was an excellent sweetness of religion, that had 
 entirely possessed the soul of the Baptist, that in so great 
 reputation of sanctity, so mighty concourse of people, such 
 great multitudes of disciples and confidents, and such throngs 
 of admirers, he was humble, without mixtures of vanity, and 
 confirmed in his temper and piety against the strength of the 
 most impetuous temptation. And he was tried to some 
 purpose : for when he was tempted to confess himself to be 
 the Christ, he refused it ; or to be Elias, or to be accounted 
 " that prophet," he refused all such great appellatives, and 
 confessed himself only to be "a voice," the lowest of en- 
 tities, whose being depends upon the speaker, just as himself 
 did upon the pleasure of God, receiving form, and publi- 
 cation, and employment, wholly by the will of his Lord, 
 in order to the manifestation of " the Word eternal." It 
 were well that the spirits of men would not arrogate more 
 than their own, though they did not lessen their own just 
 dues. It may concern some end of piety or prudence, that 
 our reputation be preserved by all just means ; but never, 
 that we assume the dues of others, or grow vain by the 
 spoils of an undeserved dignity. Honours are the rewards of 
 virtue or engagement upon offices of trouble and public use ; 
 but then they must suppose a preceding worth, or a fair 
 employment. But he that is a plagiary of others' titles or 
 offices, and dresses himself with their beauties, hath no more 
 solid worth or reputation than he should have nutriment, if 
 he ate only with their mouth and slept their slumbers, him- 
 self being open and unbound in all the regions of his senses. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O holy and most glorious God, who, before the publication 
 of thy eternal Son, the Prince of Peace, didst send thy 
 servant, John Baptist, by the examples of mortification, 
 and the rude austerities of a penitential life, and by the 
 sermons of penance, to remove all the impediments of sin, 
 that the ways of his Lord and ours might be made clear, 
 ready, and expedite ; be pleased to let thy Holy Spirit lead
 
 OF MORTIFICATION, &C. 159 
 
 me in the straight paths of sanctity, without deflections to 
 either hand, and without the interruption of deadly sin ; 
 that I may, with facility, zeal, assiduity, and a persevering 
 diligence, walk in the ways of the Lord. Be pleased, that 
 the axe may be laid to the root of sin, that the whole body 
 of it may be cut down in me ; that no fruit of Sodom may 
 grow up to thy displeasure. Thoroughly purge the floor 
 and granary of my heart with thy fan, with the breath 
 of thy Diviner Spirit, that it may be a holy repository of 
 graces, and full of benediction and sanctity ; that when 
 our Lord shall come, I may at all times be prepared for 
 the entertainment of so divine a guest, apt to lodge him 
 and to feast him, that he may for ever delight to dwell 
 with me. And make also to dwell with him, some- 
 times retiring into his recesses and private rooms by 
 contemplation, and admiring of his beauties, and behold- 
 ing the secrets of his kingdom ; and, at all other times, 
 walking in the courts of the Lord's house, by the dili- 
 gences and labours of repentance and an holy life, till thou 
 shalt please to call me to a nearer communication of thy 
 excellences : which then grant, when, by thy gracious 
 assistances, I shall have done thy works, and glorified thy 
 holy name, by the strict and never-failing purposes and 
 proportionable endeavours of religion and holiness, through 
 the merits and mercies of Jesus Christ. Amen. 
 
 DISCOURSE IV. 
 
 Of Mortification and Corporal Austerities. 
 
 1 . " FROM the days of John the Baptist, the kingdom of 
 heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force," 
 said our blessed Saviour. For now that the new covenant 
 was to be made with man, repentance, which is so great 
 a part of it, being, in very many actions, a punitive duty, 
 afflictive and vindicative, " from the days of the Baptist" 
 (who first, by office and solemnity of design, published this 
 doctrine,) violence was done to the inclinations and disposi- 
 tions of man, and by such violences we were to be possessed
 
 160 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 of the kingdom. And his example was the best commentary 
 upon his text : he did violence to himself; he lived a life, in 
 which the rudeness of camel's hair, and the lowest nutri- 
 ment of flies and honey of the desert, his life of singularity, 
 his retirement from the sweetnesses of society, his resisting the 
 greatest of temptations, and despising to assume false honours, 
 were instances of that violence, and explications of the doc- 
 trine of self-denial and mortification, which are the pedestal 
 of the cross, and the supporters 'of Christianity, as it dis- 
 tinguishes from all laws, religions, and institutions of the 
 world. 
 
 2. Mortification is the one half of Christianity ; it is a 
 dying to the world ; it is a denying of the will and all its 
 natural desires : " An abstinence from pleasure and sensual 
 complacences, that the flesh being subdued to the Spirit, 
 both may join in the service of God, and in the offices of 
 holy religion."* It consists in actions of severity and re- 
 nunciation ; it refuses to give entertainment to any vanity, 
 nor uses a freer license in things lawful, lest it be tempted to 
 things unlawful ; it kills the lusts of the flesh by taking 
 away its fuel and incentives, and by using to contradict its 
 appetite, does inure it, with more facility, to obey the supe- 
 rior faculties : and, in effect, it is nothing but a great care we 
 sin not, and a prudent and severe using such remedies and 
 instruments, which in nature and grace are made apt for the 
 production of our purposes. And it consists in interior and 
 exterior offices ; these being but instruments of the interior, 
 as the body is organical or instrumental to the soul, and no 
 part of the duty itself, but as they are advantages to the 
 end, the mortification of the spirit ; which by whatsoever 
 means we have once acquired and do continue, we are dis- 
 obliged from all other exterior severities, unless by accident 
 they come to be obligatory, and from some other cause. 
 
 3. Mortification of the will or the spirit of man, that is 
 the duty ; that the will of man may humbly obey God, and 
 absolutely rule its inferior faculties ; that the inordinations 
 of our natural desires, begun by Adam's sin, and continued 
 and increased by our continuing evil customs, may be again 
 
 * Tj irJ ntcfaififfii rav tpfatnftares f<t(*o( #(S rti rrif ivf (Stiff 
 T wSt>. S. Basil.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 161 
 
 placed in the right order ; that, since many of the Divine 
 precepts are restraints upon our natural desires, we should 
 so deny those appetites that covet after natural satisfactions, 
 that they may not serve themselves by disserving God. For 
 therefore our own wills are our greatest dangers and our 
 greatest enemies ; because they tend to courses contradictory 
 to God. God commands us to be humble ; our own desires 
 are to be great, considerable, and high ; and we are never 
 secure enough from contempt, unless we can place our 
 neighbours at our feet : here, therefore, we must deny our 
 will, and appetites of greatness, for the purchase of humility. 
 God commands temperance and chastity ; our desires and 
 natural promptness break the band asunder, and entertain 
 dissolutions to the licentiousness of Apicius, or the wanton- 
 ness of a Mahometan paradise, sacrificing meat and drink- 
 offerings to our appetites, as if our stomachs were the temples 
 of Bel, and making women and the opportunities of lust to 
 be our dwelling, and our employment, even beyond the 
 common looseness of entertainment : here, therefore, we 
 must deny our own wills, our appetites of gluttony and 
 drunkenness, and our prurient beastly inclinations, for the 
 purchase of temperance and chastity. And every other 
 virtue is, either directly or by accident, a certain instance 
 of this great duty, which is, like a catholicon, purgative 
 of all distemperatures, and is the best preparative and dis- 
 position to prayer in the world. 
 
 4. For it is a sad consideration, and of secret reason, 
 that since prayer, of all duties, is certainly the sweetest and 
 the easiest, it having in it no difficulty or vexatious labour, 
 no weariness of bones, no dimness of eyes, or hollow cheeks, 
 is directly consequent to it, no natural desires of contradictory 
 quality, nothing of disease, but much of comfort, and more 
 of hope in it ; yet we are infinitely averse from it, weary of 
 its length, glad of an occasion to pretermit our offices; and 
 yet there is no visible cause of such indisposition, nothing in 
 the nature of the thing, nor in the circumstances necessarily 
 appendant to the duty. Something is amiss in us, and it 
 wanted a name, till the Spirit of God, by enjoining us the 
 duty of mortification, hath taught us to know, that immor- 
 tification of spirit is the cause of all our secret and spiritual 
 indispositions : we are so incorporated to the desires of 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 162 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 sensual objects, that we feel no relish or gust of the spiritual. 
 It is as if a lion should eat hay, or an ox venison ; there 
 is no proportion between the object and the appetite, till, by 
 mortification of our first desires, our wills are made spiritual, 
 and our apprehensions supernatural and clarified. For, as 
 a cook told Dionysius the Tyrant, the black broth of Lace- 
 daemon would not do well at Syracuse, unless it be tasted by 
 a Spartan's palate ; so neither can the excellences of heaven 
 Ije discerned, but by a spirit disrelishing the sottish ap- 
 petites of the world, and accustomed to diviner banquets. 
 And this was mystically signified by the two altars in Solo- 
 mon's temple ; in the outer court whereof beasts were sacri- 
 ficed, in the inner court an altar of incense : the first repre- 
 senting mortification or slaying of our beastly appetites ; the 
 second, the offering up our prayers, which are not likely to 
 become a pleasant offertory, unless our impurities be removed 
 by the atonement made by the first sacrifices : without our 
 spirit be mortified, we neither can love to pray, nor God love 
 to hear us. 
 
 5. But there are three steps to ascend to this altar. The 
 first is, to abstain from satisfying our carnal desires in the 
 instances of sin ; and although the furnace flames with 
 vehement emissions at some times, yet to " walk in the midst 
 of the burning without being consumed," like the children of 
 the captivity : that is the duty even of the most imperfect, 
 and is commonly the condition of those good persons whose 
 interest in secular employments speaks fair, and solicits 
 often, and tempts highly ; yet they manage their affairs with 
 habitual justice, and a constant charity, and are temperate in 
 their daily meals, chaste in the solaces of marriage, and pure 
 in their spirits, unmingled with sordid affections in the midst 
 of their possessions and enjoyments. These men are in the 
 world, but they are strangers here : they have a city, but 
 " not an abiding one ; " b they are proselytes of the house, but 
 have made no covenant with the world. For though they 
 desire with secular desires, yet it is but for necessaries, and 
 then they are content ; c they use the creatures with freedom 
 and modesty, but never to intemperance and transgression ; 
 so that their hands are below, tied there by the necessities of 
 
 b Heb. xiii. 14. c 1 Tim. vi. 8.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 163 
 
 their life; but their hearts are above/ lifted up by the ab- 
 stractions of this first degree of mortification. And this is 
 the first and nicest distinction between a man of the world 
 and a man of God ; for this state is a denying our affections 
 nothing but the sin ; it enjoys as much of the world as may 
 be consistent with the possibilities of heaven. A little less 
 than this is the state of immortification, and " a being in the 
 flesh," which, saith the apostle, ''cannot inherit the kingdom 
 of God." The flesh must first be separated, and the ad- 
 herences pared off from the skin, before the parchment be fit 
 to make a schedule for use, or to transmit a record. What- 
 soever, in the sense of the Scripture, is flesh, or an enemy to 
 the Spirit, if it be not rescinded and mortified, makes, that 
 the laws of God cannot be written in our hearts. This is the 
 doctrine St. Paul taught the Church : " for if ye live after the 
 flesh, ye shall die; but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify 
 the deeds of the body, ye shall live." e This first mortifica- 
 tion is the way of life, if it continues ; but its continuance is 
 not secured till we are advanced towards life by one degree 
 more of this death. For this condition is a state of a daily 
 and dangerous warfare ; and many inroads are made by sin, 
 and many times hurt is done, and booty carried off: for he 
 that is but thus far mortified, although his dwelling be with- 
 in the kingdom of grace, yet it is in the borders of it, and 
 hath a dangerous neighbourhood. If we mean to be safe, 
 we must remove into the heart of the land, or carry the war 
 further off. 
 
 6. Secondly : We must not only be strangers here, but 
 we must be dead too, " dead unto the world:" that is, we 
 must not only deny our vices, but our passions ; not only 
 contradict the direct immediate persuasion to a sin, but also 
 cross the inclination to it. f So long as our appetites are high 
 and full, we shall never have peace or safety, but the dangers 
 and insecurities of a full war and a potent enemy ; we are 
 always disputing the question, ever struggling for life : but 
 when our passions are killed, when our desires are little and 
 low, then grace reigns, then " our life is hid with Christ in 
 God;" then we have fewer interruptions in the way of 
 righteousness ; then we are not so apt to be surprised by 
 
 d 2 Cor. v. 6. R om . yiij. 13. 
 
 f O quuiu contempta res est homo, nisi super humana se erexerit ! Sen.
 
 164 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 sudden eruptions and transportations of passions, and our 
 piety itself is more prudent and reasonable, chosen with a 
 freer election, discerned with clearer understanding, hath 
 more in it of judgment than of fancy, and is more spiritual 
 and angelical. He that is apt to be angry, though he be 
 habitually careful, and full of observation that he sin not, 
 may, at some time or other, be surprised when his guards 
 are undiligent, and without actual expectation of an enemy : 
 but if his anger be dead in him, and the inclination lessened 
 to the indifference and gentleness of a child, the man dwells 
 safe, because of the impotency of his enemy, or that he is 
 reduced to obedience, or hath taken conditions of peace. He 
 that hath refused to consent to actions of unclean ness, to 
 which he was strongly tempted, hath won a victory by fine 
 force ; God hath blessed him well. But an opportunity may 
 betray him instantly, and the sin may be in upon him una- 
 wares; unless also his desires be killed, he is betrayed by a 
 party within. David was a holy person, but he was surprised 
 by the sight of Bathsheba ; for his freer use of permitted beds 
 had kept the fire alive, which was apt to be put into a flame 
 when so fair a beauty reflected through his eyes. But Joseph 
 was a virgin, and kept under all his inclinations to looser 
 thoughts; opportunity, and command, and violence, and 
 beauty, did make no breach upon his spirit. 
 
 7. He that is in the first state of pilgrimage, does not 
 mutiny against his superiors, nor publish their faults, nor 
 envy their dignities ; but he that is dead to the world, sees 
 no fault that they have ; and when he hears an objection, he 
 buries it in an excuse, and rejoices in the dignity of their 
 persons. Every degree of mortification endures reproof with- 
 out murmur ; but he that is quite dead to the world, and to 
 his own will, feels no regret against it, and hath no secret 
 thoughts of trouble and unwillingness to the suffering, save 
 only that he is sorry he deserved it. " For so a dead body 
 resists not your violence, changes not its posture you placed 
 it in, strikes not its striker, is not moved by your words, nor 
 provoked by your scorn, nor is troubled, when you shrink 
 with horror at the sight of it ; only it will hold the head 
 downward in all its situations, unless it be hindered by vio- 
 lence : " and a mortified spirit is such, without indignation 
 against scorn, without revenge against injuries, without mur-
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 165 
 
 muring at low offices, not impatient in troubles, indifferent in 
 all accidents, neither transported with joy nor depressed with 
 sorrow, and is humble in all his thoughts. And thus, " he 
 that is dead," saith the apostle, " is justified from sins." 8 
 And this is properly a state of life, in which, by the grace of 
 Jesus, we are restored to a condition of order and interior 
 beauty in our faculties ; our actions are made moderate and 
 humane, our spirits are even, and our understandings undis- 
 turbed. 
 
 8. For passions of the sensitive soul are like an exhala- 
 tion, hot and dry, borne up from the earth upon the wings of 
 a cloud, and detained by violence out of its place, causing 
 thunders, and making eruptions into lightning and sudden 
 fires. There is a tempest in the soul of a passionate man ; 
 and though every wind does not shake the earth, nor rend 
 trees up by the roots, yet we call it violent and ill weather, if 
 it only makes a noise and is harmless. And it is an inordi- 
 nation in the spirit of a man, when his passions are tumult- 
 uous and mighty ; though they do not determine directly 
 upon a sin, they discompose his peace, and disturb his spirit, 
 and make it like troubled waters, in which no man can see 
 his own figure and just proportions ; and, therefore, by being 
 less a man, cannot be so much a Christian, in the mid^t of so 
 great indispositions. For although the cause may hallow the 
 passion, (and if a man be very angry for God's cause, it is 
 zeal, not fury,) yet the cause cannot secure the person from 
 violence, transportation, and inconvenience. When Elisha 
 was consulted by three kings concerning the success of their 
 present expedition, 11 he grew so angry against idolatrous 
 Joram, and was carried on to so great degrees of disturbance, 
 that when, for Jehoshaphat's sake, he was content to inquire 
 of the Lord, he called for a minstrel, who, by his harmony, 
 might recompose his disunited and troubled spirit, that so he 
 might be apter for divination. And sometimes this zeal goes 
 besides the intentions of the man, and beyond the degrees of 
 prudent or lawful ; and engages in a sin, though at first it 
 was zeal for religion. For so it happened in Moses, " at the 
 waters of Massah and Meribah, he spake foolishly :" and yet 
 it was when he was zealous for God, and extremely careful 
 
 t Rom. vi. 7. h 2 Kings, iii. 13-15.
 
 166 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 of the people's interest. For his passion, he was hindered 
 from entering into the land of promise. And we also, if we 
 be not moderate and well -tempered, even in our passions for 
 God, may, like Moses, break the tables of the law, and throw 
 them out of our hands, with zeal to have them preserved ; 
 for passion violently snatches at the conclusion, but is incon- 
 siderate and incurious concerning the premises. The sum 
 and purpose of this discourse is that saying of our blessed 
 Saviour, " He that will be my disciple must deny himself;"' 
 that is, not only desires that are sinful, but desires that are 
 his own, pursuances of his own affections, and violent mo- 
 tions, though to things not evil, or in themselves contagious. 
 9. Thirdly: And yet there is a degree of mortification of 
 spirit beyond this : for the condition of our security may 
 require, that we not only deny to act our temptations, or to 
 please our natural desires, but also to seek opportunities of 
 doing displeasure to our affections, and violence to our incli- 
 nations ; and not only to be indifferent, but to choose a con- 
 tradiction and a denial to our strongest appetites, to rejoice 
 in a trouble : and this was the spirit of St. Paul, " I am 
 exceeding joyful in all our tribulations ;" k and, " We glory 
 in it." 1 Which joy consists not in any sensitive pleasure any 
 man can take in afflictions and adverse accidents, but in a 
 despising the present inconveniences, and looking through 
 the cloud unto those great felicities, and graces, and con- 
 signations to glory, which are the effects of the cross : 
 " Knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience 
 experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not 
 ashamed ;" m that was the incentive of St. Paul's joy. And, 
 therefore, as it may consist with any degree of mortification 
 to pray for the taking away of the cross, upon condition it 
 may consist with God's glory and our ghostly profit ; so it is 
 properly an act of this virtue to pray for the cross, or to 
 meet it, if we understand it may be for the interest of the 
 spirit. And thus St. Basil prayed to God to remove his 
 violent pains of headach : but when God heard him, and 
 took away his pain, and lust came in the place of it, he 
 prayed to God to restore him his headach again : that cross 
 
 Mattb. xvi. 24. k 2 Cor. vii. 4. 
 
 1 Rom. v. 3, 4. "" Rom. v. 3, 4.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 167 
 
 was gain and joy, when the removal of it was so full of 
 danger and temptation. And this the masters of spiritual life 
 call " being crucified with Christ :" because, as Christ chose 
 the death, and desired it by the appetites of the spirit, though 
 his flesh smarted under it, and groaned and died with the 
 burden ; so do all that are thus mortified : they place mis- 
 fortunes and sadnesses amongst things eligible, and set them 
 before the eyes of their desire, although the flesh and the 
 desires of sense are factious and bold against such sufferings. 
 10. Of these three degrees of interior or spiritual mortifi- 
 cation, the first is duty, the second is counsel, and the third 
 is perfection. We sin if we have not the first ; we are in, 
 danger without the second ; but without the third we cannot 
 " be perfect, as our heavenly Father is," but shall have more 
 of human infirmities to be ashamed of than can be excused 
 by the accrescences and condition of our nature. The first 
 is only of absolute necessity ; the second is prudent, and of 
 greatest convenience ; but the third is excellent and perfect." 
 And it was the consideration of a wise man, that the saints in 
 heaven, who understand the excellent glories and vast dif- 
 ferences of state and capacities amongst beatified persons, 
 although they have no envy nor sorrows, yet if they were 
 upon earth, with the same notion and apprehensions they 
 have in heaven, would not for all the world lose any degree 
 of glory, but mortify to the greatest eminence, that their 
 glory may be a derivation of the greatest ray of light ; every 
 degree being of compensation glorious, and disproportion- 
 ably beyond the inconsiderable troubles of the greatest self- 
 denial. God's purpose is, that we abstain from sin ; there is 
 no more in the commandment : and therefore we must deny 
 ourselves, so as not to admit a sin, under pain of a certain 
 and eternal curse : but the other degrees of mortification are, 
 by accident, so many degrees of virtue ; not being enjoined 
 or counselled for themselves, but for the preventing of crimes, 
 and for securities of good life ; and, therefore, are parts and 
 
 n KaS-ajfl-;; ff.lv, a.vo rri; v\ix%s d^ayia.;, KO.I <rov S-vnrnuii^ous ffufj.a.ros' riKtierm Si, 
 rr,i oixiia; iv^caiag avaXji-v/-;;, f^os Ttiv Qtiay iftoiuffiv I'rtna.ytuffx' <ra.v<ra. Si rift/xfy dgiri) 
 xtti aXijhi fta.^.if'ra, dfioy/ii?i<r$ai' ft ft.iv, rw dfttrgiav ruv vrafav i%ogi%ouffa' ri Si, TO 
 3-i7o iiSos, tuQvu; 'i^ovffx, vrgoffxnafiivv. Hierocl. in Pythag. Needham, p. 8. 
 
 Tantam gloriam omrii hora negligimus, quanta bona interim facere pos- 
 semus, si otiose earn transigimus. S. Bonavent.
 
 168 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 offices of Christian prudence, which whosoever shall positively 
 reject, is neither much in love with virtue, nor careful of his 
 own safety. 
 
 11. Secondly: But mortification hath also some designs 
 tipon the body. For the body is the shop and forge of the 
 soul, in which all her designs, which are transient upon ex- 
 ternal objects, are framed : and it is a good servant, as long 
 as it is kept in obedience and under discipline ; but " he that 
 breeds his servant delicately," p will find him contumacious 
 and troublesome, bold and confident as his son : and, there- 
 fore, St. Paul's practice, (as himself gives account of it,) was 
 " to keep his body under, and bring it into subjection, lest 
 he should become a castaway ;" q for the desires of the body 
 are, in the same things in which themselves are satisfied, so 
 many injuries to the soul ; because upon every one of the 
 appetites a restraint is made, and a law placed for sentinel, 
 that if we transgress the bounds fixed by the Divine com- 
 mandment, it becomes a sin : now it is hard for us to keep 
 them within compass, because they are little more than 
 agents merely natural, and therefore cannot interrupt their 
 act, but covet and desire as much as they can, without sus- 
 pension or coercion, but what comes from without ; which is, 
 therefore, the more troublesome, because all such restraints 
 are against nature, and without sensual pleasure. And, 
 therefore, this is that that St. Paul said, " When we were in 
 the flesh, the passions of sin, which were by the law, did 
 work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death. " r For 
 
 O 
 
 these pleasures of the body draw us as loadstones draw iron, 
 not for love, but for prey and nutriment ; it feeds upon the 
 iron, as the bodily pleasures upon the life of the spirit, which 
 is lessened and impaired, according as the gusts of the flesh 
 grow high and sapid. 
 
 12. He that feeds a lion must obey him, unless he make 
 his den to be his prison. Our lusts are as wild and as cruel 
 beasts ; and, unless they feel the load of fetters and of laws, 
 will grow unruly and troublesome, 5 and increase upon us, as 
 
 P Prov. xxix. 21. 
 
 * 1 Cor. ix. 27. Rom. vi. 4. Hb. zii. 1. 1 Pet. ii. 1. and iv. 1. 
 r Rom. vii. 5 
 
 ' Ai%(it rth fit* oixtrSt f%in, ra.7; Si JSnetTi 'SouXivtii.hocr. ad Demonic, ed. 
 Lange, p. 7.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 169 
 
 
 
 we give them food and satisfaction. He that is used to drink 
 high wines, is sick if he hath not his proportion, to what 
 degree soever his custom hath brought his appetite ; and to 
 some men temperance becomes certain death, because the 
 inordination of their desires hath introduced a custom, and 
 custom hath increased those appetites, and made them almost 
 natural in their degree : but he that hath been used to hard 
 diet and the pure stream, his refreshments are much within 
 the limits of temperance, and his desires as moderate as his 
 diet. St. Jerom affirms, that to be continent in the state of 
 widowhood, is harder than to keep our virgin pure : and 
 there is reason, that then the appetite should be harder to be 
 restrained, when it hath not been accustomed to be denied, 
 but satisfied in its freer solicitations. When a fontinel is 
 once opened, all the symbolical humours run thither, and 
 issue out ; and it is not to be stopped without danger, unless 
 the humour be purged or diverted. So is the satisfaction of 
 an impure desire ; it opens the issue, and makes way for the 
 emanation of all impurity; and, unless the desire be morti- 
 fied, will not be stopped by purposes and easy desires. 
 
 13. Since, therefore, the body is the instrument of sins, 
 the fuel and the incentive, our mortification must reach 
 thither also, at least in some degrees, or it will be to small 
 purpose to think of mortifying our spirit in some instances of 
 temptation. In vain does that man think to keep his honour 
 and chastity, that invites his lust to an activeness, by soft 
 leds, and high diet, and idleness, and opportunity. Make the 
 soul's instrument unapt, and half the work is done. And 
 this is true in all instances of carnality or natural desires, 
 whose scene lies in the lower region of passions, and are 
 acted by the body ; but the operation of the cure must be in 
 proportion to the design ; as the mortification of the spirit is 
 in several degrees, so the mortification of the body also hath 
 its several parts of prudence, injunction, and necessity. For 
 the prescribing all sorts of mortifications corporal, indefinitely 
 and indiscriminately to all persons, without separation of their 
 ends and distinct capacities, is a snare to men's consciences, 
 makes religion impertinently troublesome, occasions some 
 men to glory in corporal austerity, as if of itself it were an 
 act of piety, and a distinction of the man from the more
 
 170 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 imperfect persons of the world, and is all the way unreason- 
 able and inartificial. 
 
 14. First : Therefore, such whose engagements in the 
 world, or capacities of person, confine them to the lowest and 
 first step of mortification ; those who fight only for life and 
 liberty, not for privileges and honour ; that are in perpetual 
 contestation and close fightings with sin ; it is necessary that 
 their body also be mortified in such a degree, that their 
 desires transport them not beyond the permissions of Divine 
 and human laws. 1 Let such men be strict in the rules of 
 temperance and sobriety, be chaste within the laws of mar- 
 riage, cherish their body to preserve their health, and their 
 health to serve God, and to do their offices. To these per- 
 sons, the best instruments of discipline are the strict laws of 
 temperance ; denying all transgressions of the appetite, boil- 
 ing over its margin and proper limits ; assiduous prayer, and 
 observation of the public laws of fasting ; which are framed 
 so moderate and even, as to be proportionable to the common 
 manner of living of persons secular and encumbered. For 
 though many persons of common employments, and even 
 manner of living, have, in the midst of worldly avocations, 
 undertaken austerities very rude and rigorous, yet it was in 
 order to a higher mortification of spirit; and it is also neces- 
 sary they should, if either naturally, or habitually, or easily, 
 they suffer violent transportation of passions : for since the 
 occasions of anger and disturbance in the world frequently 
 occur, if such passions be not restrained by greater violence 
 than is competent to the ordinary offices of a moderate piety, 
 the cure is weaker than the humour, and so leaves the work 
 imperfect. 
 
 15. Secondly : But this is coincident to the second degree 
 of mortification ; for if, either out of desire of a further step 
 towards perfection, or out of the necessities of nature or evil 
 customs, it be necessary also to subdue our passions, as well 
 
 * Huic epulaj, vicisse famem ; magnique pennies, 
 Summovisse hyemem tecto ; pretiosaque vestis, 
 Hirtam membra super, Komani more Quintis, 
 
 Induxisse togam. De Catone diiit Lucanus, ii. 384. 
 
 Intonsos rigidam in frontem descendere canos 
 Passus erat, meestamque genis incresctre barbam. 
 
 De eodem, ii. 376.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 171 
 
 as the direct invitations to sin ; in both these cases the body 
 must suffer more austerities, even such as directly are con- 
 trariant to every passionate disturbance, though it be not ever 
 sinful in the instance. All mortifiers must abstain from 
 every thing that is unlawful ; but these, that they may ab- 
 stain from things unlawful, must also deny to themselves 
 satisfaction in things lawful and pleasant : and this in a just 
 proportion to the end, the subduing the passions, lest their 
 liberty and boldness become licentious. And we shall easier 
 deny their importunity to sin, when we will not please them, 
 in those things in which we may : such in which the fear of 
 God, and the danger of our souls, and the convictions of 
 reason and religion, do not immediately co-operate. And 
 this was the practice of David, when he had thirsted for the 
 water of Bethlehem, and some of his worthies ventured their 
 lives and brought it; " he refused to drink it, but poured it 
 upon the ground unto the Lord ; " u that is, it became a drink- 
 offering unto the Lord ; an acceptable oblation, in which he 
 sacrificed his desires to God, denying himself the satisfaction 
 of such a desire, which was natural and innocent, save that it 
 was something nice, delicate, and curious. Like this was the 
 act of the fathers, in the mountain Nitria, x to one of which a 
 fair cluster of dried grapes being sent, he refused to taste 
 them, lest he should be too sensual and much pleased, but 
 sent them to another, and he to a third ; and the same con- 
 sideration transmitted the present through all their cells, till 
 it came to the first man again ; all of them not daring to con- 
 tent their appetite in a thing too much desired, lest the like 
 importunity, in the instance of a sin, should prevail upon 
 them. To these persons, the best instruments of discipline 
 are subtractions, rather than imposition, of austerities ; let 
 them be great haters of corporal pleasures, eating for neces- 
 sity, diet spare and cheap ; abridging and making short the 
 opportunities of natural and permitted solaces ; y refusing ex- 
 terior comforts; not choosing the most pleasant object; not 
 suffering delight to be the end of eating, and therefore sepa- 
 rating delight from it as much as prudently they may ; not 
 being too importunate with God to remove his gentler hand 
 
 u 2 Sam. xxiii. 17. 
 
 * A pud Pallad. in Histor. Lausiac. 
 
 J Quanto quisque sibi plura negaverit, a Diis plura feret. Hor. lit. 16, 21.
 
 172 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 of paternal correction, but inuring ourselves to patient suffer- 
 ing, and indifferent acceptation of the cross that God lays 
 upon us, at no hand living delicately, or curiously, or impa- 
 tiently. And this was the condition of St. Paul, suffering 
 with excellent temper all those persecutions and inconve- 
 niences, which the enemies of religion loaded him withal ; 
 which he called " bearing the marks of the Lord Jesus in his 
 body," 2 and "carrying about in his body the dying"" or 
 mortification " of the Lord Jesus : " it was in the matter of 
 persecution, which because he bare patiently, and was accus- 
 tomed to, and he accepted with indifference and renunciation, 
 they were the mortifications and the marks of Jesus ; that is, 
 a true conformity to the passion of Christ, and of great effect 
 and interest for the preventing sins by the mortification of his 
 natural desires. 
 
 16. Thirdly : But in the pale of the Church there are, and 
 have been, many tall cedars whose tops have reached to 
 heaven ; some there are that choose afflictions of the body, 
 that by turning the bent and inclination of their affections 
 into sensual displeasures, they may not only cut off all pre- 
 tensions of temptation, but grow in spiritual graces, and 
 perfections intellectual and beatified. To this purpose they 
 served themselves with the instances of sackcloth, hard 
 lodging, long fasts, pernoctation in prayers, renunciation of 
 all secular possessions, great and expensive charity, bodily 
 labours to great weariness and affliction, and many other 
 prodigies of voluntary suffering, which Scripture and the 
 ecclesiastical stories do frequently mention. St. Lewis, king 
 of France, wore sackcloth every day, unless sickness hin- 
 dered ; and St. Zenobius, as long as he was a bishop. And 
 when Severus Sulpitius sent a sackcloth to St. Paulinus, 
 bishop of Nola, he returned to him a letter of thanks, and 
 discoursed piously concerning the use of corporal austerities. 
 And that I need not instance, it was so general, that this 
 was, by way of appropriation, called " the garment of the 
 Church," b because of the frequent use of such instruments 
 of exterior mortification : and so it was in other instances. 
 
 z Gal. vi. 17. 2 Cor. iv. 10. 
 
 b Deposuerunt seculi byssum, et sumpserunt ecclesiae vestimentum, quod 
 estcilicium. Ruricius, ep. 20. Euseb. lib. ii. Hist. c. 22. Clem. Alex. P&dag. 
 lib. ii. c. 1.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 173 
 
 St. James neither ate flesh nor drank wine ; St. Matthew 
 lived upon acorns, seeds, and herbs ; and, amongst the elder 
 Christians, some rolled themselves naked in snows, some 
 upon thorns, some on burning coals, some chewed bitter pills 
 and masticated gums, and sipped frequently of horrid potions, 
 and wore iron upon their skin, and bolts upon their legs, and, 
 in witty torments, excelled the cruelty of many of their per- 
 secutors, whose rage determined quickly in death, and had 
 certainly less of torment than the tedious afflictions and rude 
 penances of Simeon, surnamed Stylites. But as all great 
 examples have excellences above the ordinary devotions of 
 good people, so have they some danger and much consider- 
 ation. 
 
 17. First, therefore, I consider, that these bodily and 
 voluntary self-afflictions can only be of use in carnal and 
 natural temptations, of no use in spiritual : for ascetic diet, 
 hard lodging, and severe disciplines, cannot be directly ope- 
 rative upon the spirit, but only by mediation of the body, by 
 abating its extravagances, by subtracting its maintenance, 
 by lessening its temptations ; these may help to preserve the 
 soul chaste or temperate, because the scene of these sins lies 
 in the body, and thence they have their maintenance, 6 and 
 from thence also may receive their abatements. But in 
 actions which are less material, such as pride, and envy, and 
 blasphemy, and impenitence, and all the kinds and degrees of 
 malice, external mortifications do so little co-operate to their 
 cure, that oftentimes they are their greatest inflamers and 
 incentives, and are like cordials given to cure a cold fit of an 
 ague, they do their work, but bring a hot fit in its place : and 
 besides that great mortifiers have been soonest assaulted by 
 the spirit of pride, we find that great fasters are naturally 
 angry and choleric. St. Hierom found it in himself, and 
 Ruffinus felt some of the effects of it. And therefore this 
 last part of corporal mortification, and the choosing such 
 afflictions by a voluntary imposition, is at no hand to be 
 applied in all cases, but in cases of lust only, and intem- 
 perance, or natural impatience, or such crimes which dwell 
 in the senses : and then it also would be considered, whether 
 
 c "Ev srXn^avj; yag xvvrgis' iv ^i T/>7; xaxu; 
 Ugaffffou/riv OUK 'ivwrtv aQgobirn figo-roTs. Antiphan*
 
 174 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 or no rudeness to the body, applied for the obtaining patience, 
 be not a direct temptation to impatience, a provoking the 
 spirit, and a running into that whither we pray that God 
 would not suffer us to be led. Possibly such austerities, if 
 applied with great caution and wise circumstances, may be 
 an exercise of patience, when the grace is by other means 
 acquired ; and he that finds them so may use them, if he 
 dares trust himself: but as they are dangerous before the 
 grace is obtained, so when it is, they are not necessary. 
 And still it may be inquired, in the case of temptations to 
 lust, whether any such austerities, which can consist with 
 health, will do the work? So long as the body is in health, 
 it will do its offices of nature ; if it is not in health, it cannot 
 do all offices of grace, nor many of our calling. And there- 
 fore, although they may do some advantages to persons 
 tempted with the lowest sins, yet they will not do it all, nor 
 do it alone, nor are they safe to all dispositions : and where 
 they are useful to these smaller and lower purposes, yet we 
 must be careful to observe, that the mortification of the 
 spirit to the greatest and most perfect purposes, is to be set 
 upon by means spiritual, and of immediate efficacy ; for they 
 are the lowest operations of the soul, which are moved and 
 produced by actions corporal ; the soul may from those be- 
 come lustful or chaste, cheerful or sad, timorous or confident : 
 but yet even in these the soul receives but some dispositions 
 thence, and more forward inclinations : but nothing from the 
 body can be operative in the begetting or increase of charity, 
 or the love of God, or devotion, or in mortifying spiritual and 
 intellectual vices ; and therefore those greater perfections 
 and heights of the soul, such as are designed in this highest 
 degree of mortification, are not apt to be enkindled by cor- 
 poral austerities. And Nigrinus, in Lucian, d finds fault with 
 those philosophers who thought virtue was to be purchased 
 by cutting the skin with whips, binding the nerves, razing 
 the body with iron : but he taught that virtue is to be placed 
 in the mind by actions internal and immaterial, and that from 
 
 " &r,).es et xa.t Tat ratovTat xariyiuxus ^i\tff'a^ai, o* faurr^ a.ax.r.eii aeirr,; 
 
 'Xi\a.f*.f>a.i<>'i, fit jraKt.a.l; a,vu,yx,a.i; xcu jfovaig TOU; inus dvrigitv x.dTa.yu/j.*a.ffu/ri. Taurt 
 tiv oi7 oi ^rs/.Xoi xi).iuotTi;, aXXa/ Se, ftaffviyevnTts' ei at ^aonfrtooi, xai ai&r.oto TO.; 
 
 n/panias O.VTUV xitra^vatTtf' fiyiire ya.e %gr,vcu -ra>Jv -r^on^ii If rali ^tiguTi ro ffrtpp'o* 
 revTo xer,i a.irtt3r\f x.a,rttffxiv<i<Ta,i, Lucian. A (grin. Bipunt. Vol. I. p. 50.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 175 
 
 thence remedies are to be derived against perturbations and 
 actions criminal. And this is determined by the apostle in 
 fairest intimation, " Mortify, therefore, your earthly mem- 
 bers ;" e and he instances in carnal crimes, " fornication, 
 uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and 
 covetousness," which are things may be something abated 
 by corporal mortifications; and that these are, by distinct 
 manner, to be helped from other more spiritual vices, he 
 adds, " But now, therefore, put off all these, anger, wrath, 
 malice, blasphemy, filthy communication, and lying." f To 
 both these sorts of sins, mortification being the general 
 remedy, particular applications are to be made, and it must 
 be only spiritual, or also corporal in proportion to the nature 
 of the sins : g he seems to distinguish the remedy by separa- 
 tion of the nature of the crimes, and possibly also by the 
 differing words of " mortify" 11 applied to carnal sins, and 
 " put off" 1 to crimes spiritual. 
 
 18. Secondly: But in the lesser degrees of mortification, 
 in order to subduing of all passions of the sensitive appetite, 
 and the consequent and symbolical sins, k bodily austerities 
 are of good use, if well understood and prudently undertaken. 
 To which purpose I also consider, no acts of corporal auste- 
 rity or external religion are of themselves to be esteemed 
 holy or acceptable to God, are nowhere precisely commanded, 
 no instruments of union with Christ, no immediate parts of 
 Divine worship ; and therefore, to suffer corporal austerities 
 with thoughts determining upon the external action or imagi- 
 nations of sanctity inherent in the action, is against the 
 purity, the spirituality, and simplicity, of the Gospel. And 
 this is the meaning of St. Paul, " It is a good thing that the 
 heart be established with grace, not with meats, which have 
 not profited them which have walked in them ;' M and, " The 
 kingdom of God consists not in meat and drink, but in 
 righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost ;" m and, 
 
 e Col. iii. 5. f Verse 8. 
 
 K Ut corpus redimas, ferrum patieris et ignes, 
 
 Arida nee sitiens ora lavabis aqua. 
 Ut valeas animo, quicquam tolerare negabis 1 
 
 k 'O ty-yus xu^'iau v\ri^ns pttfTt'yuv.Clem. Alex. Ptedag. 2. 
 1 Heb. xiii. y. Rom. sir. 17.
 
 176 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 " Bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable 
 unto all things."" Now, if external mortifications are not for 
 themselves, then they are to receive their estimate as they 
 co-operate to the end : whatsoever is a prudent restraint 
 of an extravagant passion, whatsoever is a direct denial of a 
 sin, whatsoever makes provision for the spirit, or withdraws 
 the fuel from the impure fires of carnality, that is an act of 
 mortification ; but those austerities which Baal's priests did 
 use, or the Flagellantes, an ignorant faction that went up 
 and down villages whipping themselves, or those which re- 
 turn periodically on a set day of discipline, and using rude- 
 nesses to the body by way of ceremony and solemnity, not 
 directed against the actual incursion of a pungent lust, are 
 not within the verge of the grace of mortification. For, 
 unless the temptation to a carnal sin be actually incumbent 
 and pressing upon the soul, pains of infliction and smart do 
 no benefit toward suppressing the habit or inclination : for 
 such sharp disciplines are but short and transient troubles : 
 and although they take away the present fancies of a tempta- 
 tion, yet, unless it be rash and uncharitable, there is no effect 
 remanent upon the body, but that the temptation may speedily 
 return. As is the danger, so must be the application of the 
 remedy. Actual severities are not imprudently undertaken 
 in case of imminent danger ; but to cure an habitual lust, 
 such corporal mortifications are most reasonable, whose effect 
 is permanent, and which takes away whatsoever does minister 
 more fuel, and puts a torch to the pile. 
 
 19. But this is altogether a discourse of Christian pru- 
 dence, not of precise duty and religion : for if we do, by any 
 means, provide for our indemnity, and secure our innocence, 
 all other exterior mortifications are not necessary, and they 
 are convenient but as they do facilitate or co-operate towards 
 the end. And if that be well understood, it will concern us 
 that they be used with prudence and caution, with purity of 
 intention, and without pride : for, since they are nothing in 
 themselves, but are hallowed and adopted into the family of 
 religious actions by participation of the end, the doing them 
 not for themselves takes off all complacency and fancy re- 
 flecting from an opinion of the external actions, guides, and 
 
 n 1 Tim. iv. 8.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 1 77 
 
 purifies the intention, and teaches us to be prudent in the 
 managing of those austerities, which, as they are in them- 
 selves afflictive, so have in them nothing that is eligible, if 
 they be imprudent. 
 
 20. And now, supposing these premises as our guide to 
 choose and enter into the action, prudence must be called 
 into the execution and discharge of it, and the manner of its 
 managing. And, for the prudential part, I shall first give 
 the advice of Nigrinus in the discipline of the old philo- 
 sophers : " He that will best institute and instruct men in 
 the studies of virtue and true philosophy, must have regard 
 to the mind, to the body, to the age, to the former educa- 
 tion, and capacities or incapacities of the person ;" to which 
 all such circumstances may be added, as are to be accounted 
 for in all prudent estimations : such as are national customs, 
 dangers of scandal, the presence of other remedies, or dis- 
 banding of the inclination. 
 
 21. Secondly: It may also concern the prudence of this 
 duty, not to neglect the smallest inadvertences and minutes 
 of lust or spiritual inconvenience, but to contradict them in 
 their weakness and first beginnings. We see that great dis- 
 turbances are wrought from the smallest occasions meeting 
 with an impatient spirit, like great flames kindled from a little 
 spark fallen into an heap of prepared nitre. St. Austin tells 
 a story of a certain person " much vexed with flies in the 
 region of his dwelling, and himself heightened the trouble by 
 too violent and busy reflections upon the inconsiderableness 
 of the instrument, and the greatness of the vexation alighting 
 upon a peevish spirit. In this disposition he was visited by a 
 Manichee (an heretic that denied God to be the maker of 
 things visible) : he being busy to rub his infection upon the 
 next thing he met, asked the impatient person, whom he 
 thought to be the maker of flies? He answered, I think the 
 devil was ; for they are instruments of great vexation and 
 perpetual trouble. What he rather fancied than believed, or 
 expressed by anger rather than at all had entertained within, 
 the Manichee confirmed by such arguments, to which his 
 
 KJ rov agirra -raitium aitouteou; T/>acueevfi.t*or, raura fit* ^v%tj;, ravra Si 
 rufta,re;, rtura St r^ixix; TI xai rfif Wjorfgov ayuyris itTo%iif$au. Lucian, Nigrin. 
 Bipont. Vol. I. p. 51. 
 
 VOL. II. B
 
 178 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 adversary was very apt to give consent by reason of his 
 impatience and peevishness. The Manichee, having set his 
 foot firm upon his first breach, proceeded in his question : 
 If the devil made flies, why not bees, who are but a little 
 bigger, and have a sting too ? The consideration of the sting 
 made him fit to think, that the little difference in bigness 
 needed not a distinct and a greater efficient, especially since 
 the same workman can make a great as well as a little vessel. 
 The Manichee proceeded: If a bee, why not a locust? if a 
 locust, then a lizard? if a lizard, then a bird ? if a bird, then 
 a lamb ? and thence he made bold to proceed to a cow, to an 
 elephant, to a man. His adversary, by this time, being 
 insnared by granting so much, and now ashamed not to 
 grant more, lest his first concessions should seem unreason- 
 able and impious, confessed the devil to be the maker of all 
 creatures visible. "P The use which is made of this story is 
 this caution, that the devil do not abuse us in flies, and 
 provoke our spirits by trifles and impertinent accidents : for 
 if we be unmortified in our smallest motions, it is not imagin- 
 able we should stand the blast of an impetuous accident and 
 violent perturbation. Let us not, therefore, give our passions 
 course in a small accident, because the instance is inconsider- 
 able ; for, though it be, the consequence may be dangerous, 
 and a wave may follow a wave, till the inundation be general 
 and desperate. And therefore, here it is intended for advice, 
 that we be observant of the accidents of our domestic affairs, 
 and curious that every trifling inadvertency of a servant, or 
 slight misbecoming action, or imprudent words, be not appre- 
 hended as instruments of vexation ; for so many small occa- 
 sions, if they be productive of many small disturbances, will 
 produce an habitual churlishness and immortification of spirit. 
 22. Thirdly : Let our greatest diligence and care be em- 
 ployed in mortifying our predominant passion : for if our care 
 be so great as not to entertain the smallest, and our resolu- 
 tion so strong and holy as not to be subdued by the greatest 
 and most passionate desires, the Spirit hath done all its work, 
 secures the future, and sanctifies the present ; and nothing is 
 wanting but perseverance in the same prudence and religion. 
 And this is typically commanded in the precept of God to 
 
 P Tract 1. in Job.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 179 
 
 Moses and Aaron, in the matter of Peor: " Vex the Midian- 
 ites, because they vexed you, and made you sin by their 
 daughters." And Phinehas did so; he killed a prince of the 
 house of Simeon, and a princess of Midian, and God con- 
 firmed the priesthood to him for ever; meaning, that we shall 
 for ever be admitted to a nearer relation to God, if we sacrifice 
 to God our dearest lust. And this is not so properly an act 
 as the end of mortification. Therefore it concerns the pru- 
 dence of the duty, that all the efficacy and violence of it be 
 employed against the strongest, and there where is the most 
 dangerous hostility. 
 
 23. Fourthly : But if we mean to be masters of the field, 
 and put our victory past dispute, let us mortify our morosity 
 and natural aversations, reducing them to an indifference, 
 having in our wills no fondnesses, in our spirits no faction of 
 persons or nations, being prepared to love all men, and to 
 endure all things, and to undertake all employment, which 
 are duty or counsel in all circumstances or disadvantages. 
 For the excellence of evangelical sanctity does surmount all 
 antipathies, as a vessel climbs up and rides upon a wave ; 
 " The wolf and the lamb shall cohabit, and a child shall play 
 and put his fingers in the cavern of an aspick ;" nations, 
 whose interests are most contradictory, must be knit by the 
 confederations of a mortified and a Christian spirit, and single 
 persons must triumph over the difficulties of an indisposed 
 nature, or else their own will is un mortified, and nature is 
 stronger than can well consist with the dominion and abso- 
 lute empire of grace. To this I reduce such peevish and 
 unhandsome nicenesses in matters of religion, that are unsa- 
 tisfied unless they have all exterior circumstances trimmed 
 up and made pompous for their religious offices ; such who 
 cannot pray without a convenient room, and their devotion is 
 made active only by a well-built chapel, and they cannot sing 
 lauds without church music, and too much light dissolves 
 their intention, and too much dark promotes their melan- 
 choly ; and because these, and the like exterior ministries, 
 are good advantages, therefore without them they can do 
 nothing, which certainly is a great intimation and likeness to 
 immortification. Our will should be like the candle of the 
 eye, without all colour in itself, that it may entertain the 
 species of all colours from without : and when we lust after
 
 180 OF MORTIFICATION, 
 
 mandrakes, and deliciousnes of exterior ministries, we many 
 times are brought to betray our own interest, and prostitute 
 our dearest affections to more ignoble and stranger desires. 
 Let us love all natures, and serve all persons, and pray in all 
 places, and fast without opportunities, and do alms above our 
 power, and set ourselves heartily on work to neglect and 
 frustrate those lower temptations of the devil, who will fre- 
 quently enough make our religion inopportune, if we then 
 will make it infrequent ; and will present us with objects 
 enough and flies to disquiet our persons, if our natures be 
 petulant, peevish, curious, and unmortified. 
 
 24. It is a great mercy of God to have an affable, sweet, 
 and well-disposed nature, and it does half the work of morti- 
 fication for us ; we have the less trouble to subdue our 
 passions and destroy our lusts. But then, as those, whose 
 natures are morose, choleric, peevish, and lustful, have greater 
 difficulty ; so is their virtue of greater excellence, and re- 
 turned with a more ample reward : but it is in all men's 
 natures, as with them who gathered manna, " They that 
 gathered little, had no lack, and they that gathered much, 
 had nothing over :" they who are of ill natures, shall want 
 no assistance of God's grace to work their cure q , though their 
 flesh be longer healing ; and they who are sweetly tempered, 
 being naturally meek and modest, chaste or temperate, will 
 find work enough to contest against their temptations from 
 without, though from within possibly they may have fewer. 
 Yet there are greater degrees of virtue and heroical excel- 
 lences, and great rewards, to which God hath designed them 
 by so fair dispositions, and it will concern all their industry to 
 mortify their spirit, which, though it be malleable and more 
 ductile, yet it is as bare and naked of imagery as the rudest 
 and most iron nature; so that mortification will be every 
 man's duty ; no nature, nor piety, nor wisdom, nor perfection, 
 but will need it, either to subdue a lust, or a passion ; to cut 
 off an occasion, or to resist a temptation ; to persevere, or to 
 go on ; to secure our present estate, or to proceed towards 
 perfection. But all men do not think so. 
 
 25. For there are some who have great peace, no fight- 
 ings within, no troubles without, no disputes or contradictions 
 
 i Nemo adeo ferus est, ut non mitescere possit, 
 Si modo culturae patientem commodet aurem. HOT. ep. 1. i. 39.
 
 AND CORPORAL AUSTERITIES. 181 
 
 in their spirit : but these men have the peace of tributaries, or 
 a conquered people ; the gates of their city stand open day 
 and night, that all the carriages may enter without disputing 
 the pass : the flesh and the spirit dispute not, because the 
 spirit is there in pupilage or in bonds, and the flesh rides in 
 triumph, with the tyranny, and pride, and impotency, of a 
 female tyrant. For, in the sense of religion, we all are 
 warriors or slaves ; either ourselves are stark dead in tres- 
 passes and sins, or we need to stand perpetually upon our 
 guards in continual observation, and in contestation against 
 our lusts and our passions ; so long denying and contradicting 
 our own wills, till we will and choose to do things against our 
 wills, having an eye always to those infinite satisfactions 
 which shall glorify our wills and all our faculties, when we 
 arrive to that state in which there shall be no more contra- 
 diction, but only that " our mortal shall put on immor- 
 tality." 
 
 26. But as some have a vain and dangerous peace, so 
 others double their trouble by too nice and impertinent 
 scruples, thinking that every temptation is a degree of im- 
 mortification. As long as we live, we shall have to do with 
 enemies : but as this life is ever a state of imperfection, so 
 the very design and purpose of mortification is not to take 
 away temptations, but to overcome them ; it endeavours to 
 facilitate the work, and secure our condition, by removing all 
 occasions it can : but the opportunity of a crime, and the 
 solicitation to a sin, is no fault of ours, unless it be of our 
 procuring, or finds entertainment when it comes unsent for. 
 To suffer a temptation is a misery; but if we then set upon 
 the mortification of it, it is an occasion of virtue, and never 
 is criminal unless we give consent. But then also it would 
 be considered, that it is not good offering ourselves to fire 
 ordeal to confirm our innocence ; nor prudent to enter into 
 battle without need, and to shew our valour ; nor safe to 
 procure a temptation, that we may have the reward of morti- 
 fication of it. For mortification of the spirit is not com- 
 manded as a duty finally resting in itself, or immediately 
 landing upon God's glory, such as are acts of charity and 
 devotion, chastity and justice : but it is the great instrument 
 of humility and all other graces ; and, therefore, is to be 
 undertaken to destroy a sin, and to secure a virtuous habit.
 
 182 OF MORTIFICATION, &C. 
 
 And besides that/ to call on a danger is to tempt God, and 
 to invite the devil (and no man is sure of a victory) : it is 
 also great imprudence to create a need, that we may take it 
 away again ; to drink poison, to make experiment of the 
 antidote ; and, at the best, it is but a running back to come 
 just to the same place again : for he that is not tempted, does 
 not sin: but he that invites a temptation that he might over- 
 come it, or provokes a passion that he may allay it, is then 
 but in the same condition after his pains and his danger : he 
 was not sure he should come so far. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O dearest God, who hast framed man of soul and body, and 
 fitted him with faculties and proportionable instruments to 
 serve thee according to all our capacities, let thy Holy 
 Spirit rule and sanctify every power and member, both of 
 soul and body, that they may keep that beauteous order 
 which, in our creation, thou didst intend, and to which 
 thou dost restore thy people in the renovations of grace ; 
 that our affections may be guided by reason, our under- 
 standing may be enlightened with thy word, and then 
 may guide and persuade our will ; that we suffer no violent 
 transportation of passions, nor be overcome by a tempta- 
 tion, nor consent to the impure solicitations of lust ; that 
 " sin may not reign in our mortal bodies," but that both 
 bodies and souls may be conformable to the sufferings 
 of the holy Jesus ; that in our body we may bear the 
 marks and dying of our Lord, and in our spirits we may 
 be humble and mortified, and like him, in all his imitable 
 perfections ; that we may die to sin, and live to righteous- 
 ness, and, after our suffering together with him in this 
 world, we may reign together with him hereafter : to whom, 
 in the Unity of the most mysterious Trinity, be all glory, 
 and dominion, and praise, for ever and ever. Amen. 
 
 r Vide Disc, of Temptation.
 
 HISTORY OF THE BAPTISM OF JESUS, &C. 183 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 
 Of Jesus being baptized, and going into the Wilderness 
 to be tempted. 
 
 1 . Now the full time was come, Jesus took leave of his 
 mother and his trade, to begin his Father's work, and the 
 office prophetical, in order to the redemption of the world ; 
 and when " John was baptizing in Jordan, Jesus came to 
 John, to be baptized of him." The Baptist had never seen 
 his face, because they had been, from their infancy, driven 
 to several places, designed to several employments, and 
 never met till now. But immediately the Holy Ghost in- 
 spired St. John with a discerning and knowing spirit, and 
 at his first arrival he knew him, and did him worship. And 
 when Jesus desired to be baptized, " John forbade him, 
 saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and comest thou 
 to me?" For the baptism of John, although it was not 
 a direct instrument of the Spirit for the collation of grace, 
 neither find we it administered in any form of words, not so 
 much as in the name of Christ to come (as many dream), a 
 (because, even after John had baptized, the Pharisees still 
 doubted, if he were the Messias; which they would not, if, in 
 his form of ministration, he had published Christ to come 
 after him ; and also because it had not been proper for 
 Christ himself to have received that baptism, whose form 
 had specified himself to come hereafter; neither could it 
 consist with the revelation which John had, and the con- 
 fession which he made, to baptize in the name of Christ to 
 come, whom the Spirit marked out to him to come al- 
 ready, and himself pointed at him with his finger), yet it was 
 a ceremonious consignation of the doctrine of repentance, 6 
 which was one great part of the covenant evengelical, and 
 was a Divine institution, the susception of it was in order to 
 the fulfilling all righteousness; it was a sign of humility, the 
 persons baptized confessed their sins ; it was a sacramental 
 disposing to the baptism and faith of Christ : but therefore 
 
 * Gabriel, Sotus, Scotus, &c. 
 
 b TI/>iii[tiov rau ilayyiKiov Trti %ugins Acts, lix. 4.
 
 184 HISTORY OF THE BAPTISM 
 
 John wondered, why the Messias, the Lamb of God, pure 
 and without spot, who needed not the abstersions of re- 
 pentance, or the washings of baptism, should demand it, 
 and of him, a sinner, and his servant. And in the Hebrew 
 Gospel of St. Matthew, which the Nazarenes used at Beroea 
 (as St. Hierom reports), these words are added: "The 
 mother of the Lord and his brethren said unto him, John 
 Baptist baptized to the remissions of sins, let us go and be 
 baptized of him. He said to them, what have I sinned, that 
 I should go and be baptized of him ?" And this part of the 
 story is also told by Justin Martyr. d But Jesus wanted 
 not a proposition to consign by his baptism proportionable 
 enough to the analogy of its institution ; for as others pro- 
 fessed their return towards innocence, so he avowed his 
 perseverance in it; and though he was never called in 
 Scripture a sinner, yet he was made sin for us ; that is, he 
 did undergo the shame and the punishment ; and therefore 
 it was proper enough for him to perform the sacrament of 
 sinners. 
 
 2. But the holy Jesus, who came (as himself, in answer 
 to the Baptist's question, professed) " to fulfil all righteous- 
 ness," would receive that rite, which his Father had insti- 
 tuted in order to the manifestation of his Son. For although 
 the Baptist had a glimpse of him by the first irradiations of 
 the Spirit, yet John professed, that he therefore came baptiz- 
 ing with water, that " Jesus might be manifested to Israel;" 6 
 and it was also a sign given to the Baptist himself, that " on 
 whomsoever he saw the Spirit descending and remaining," 
 he is the person, " that baptizeth with the Holy Ghost." 
 And God chose to actuate the sign at the waters of Jordan, 
 in great and religious assemblies, convened there at John's 
 baptism ; and therefore Jesus came to be baptized, and by 
 this baptism became known to John, who, as before he gave 
 to him an indiscriminate testimony, so now he pointed out 
 the person in his sermons and discourses ; and, by calling him 
 the Lamb of God/ prophesied of his passion, and preached 
 
 c Quaest. ad Orthod. 37. d Dial. 3. advers. Pelag. 
 
 e 'Efiawrtfitn at xui itflffrivffiv (Jlrtffavs,) tux uwriif atrsgwrufftus n vnffTiia; %gi!a* 
 f%&>* % xaSd/irta;, a TJJ Ifuffii xaSago; xai ayios, aXX* "ret XKI 'ludvvy a.),f,6iia.v v^iiff- 
 futgrugv<ri>i, Kilt Ifiiv v-ro'ygaftfi.ov vrctgtiffxtirui.Clem. Constit. Apost. lib. vii. c. 23. 
 
 f Sjmbolum supplicii crucis. Just. Mart.
 
 AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 185 
 
 him to be the world's Redeemer, and the sacrifice for man- 
 kind. He was now manifest to Israel ; he confirmed the 
 baptism of John ; he sanctified the water to become sacra- 
 mental and ministerial in the remission of sins ; he by a real 
 event declared, that to them who should rightly be baptized 
 the kingdom of heaven should certainly be opened ; he 
 inserted himself, by that ceremony, into the society and 
 participation of the holy people, of which communion him- 
 self was Head and Prince ; and he did, in a symbol, purify 
 human nature, whose stains and guilt he had undertaken. 
 
 3. As soon as John had performed his ministry, and 
 Jesus was baptized, he prayed, and the heavens were 
 opened, and the air clarified by a new and glorious light ; g 
 " and the Holy Ghost, in the manner of a dove, alighted 
 upon" his sacred head, and God the Father gave " a voice 
 from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom 
 I am well pleased." This was the inauguration and pro- 
 clamation of the Messias, when he began to be the great 
 Prophet of the new covenant. And this was the greatest 
 meeting that ever was upon earth, where the whole cabinet 
 of the mysterious Trinity was opened and shewn, as much as 
 the capacities of our present imperfections will permit ; the 
 second person in the veil of humanity, the third in the shape, 
 or with the motion of a dove; h but the first kept his primi- 
 tive state ; and as to the Israelites he gave notice by way of 
 caution, ** Ye saw no shape, but ye heard a voice;" so now 
 also God the Father gave testimony to his holy Son, and 
 appeared only in a voice, without any visible representment. 
 
 4. When the rite and the solemnity was over, " Christ 
 ascended up out of the waters, and left so much virtue be- 
 hind him, that, as Gregorius Turonensis reports, 1 that creek 
 of the river, where his holy body had been baptized, was 
 endued with a healing quality, and a power of curing lepers 
 that bathed themselves in those waters in the faith and with 
 invocation of the holy name of Jesus. But the manifestation 
 of this power was not till afterwards, for as yet Jesus did uo 
 miracles. 
 
 Kcu iliSvs MtiXa.f*.-$>i Tat r'ovtov $$ p'tya. L'rang. Ebion. 
 
 h 'Oft) #ignrria.v, Matt. iii. 16 ; Mark, i. 10. "E> <rapctrif tfiu, Luke, iii. 
 
 1 De Gloria Martyr, cap. xvii.
 
 186 HISTORY OF THE BAPTISM 
 
 5. As soon as ever the Saviour of the world was bap- 
 tized, had opened the heavens, which yet never had been 
 opened to man, and was declared the Son of God, " Jesus 
 was by the Spirit driven into the wilderness," not by an 
 unnatural violence, but by the efficacies of inspiration, and a 
 supernatural inclination and activity of resolution ; for it was 
 the Holy Spirit that bare him thither ; he was led by the good 
 Spirit to be tempted by the evil : whither also he was pleased 
 to retire, to make demonstration that, even in an active life, 
 such as he was designed to and intended, some recesses and 
 temporary demissions of the world are most expedient, for 
 such persons especially whose office is prophetical, and for 
 institution of others, that, by such vacancies in prayer and 
 contemplation, they may be better enabled to teach others, 
 when they have in such retirements conversed with God. 
 
 6. In the desert, which was four miles from the place of 
 his baptism, and about twenty miles from Jerusalem, as the 
 common computations are, he did abide " forty days and 
 forty nights," where he was perpetually disturbed and as- 
 saulted with evil spirits, in the midst of wild beasts, in a 
 continual fast, without eating bread or drinking water ; " and 
 the angels ministered to him," being messengers of comfort 
 and sustentation, sent from his Father for the support and 
 service of his humanity, and employed in resisting and dis- 
 countenancing the assaults and temporal hostilities of the 
 spirits of darkness. 
 
 7. Whether the devils appeared in any horrid and af- 
 frighting shapes is not certain ; but it is more likely, to a 
 person of so great sanctity and high designation, they would 
 appear more angelical and immaterial, in representments 
 intellectual, in words and ideas, temptations and enticements, 
 because Jesus was not a person of those low weaknesses to 
 be affrighted or troubled with an ugly phantasm, which can 
 do nothing but abuse the weak and imperfect conceptions of 
 persons nothing extraordinary. And this was the way which 
 Satan, or the prince of the devils, took, whose temptations 
 were reserved for the last assault, and the great day of trial ; 
 for at the expiration of his forty days, Jesus being hungry, the 
 tempter invited him only to eat bread of his own providing, 
 which might refresh his humanity, and prove his Divinity, 
 hoping that his hunger, and the desire of convincing the
 
 AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS. 187 
 
 devil, might tempt him to eat before the time appointed. 
 " But Jesus answered, It is written, man shall not live by 
 bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the 
 mouth of God:" meaning, that in every word of God, whether 
 the commandment be general or special, a promise is either 
 expressed or implied of the supply of all provisions necessary 
 for him that is doing the work of God ; and that was the 
 present case of Jesus, who was then doing his Father's work, 
 and promoting our interest, and therefore was sure to be 
 provided for : and therefore so are we. 
 
 8. The devil, having failed in this assault, tries him again, 
 requiring but a demonstration of his being the Son of God. 
 He " sets him upon the battlement of the temple, " k and invites 
 him to throw himself down, upon a pretence that God would 
 send his angels to keep his Son ; and quotes Scripture for it. 
 But Jesus understood it well ; and though he was secured of 
 God's protection, yet he would not tempt God, nor solicit his 
 providence to a dereliction by tempting him to an unneces- 
 sary conservation. This assault was silly and weak. But 
 at last he unites all his power of stratagem, and places the 
 holy Jesus upon an exceeding high mountain ; and, by an 
 angelical power, draws into one centre species and ideas 
 from all the kingdoms and glories of the world, 1 and makes 
 an admirable map of beauties, and represents it to the eyes 
 of Jesus, saying, that all that was put into his power to give, 
 and he " would give it him, if he would fall down and worship 
 him." But then the holy Lamb was angry as a provoked 
 lion, and commanded him away, when his temptations 
 were violent, and his demands impudent and blasphemous. 
 " Then the devil leaveth him, and the angels came and 
 ministered unto him," bringing such things as his necessities 
 required, after he had, by a forty days' fast, done penance 
 for our sins, and consigned to his Church the doctrine and 
 discipline of fasting in order to a contemplative life, and the 
 resisting and overcoming all the temptations and allurements 
 of the devil, and all our ghostly enemies. 
 
 v, TO <ira.vu run ia.ut arxTiif*. 
 avTaa^aT* HfTurte, oWa xa/
 
 188 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 Ad SECTION IX. 
 
 Considerations upon the Baptizing, Fasting, and Temptation 
 of the Holy Jesus by the Devil. 
 
 1. WHEN the day did break, and the Baptist was busy in his 
 offices, the Sun of Righteousness soon entered upon our 
 hemisphere ; and after he had lived a life of darkness and 
 silence for thirty years together, yet now that he came to do 
 the greatest work in the world, and to minister in the most 
 honourable embassy, he would do nothing of singularity, but 
 fulfil all righteousness, and satisfy all commands, and join in 
 the common rites and sacraments which all people, innocent 
 or penitent, did undergo, either as deleteries of sin or instru- 
 ments of grace. For so he would needs be baptized by his 
 servant ; and though he was of purity sufficient to do it, and 
 did actually, by his baptism, purify the purifier, and sanctify 
 that and all other streams to a holy ministry and effect, yet 
 he went in, bowing his head like a sinner, unclothing 
 himself like an imperfect person, and craving to be washed, 
 as if he had been crusted with an impure leprosy ; thereby 
 teaching us to submit ourselves to all those rites which he 
 would institute ; and although some of them be, like the 
 baptism of John, joined with confession of sins and publi- 
 cation of our infirmities, yet it were better for us to lay 
 by our loads and wash our ulcers, than by concealing them, 
 out of vainer desires of impertinent reputation, cover our 
 disease till we are heart-sick and die. But when so holy 
 a person does all the pious ministries of the more imperfect, 
 it is a demonstration to us, that a life common and ordinary, 
 without affectation or singularity, is the most prudent and 
 safe. Every great change, every violence of fortune, all 
 eminences and unevennesses whatsoever, whether of person, 
 or accident, or circumstance, puts us to a new trouble, re- 
 quires a distinct care, creates new dangers, objects more 
 temptations, marks us out the objects of envy, makes our 
 standing more insecure, and our fall more contemptible and 
 ridiculous. But an even life, spent with as much rigour of 
 duty to God as ought to be, yet in the same manner of 
 devotions, in the susception of ordinary offices, in bearing
 
 BAPTISM OF JESUS. 189 
 
 public burdens, frequenting public assemblies, performing 
 offices of civility, receiving all the rites of an established 
 religion, complying with national customs, and hereditary 
 solemnities of a people ; in nothing disquieting public peace, 
 or disrelishing the great instruments of an innocent commu- 
 nion, or dissolving the circumstantial ligaments of charity, or 
 breaking laws and the great relations and necessitudes of 
 the world, out of fancy or singularity, is the best way to live 
 holily, and safely, and happily ; safer from sin and envy, and 
 more removed from trouble and temptation. 
 
 2. When Jesus came to John to be baptized, John, out of 
 humility and modesty, refused him ; but when Jesus, by re- 
 duplication of his desire, fortifying it with a command, made 
 it in the Baptist to become a duty, then he obeyed. And so 
 also did the primitive clerks refuse to do offices of great dig- 
 nity and highest ministry ; looking through the honour upon 
 the danger, and, passing by the dignity, they considered the 
 charge of the cure, and knew that the eminence of the office 
 was in all senses insecure to the person, till, by command and 
 peremptory injunction of their superiors, it was put past a 
 dispute, and became necessary, and that either they must 
 perish instantly in the ruins and precipices of disobedience, 
 or put it to the hazard and a fair venture, for a brighter 
 crown or a bigger damnation. I wish also this care were 
 entailed, and did descend upon all ages of the Church; for 
 the ambitious seeking of dignities and prelacies ecclesiastical, 
 is grown the pest of the Church, and corrupts the salt itself, 
 and extinguishes the lights, and gives too apparent evidences 
 to the world, that neither the end is pure, nor the intention 
 sanctified, nor the person innocent, but the purpose ambitious 
 or covetous, and the person vicious ; and the very entrance 
 into church-offices is with an impure torch, and a foul hand, 
 or a heart empty of the affections of religion, or thoughts of 
 doing God's work. I do not think the present age is to be 
 treated with, concerning denying to accept rich prelacies and 
 pompous dignities ; but it were but reasonable that the main 
 intention and intellectual design should be, to appreciate and 
 esteem the office and employment to be of greatest considera- 
 tion. It is lawful to desire a bishopric ; neither can the un- 
 willingness to accept it be, in a prudent account, adjudged 
 the aptest disposition to receive it, (especially if done in
 
 190 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 ceremony,* just in the instant of their entertainment of it, 
 and possibly after a long ambition :) but yet it were well if 
 we remember, that such desires must be sanctified with holy 
 care and diligence in the office ; for the honey is guarded 
 with thousands of little sharp stings and dangers ; and it will 
 be a sad account, if we be called to audit for the crimes of 
 our diocess, after our own tallies are made even ; and he that 
 believes his own load to be big enough, and trembles at the 
 apprehension of the horrors of doomsday, is not very wise, 
 if he takes up those burdens which he sees have crushed 
 their bearers, and presses his own shoulders till the bones 
 crack, only because the bundles are wrapped in white linen 
 and bound with silken cords. " He that desires the office of 
 a bishop, desires a good work," saith St. Paul : and therefore 
 we must not look on it for the fair-spreading sails and the 
 beauteous streamers, which the favour of princes hath put to 
 it, to make it sail fairer and more secure against the dangers 
 of secular discomforts ; but upon the burden it bears. Pre- 
 lacy is a good work ; and a good work well done is very 
 honourable, and shall be rewarded : but he that considers 
 the infinite dangers of miscarrying, and that the loss of the 
 ship will be imputed to the pilot, may think it many times 
 the safest course to put God or his superiors to the charge of 
 a command, before he undertakes such great ministries ; 
 and he that enters in by the force of authority, as he himself 
 receives a testimony of his worth and aptness to the employ- 
 ment, so he gives the world another, that his search for it was 
 not criminal, nor his person immodest : and by his weighty 
 apprehension of his dangers he will consider his work, and 
 obtain a grace to do it diligently, and to be accepted gra- 
 ciously. And this was the modesty and prudence of the 
 Baptist. 
 
 3. " When Jesus was baptized, he prayed, and the heavens 
 were opened." External rites of Divine institution receive 
 benediction and energy from above, but it is by the mediation 
 of prayer; 6 for there is nothing ritual, but it is also joined 
 with something moral, and required, on our part, in all per- 
 sons capable of the use of reason, that we may understand 
 
 * In Pontifical. Rom. 
 
 b lCor.x.l_3. Gal. iii. 14, 27. 1 Pet. iii. 21. 1 Cor.xii.7,13. Matth. 
 iii. 2, 6.
 
 BAPTISM OF JESUS. 191 
 
 that, the blessings of religion are works and graces too : God, 
 therefore, requiring us to do something, not that we may 
 glory in it, but that we may estimate the grace, and go to 
 God for it in the means of his own hallowing. Naaman had 
 been stupid, if, when the prophet bade him wash seven times 
 in Jordan for his cure, he had not confessed the cure to be 
 wrought by the God of Israel, and the ministry of his prophet, 
 but had made himself the author, because of his obedience to 
 the enjoined condition ; and it is but a weak fancy to dero- 
 gate from God's grace, and the glory and the freedom of it, 
 because he bids us wash before we are cleansed, and pray 
 when we are washed, and commands us to ask before we 
 shall receive. But this also is true, from this instance, that 
 the external rite of sacrament is so instrumental in a spiritual 
 grace, that it never does it but with the conjunction of some- 
 thing moral : and this truth is of so great persuasion in the 
 Greek Church, c that the mystery of consecration in the vene- 
 rable eucharist is amongst them attributed not to any mys- 
 tical words and secret operations of syllables, but to the 
 efficacy of the prayers of the Church, in the just imitation of 
 the whole action and the rite of institution. And the purpose 
 of it is, that we might secure the excellence and holiness of 
 such predispositions and concominant graces, which are ne- 
 cessary to the worthy and effectual susception of the external 
 rites of Christianity. 
 
 4. After the holy Jesus was baptized, and had prayed, 
 the heavens opened, d the Holy Ghost descended, and a voice 
 from heaven proclaimed him to be the Son of God, and one 
 in whom the Father was well pleased ; and the same ointment, 
 that was cast upon the head of our High Priest went unto 
 his beard, and thence fell to the borders of his garment : for 
 as Christ, our Head, felt these effects in manifestation, so the 
 Church believes God does to her, and to her meanest children, 
 in the susception of the holy rite of baptism, in right, apt, 
 arid holy dispositions. For the heavens open, too, upon us ; 
 and the Holy Ghost descends, to sanctify the waters and to 
 
 c Justin. Mart. Apol. 2. Euseb. Emiss. Serm.o.de Pascb. S.August, lib. iii. 
 c. 4. de Trin. 
 
 d Quod Christus vidit coelos apertos, nostri utique gratia factum est, qui- 
 bus per lavacrum unda; regeneratricis janua panditur regni ccelestis. Beda 
 in Matt. lib. i. c. 1.
 
 192 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 hallow the catechumen, and to pardon the past and re- 
 pented sins, and to consign him to the inheritance of sons, 
 and to put on his military girdle, and give him the sacrament 
 and oath of fidelity : for all this is understood to be meant by 
 those frequent expressions of Scripture, calling baptism " the 
 laver of regeneration, illumination, a washing away the filth 
 of the flesh, and the answer of a good conscience, a being 
 buried with Christ,"* and many others of the like purpose and 
 signification. But we may also learn hence, sacredly to 
 esteem the rites of religion, which he first sanctified by his 
 own personal susception, and then made necessary by his 
 own institution and command ; and God hath made to be 
 conveyances of blessing, and ministries of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 5. " The Holy Ghost descended upon Jesus, in the manner 
 or visible representment of a dove ;" either in similitude of 
 figure, which he was pleased to assume, as the Church more 
 generally hath believed ; or at least he did descend like a 
 dove, and in his robe of fire hovered over the Baptist's head, 
 and then " sat upon him," as the dove uses to sit upon the 
 house of her dwelling; whose proprieties of nature are pretty 
 and modest hieroglyphics of the duty of spiritual persons, 
 which are thus observed in both philosophies. The dove 
 sings not, but mourns ; it hath no gall/ strikes not with its 
 bill, hath no crooked talons, and forgets its young ones 
 soonest of any of the inhabitants of the air. And the effects 
 of the Holy Spirit are symbolical in all the sons of sanctifica- 
 tion : for the voice of the Church is sad in those accents 
 which express her own condition : but as the dove is not so 
 sad in her breast as in her note, so neither is the interior 
 condition of the Church wretched and miserable, but indeed 
 her song is most of it elegy within her own walls, and her 
 condition looks sad, and her joys are not pleasures in the 
 public estimate; but they that afflict her think her miserable, 
 because they know not the sweetnesses of a holy peace and 
 serenity which supports her spirit, and plains the heart under 
 a rugged brow, making the soul festival under the noise of a 
 threne and sadder groanings. But the sons of consolation 
 are also taught their duty by this apparition : for upon whom- 
 
 e Epb, v. 26'. Heb. x. 32. 1 Pet. iii. 21. Rom. vi. 4. 
 1 Scil. in hepate ; Labet autem in intestine.
 
 BAPTISM OF JESUS. 193 
 
 soever the Spirit descends, he teaches him to be meek and 
 charitable, neither offending by the violence of hands nor 
 looser language. For the dove is inoffensive in beak and 
 foot, and feels no disturbance and violence of passions when 
 its dearest interests are destroyed; that we also may be of an 
 even spirit in the saddest accidents, which usually discompose 
 our peace : and however such symbolical intimations receive 
 their efficacy from the fancy of the contriver ; yet here, 
 whether this apparition did intend any such moral represent- 
 ment or no, it is certain, that wherever the Holy Spirit does 
 dwell, there also peace and sanctity, meekness and charity, 
 a mortified will, and an active dereliction of our desires, do 
 inhabit. But besides this hieroglyphical representment, this 
 dove, like that which Noah sent out from the ark, did aptly 
 signify the world to be renewed, and all to be turned to a 
 new creation ; and God hath made a new covenant with us, 
 that, unless we provoke him, he will never destroy us any 
 more. 
 
 6. No sooner had the voice of God pronounced Jesus to 
 be the well-beloved Son of God, but the devil thought it of 
 great concernment to attempt him, with all his malice and his 
 art; and that is the condition of all those whom God's grace 
 hath separated from the common expectations and societies 
 of the world : and therefore the son of Sirach gave good 
 advice: " My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare 
 thy soul for temptation ;"s for not only the spirits of darkness 
 are exasperated at the declension of their own kingdom, but 
 also the nature and constitution of virtues and eminent graces, 
 which holy persons exercise in their lives, is such as to be 
 easily assailable by their contraries, apt to be lessened by 
 time, to be interrupted by weariness, to grow flat and insipid 
 by tediousness of labour, to be omitted and grow infrequent, 
 by the impertinent diversions of society and secular occasions ; 
 so that to rescind the ligaments of vice, made firm by nature 
 and evil habits ; to acquire every new degree of virtue, to 
 continue the holy fires of zeal in their just proportion, to 
 overcome the devil, and to reject the invitations of the world, 
 and the softer embraces of the flesh, which are the proper 
 employment of the sons of God, is a perpetual difficulty ; 
 
 - Ki-clus. ii. 1. 
 VOL. II. S
 
 194 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUs's FASTING, 
 
 and every possibility of prevaricating the strictnesses of a 
 duty is a temptation, and an insecurity, to them who have 
 begun to serve God in hard battles. 
 
 7. The Holy Spirit did drive Jesus into the wilderness, to 
 be tempted by the devil. And though we are bound to pray 
 instantly, that we fall into no temptation ; yet if, by Divine 
 permission, or by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit, we be 
 engaged in an action or course of life that is full of tempta- 
 tion and empty of comfort, let us apprehend it as an issue of 
 Divine Providence, as an occasion of the rewards of diligence 
 and patience, as an instrument of virtue, as a designation of 
 that way in which we must glorify God ; but no argument 
 of disfavour, since our dearest Lord, the most holy Jesus, 
 who could have driven the devil away by the breath of his 
 mouth, yet was, by the Spirit of his Father, permitted to a 
 trial and molestation by the spirits of darkness. And this is 
 St. James's counsel : " My brethren, count it all joy when ye 
 enter into divers temptations ; knowing that the trial of your 
 faith worketh patience." 11 So far is a blessing, when the 
 Spirit is the instrument of our motion, and brings us to the 
 trial of our faith : but if the Spirit leaves us, and delivers us 
 over to the devil, not to be tempted, but to be abused and 
 ruined, it is a sad condition, and the greatest instance of 
 their infelicity, whom the Church, upon sufficient reason, and 
 with competent authority, delivers over to Satan, by the in- 
 fliction of the greater excommunication. 
 
 8. As soon as it was permitted to the devil to tempt our 
 Lord, he, like fire, had no power to suspend his act, but was 
 as entirely determined by the fulness of his malice, as a 
 natural agent by the appetites of nature ; that we may know 
 to whom we owe the happiness of all those hours and days 
 of peace, in which we sit under the trees of paradise, and see 
 no serpent encircling the branches, and presenting us with 
 fair fruit to ruin us. It is the mercy of God we have the 
 quietness of a minute ; for if the devil's chain were taken off, 
 he would make our very beds a torment ; our tables to be a 
 snare; our sleeps fantastic, lustful, and illusive; and every 
 sense should have an object of delight and danger, an hyena 
 to kiss, and to perish in its embraces. But the holy Jesus 
 
 h Jam. i. 2.
 
 AND TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS. 195 
 
 having been assaulted by the devil, and felt his malice by the 
 experiments of humanity, is become so merciful a High Priest, 
 and so sensible of our sufferings and danger, by the appre- 
 hensions of compassions, that he hath put a hook into the 
 nostrils of Leviathan ; and although the relics of seven nations 
 be in our borders and fringes of our country, yet we live as 
 safe as did the Israelites, upon whom sometimes an inroad 
 and invasion was made, and sometimes they had rest forty 
 years ; and when the storm came, some remedy was found 
 out by his grace, by whose permission the tempest was 
 stirred up : and we find many persons, who in seven years 
 meet not with a violent temptation to a crime, but their 
 battles are against impediments and retardations of improve- 
 ment ; their own rights are not directly questioned, but the 
 devil and sin are wholly upon the defensive. Our duty here 
 is an act of affection to God, making returns of thanks for the 
 protection, and of duty, to secure and continue the favour. 
 
 9. But the design of the Holy Ghost being to expose 
 Jesus to the temptation, he arms himself with fasting, and 
 prayer, and baptism, and the Holy Spirit, against the day of 
 battle ; he continues in the wilderness forty days and forty 
 nights, without meat or drink, attending to the immediate 
 addresses and colloquies with God ; not suffering the inter- 
 ruption of meals, but representing his own and the necessities 
 of all mankind, with such affections and instances of spirit, 
 love, and wisdom, as might express the excellence of his 
 person, and promote the work of our redemption ; his con- 
 versation being, in this interval, but a resemblance of angelical 
 perfection, and his fasts not an instrument pf mortification, 1 
 for he needed none ; he had contracted no stain from his own 
 nor his parents' acts ; neither do we find that he was at all 
 hungry, or afflicted with his abstinence, till after the expira- 
 tion of forty days. He was afterwards " an hungered," said 
 the evangelist ; and his abstinence from meat might be a 
 defecation of his faculties, and an opportunity of prayer, but 
 
 ' El/ 'drew r>j; ^eiyrnf *ara/&>0jj?, ran aoi fgo; Kvrixiifn,iva.; $vvtip.ii; fraXa/i/ 
 J/Sm^/ rr>* l^auffiav' ufftrt^ ya.(> pirn ra fsdrrifff&it xa,i Tifffa.^tt.x.ivra, ii/u.i/>a; trsigiira, 
 ov% on xa.i Xfio rouTou MIX.O.V avx tSJvara, a A A.' on TavTU. rai-ii xat a.x,o\ouQttt. wgarrj/y 
 oi/AjTa - HUTU xai <ru f^o TOU {xtf'rlir/j.K'ro; To7s xvTixiif&iais ira,Ka,t'.iv p.ri ro^.fj.nfx:, 
 
 SE/.:/;, siyyA.<Toy. Ci/ri/. /iieros. Cutech. 3.
 
 196 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUs's FASTING, 
 
 we are not sure it intended any thing else. But it may con- 
 cern the prudence of religion to snatch at this occasion of 
 duty, so far as the instance is imitable ; and in all violences 
 of temptation to fast and pray, prayer being a rare antidote 
 against the poison, and fasting a convenient disposition to 
 intense, actual, and undisturbed prayer. And we may re- 
 member also, that we have been baptized and consigned with 
 the Spirit of God, k and have received the adoption of sons, 
 and the graces of sanctification in our baptisms, and had 
 then the seed of God put into us ; and then we put on 
 Christ : and, entering into battle, put on the whole armour 
 of righteousness ; and therefore we may, by observing our 
 strength, gather also our duty and greatest obligation, to 
 fight manfully, that we may triumph gloriously. 
 
 10. The devil's first temptation of Christ was upon the 
 instances and first necessities of nature ; Christ was hungry, 
 and the devil invited him to break his fast upon the expense 
 of a miracle, by turning the stones into bread. But the an- 
 swer Jesus made was such as taught us, since the ordinary 
 providence of God is sufficient for our provision or support, 
 extraordinary ways of satisfying necessities are not to be un- 
 dertaken ; but God must be relied upon, his time attended, 
 his manner entertained, and his measure thankfully received. 
 Jesus refused to be relieved, and denied to manifest the 
 Divinity of his person, rather than he would do an act which 
 had in it the intimation of a diffident spirit, or might be ex- 
 pounded a disreputation to God's providence. And, there- 
 fore, it is an improvident care and impious security, to take 
 evil courses, and use vile instruments, to furnish our table, 
 and provide for our necessities. God will certainly give us 
 bread ; and till he does, we can live by the breath of his 
 mouth, by the word of God, by the light of his countenance, 
 by the refreshment of his promises : for if God gives not pro- 
 visions into our granaries, he can feed us out of his own, that 
 is, out of the repositories of charity. If the flesh-pots be 
 removed, he can also alter the appetite ; and when our stock 
 
 *E ffit <rgs^?aX) fitTx TO ficiiTTiffUt a Tau fyubiux,Ti)f xai TlienffTttSt fpof"x^.i7 
 01 (*( ya. xsci TU \iyta xai 9iy f&ov ;rfl<rioX eia TO xaj.uuux, TU xpvvrTai ifaTi S/i 
 TO tfnx.iyofj.tvtt), t%li; Cf nxr,fflis' f-n <fo"rj'fs Ton uyuya.' Tp_0va/.t>u TO 'uiua, rpo%a)i.ou TO 
 xiivfjLa., li u -rutTO, TO. /3tXi TOU trenttgau TO, imev/iupivoi r&iff6r,ffiTa.i' trnufia. pit IffTiv, 
 uot tgti' viaa/i p.iv IffTit, u>./.a, trugi; tZiffTri^ioi. Xuziun, Oral, in S. Rapt. 
 
 *
 
 AND TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS. 197 
 
 is spent, lie can also lessen the necessity ; or if that con- 
 tinues, he can drown the sense of it in a deluge of patience 
 and resignation. Every word of God's mouth can create a 
 grace, and every grace can supply two necessities, both of 
 the body and the spirit, by the comforts of this to support 
 that, that they may bear each other's burden, and alleviate 
 the pressure. 
 
 11. But the devil is always prompting us to change our 
 stones into bread, our sadnesses into sensual comfort, our 
 drynesses into inundations of fancy and exterior sweetnesses : 
 for he knows, that the ascetic tables of mortification and the 
 stones of the desert are more healthful than the fulnesses of 
 voluptuousness and the corn of the valleys. He cannot en- 
 dure, we should live a life of austerity or self-denial: if he 
 can get us but to satisfy our senses, and a little more freely 
 to please our natural desires, he then hath a fair field for the 
 battle ; but so long as w r e force him to fight in hedges and 
 morasses, encircling and crowding up his strengths into dis- 
 advantages, by our stone w r alls, our hardnesses of discipline 
 and rudenesses of mortification, we can with more facilities 
 repel his flatteries, and receive fewer incommodities of spirit. 
 But thus the devil will abuse us, by the impotency of our 
 natural desires ; and therefore let us go to God, for satisfac- 
 tion of our wishes. God can, and does, when it is good for 
 us, change our stones into bread : for he is a Father so mer- 
 ciful, that " if we ask him a fish, he will not give us a scor- 
 pion ; if we ask him bread, he will not offer us a stone ;" but 
 will satisfy all our desires by ministrations of the Spirit, 
 making stones to become our meat, and tears our drink ; 
 which, although they are unpleasant and harsh to natural 
 appetites, yet, by the operation and influences of God's Holy 
 Spirit, they are made instruments of health, and life, and 
 salvation. 
 
 12. The devil, perceiving Jesus to be a person of greater 
 eminence and perfection, than to be moved by sensual and 
 low desires, makes a second assault, by a temptation some- 
 thing more spiritual, and tempts him to presumption and 
 indiscreet confidence, to a throwing himself down from the 
 pinnacles of the temple; upon the stock of predestination, 
 that God might secure him by the ministry of angels, and so 
 prove his being the Son of God. And indeed it is usual
 
 198 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUS's FASTING, 
 
 with the devil, when severe persons have so much mortified 
 their lower appetites, that they are not easily overcome by 
 an invitation of carnality or intemperance, to stir them to 
 opinions of their own sanctity, and make their first escaping 
 prove their second and greater dangers. But that the devil 
 should persuade Jesus to throw himself down, because he 
 was the Son of God, was an invitation to no purpose, save 
 only that it gave occasion to this truth, That God's provi- 
 dence secures all his sons in the ways of nature, and while 
 they are doing their duty ; but loves not to be tempted to acts 
 unreasonable and unnecessary. God will protect his servants 
 in or from all evils happening without their knowledge, or 
 against their will ; but not from evils of their own procuring. 
 Heron, an inhabitant of the desert, suffered the same tempta- 
 tion, and was overcome by it ; for he died with his fall, sin- 
 fully and ingloriously. For the caresses of God's love to his 
 saints and servants are security against all but themselves. 
 The devil and all the world offer to do them mischief, but 
 then they shall be safe, because they are innocent ; if they 
 once offer to do the same to themselves, they lose their pro- 
 tection, because they lose their prudence and their charity. 
 But here, also, it will concern all those who, by their eminent 
 employment, and greater ministries in ecclesiasticals, are set 
 upon the pinnacle of the temple, to take care that the devil 
 tempt not them to a precipice ; a fall from so great a height 
 will break the bones in pieces : and yet there also the station 
 is less firm, the posture most uneasy, the prospect vertiginous, 
 and the devil busy, and desirous to thrust us headlong. 
 
 13. St. Hierom here observes well, 1 the devil intending 
 mischief to our blessed Saviour, invited him " to cast himself 
 down." He may persuade us to a fall, but cannot precipi- 
 tate us without our own act. And it is an infinite mercy in 
 God, that the devil, who is of malice infinite, is of so re- 
 strained and limited a power, that he can do us no ghostly 
 disadvantage, but by persuading us to do it ourselves. And 
 then it will be a strange imprudence to lay violent and unrea- 
 sonable hands upon ourselves, and do that mischief which 
 our strongest and most malicious adversary cannot ; or to be 
 invited by the only rhetoric of a dog's barking, to come near 
 
 1 S. Ilieron. in -1. cap. Matt.
 
 AND TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS. 199 
 
 him, to untie his chain, to unloose his muzzle, for no other 
 end but that we may be bitten. Just such a fool is every 
 person that consents to the temptations of the devil. 
 
 14. By this time the devil began to perceive that this 
 was the Son of God, and designed to be the King of all the 
 world, and therefore resolved, for the last assault, to proffer 
 him the kingdoms of the world ; thinking ambition more likely 
 to ruin him, because he knew it was that which prevailed 
 upon himself, and all those fallen stars, the angels of darkness. 
 That the devil told a lie, it is most likely, when he said he 
 had power to dispose the kingdoms of the world ; for origin- 
 ally, and by proper inherent right, God alone disposes all 
 governments : but it is also certain, that the devil is a person 
 capable of a delegate employment, in some great mutation of 
 states ; and many probabilities have been observed by wise 
 personages, persuading that the grandeur of the Roman em- 
 pire was, in the degrees of increment and decrement, per- 
 mitted to the power and managing of the devil ; that the 
 greatness of that government, being in all appearance full of 
 advantage to Satan's kingdom, and employed for the disim- 
 provement of the weak beginnings and improbable increase 
 of Christianity, might give lustre and demonstration to it 
 that it came from God ; since the great permissions of power 
 made to the devil, and acted with all art and malice in de- 
 fiance of the religion, could produce no other effect upon it, 
 but that it made it grow greater ; and the greatness was made 
 more miraculous, since the devil, when his chain was off, fain 
 would, but could not, suppress it. 
 
 15. The Lamb of God, that heard him with patience 
 tempt him to do himself a mischief, and to throw himself 
 headlong, could by no means endure it, when he tempted to 
 a direct dishonouring of God. Our own injuries are oppor- 
 tunities of patience ; but when the glory of God, and his 
 immediate honour, is the question, then is the occasion and 
 precise minute for the flames of a clear-shining and uncon- 
 suniing zeal. But the care of God's glory had so filled and 
 employed all the faculties of Jesus, that he takes no notice of 
 the offer : and it were well also, that we had fewer opinions 
 of the lustre of wordly dignities, or at least that we, in imi- 
 tation of our blessed Master, should refuse to accept all the 
 world, when it is to be bought of the devil at the expense of
 
 200 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUS's FASTING, &C. 
 
 a deadly sin. For that government cannot be very honour- 
 able that makes us slaves to the worst of tyrants ; and all 
 those princes and great personages, \vho, by injury and 
 usurpation, possess and invade others' rights, would do well 
 to consider, that a kingdom is too dearly paid for if the con- 
 dition be first to worship the devil. 
 
 16. When the devil could do no good, " he departed for 
 a time." If he could ever have spied a time of returning, he 
 
 wanted not will nor malice to observe and use it : and although 
 
 o 
 
 Jesus was a person without danger, yet I doubt not but the 
 Holy Ghost described that circumstance, that we should not 
 have the securities of a deep peace when we have had the 
 success of conquerors, for a surprise is most full of horror and 
 of more certain ruin ; so that we have no security, but a per- 
 petual observation ; that, together with the grace of God, 
 (who takes care of all his servants, and will drive away the 
 tempter when he please.-?, and help us always when we need,) 
 is as great an argument for our confidence, and encouragement 
 to onr prayers and address to God, as it is safety to our per- 
 son and honour to our victory. And let us account it our 
 honour, that the trials of temptation, which is the greatest 
 sadness of our condition, are hallowed by the temptation of 
 Jesus, and our condition assured by his assistances, and the 
 assistances procured by our prayers most easily upon the 
 advantage of his sufferings and compassion. And we may 
 observe, that poverty, predestination, and ambition, are the 
 three quivers, from which the devil drew his arrows, which 
 (as the most likely to prevail) he shot against Christ : but 
 now he shot in vain, and gave probation that he might be 
 overcome ; our Captain hath conquered for himself and us. 
 By these instances we see our danger, and how we are 
 provided of a remedy. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O holy Jesus, who didst fulfil all righteousness, and didst live 
 a life of evenness, and obedience, and community, submit- 
 ting thyself to all rites and sanctions of Divine ordinance ; 
 give me grace to live, in the fellowship of thy holy church, 
 a life of piety, and without singularity, receiving the sweet 
 influence of thy sacraments and rites, and living in the
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 201 
 
 purities and innocences of my first sanctification. I adore 
 thy goodness infinite, that thou hast been pleased to wash 
 my soul in the laver of regeneration, that thou hast con- 
 signed me to the participation of thy favours by the holy 
 eucharist. Let me not return to the infirmities of the old 
 man, whom thou hast crucified on thy cross, and who was 
 buried with thee in baptism ; nor renew the crimes of my 
 sinful years, which were so many recessions from baptismal 
 purities : but let me ever receive the emissions of thy 
 Divine Spirit, and be a son of God, a partner of thine 
 immortal inheritance; and, when thou seest it needful, 
 I may receive testimony from heaven, that I am thy ser- 
 vant and thy child. And grant that I may so walk, that 
 I neither disrepute the honour of the Christian institution, 
 nor stain the whitenesses of that innocence which thou 
 didst invest my soul withal when I put on the baptismal 
 robe, nor break my holy vow, nor lose my right of inherit- 
 ance, which thou hast given me by promise and grace ; but 
 that thou mayest love me with the love of a father, and a 
 brother, and a husband, and a lord, and I serve thee in the 
 communion of saints, in the susception of sacraments, in 
 the actions of a holy life, and in a never-failing love or 
 uninterrupted devotion : to the glory of thy name, and the 
 promotion of all those ends of religion which thou hast 
 designed in the excellent economy of Christianity. Grant 
 this, holy Jesus, for thy mercy's sake, and for the honour 
 of thy name, which is, and shall be, adored for ever and 
 ever. Amen. 
 
 DISCOURSE V. 
 Of Temptation. 
 
 1. GOD, who is the fountain of good, did choose rather to 
 bring good out of evil, than not to suffer any evil to be : not 
 only because variety of accidents and natures do better enter- 
 tain our affections, and move our spirits, who arc transported, 
 and suffer great impressions by a circumstance, by the very 
 opposition, and accidental lustre and eminence, of contraries ;
 
 202 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 but also that the glory of the Divine providence, in turning 
 the nature of things into the designs of God, might be illus- 
 trious, and that we may, in a mixed condition, have more 
 observation, and, after our danger and our labour, may obtain 
 a greater reward : for temptation is the opportunity of virtue 
 and a crown ; God having disposed us in such a condition, 
 that our virtues must be difficult, our inclinations averse and 
 corrigible, our avocations many, our hostilities bitter, our 
 dangers proportionable, that our labour might be great, our 
 inclinations suppressed and corrected, our intentions be made 
 actual, our enemies be resisted, and our dangers pass into 
 security and honour, after a contestation, and a victory, and 
 a perseverance. It is every man's case; trouble" is as cer- 
 tainly the lot of our nature and inheritance, and we are so 
 sure to be tempted, that in the deepest peace and silence of 
 spirit oftentimes is our greatest danger ; not to be tempted, 
 is sometimes our most subtle temptation. It is certain, then, 
 we cannot be secure when our security is our enemy ; but 
 therefore we must do, as God himself does, make the best of 
 it, and not be sad at that which is the public portion and the 
 case of all men, but order it according to the intention, place 
 it in the eye of virtue, that all his actions and motions may 
 tend thither, there to be changed into felicities. But certain 
 it is, unless we first be cut and hewn in the mountains, we 
 shall not be fixed in the temple of God ; but, by incision and 
 contusions, our roughnesses may become plain, or our sparks 
 kindled, and we may be, either for the temple or the altar, 
 spiritual building or holy fire, something that God shall 
 delight in, and then the temptation was not amiss. 
 
 2. And therefore we must not wonder, that oftentimes it 
 so happens, that nothing will remove a temptation, no dili- 
 gence, no advices, no labour, no prayers ; not because these 
 are ineffectual, but because it is most fit the temptation 
 should abide, for ends of God's designing : and although 
 St. Paul was a person whose prayers were likely to be 
 prevalent, and his industry of mach prudence and efficacy 
 toward the drawing out of his thorn ; yet God would not do 
 it, but continued his war, only promising to send him succour, 
 
 * Erras, mi frater, erras, si putas unquam Christianum persecutionem non pati. 
 Tune maxime oppugnaris, si te oppugnari nescis. 5. Hier. ad Heliod.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 203 
 
 " My grace is sufficient for thee ;" b meaning, he should have 
 an enemy to try his spirit and improve it, and he should also 
 have God's Spirit to comfort and support it ; but as, without 
 God's grace, the enemy would spoil him, so without an enemy 
 God's grace would never swell up into glory and crown him. 
 For the caresses of a pleasant fortune are apt to swell into 
 extravagances of spirit, and burst into the dissolution of 
 manners ; and unmixed joy is dangerous : but if, in our 
 fairest flowers, we spy a locust, or feel the uneasiness of a 
 sackcloth under our fine linen, or our purple be tied with an 
 uneven and a rude cord ; any little trouble, but to correct our 
 wildnesses, though it be but a death's head served up at our 
 feasts, it will make our tables fuller of health and freer from 
 snare, it will allay our spirits, making them to retire from the 
 weakness of dispersion, to the union and strength of a sober 
 recollection. 
 
 3. Since, therefore, it is no part of our employment or our 
 care to be free from all the attempts of an enemy, but to be 
 safe in despite of his hostility ; it now will concern us to 
 inform ourselves of the state of the war in general, and then 
 to make provisions, and to put on armour accordingly. 
 
 4. First : St. Cyprian often observes, and makes much of 
 the discourse, that the devil, when he intends a battery, first 
 views the strength and situation of the place. His sense, 
 drawn out of the cloud of an allegory, is this : The devil first 
 considers the constitution and temper of the person he is to 
 tempt, and where he observes his natural inclination apt for 
 a vice, he presents him with objects, and opportunity, and 
 arguments fitting to his caitive disposition ; from which he 
 is likely to receive the smaller opposition, since there is a 
 party within that desires his intromission. Thus, to lustful 
 natures, he represents the softer whispers of the spirit of 
 fornication ; to the angry and revengeful, he offers to consi- 
 deration the satisfactions and content of a full revenge, and 
 the emissions of anger ; to the envious he makes panegyrics 
 of our rivals, and swells our fancies to opinion, our opinion 
 to self-love, self-love to arrogance, and these are supported 
 by contempt of others, and all determine upon envy, and 
 expire in malice. Now, in these cases, when our natures are 
 
 b 2 Cor. xii. 9. c Serm. de Zelo.
 
 204 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 caitive and unliamlsome, it were good we were conscious of 
 our own weaknesses, and, by special arts and strengths of 
 mortification, fortify that part where we are apt and exposed 
 to danger : we are sure enough to meet a storm there, and we 
 also are likely to perish in it, unless we correct those averse- 
 nesses and natural indispositions, and reduce them to the 
 evennesses of virtue, or the affections and moderation of a 
 good nature. Let us be sure, that the devil take not a helve 
 from our own branches to fix his axe, that so he may cut the 
 tree down : and certainly he that does violence to his nature, 
 will not be easy to the entertainment of affections preterna- 
 tural and violent. 
 
 5. Secondly : But the devil also observes all our exterior 
 accidents, occasions, and opportunities of action ; he sees 
 what company we keep, he observes what degrees of love 
 we have to our wives, what looseness of affection towards 
 children, how prevalent their persuasions, how inconvenient 
 their discourses, how trifling their interests, and to what 
 degrees of determination they move us by their importunity 
 or their power. The devil tempted Adam by his wife, be- 
 cause he saw his affections too pliant, and encircling her with 
 the entertainment of fondness, joy, wonder, and amorous 
 fancy : it was her hand that made the fruit beauteous to 
 Adam; " she saw it fair" of itself, " and so she ate;" but 
 Adam was not moved by that argument, but, " The woman 
 gave it me, and I did eat :" she gave vivacity to the tempta- 
 tion, and efficacy to the argument. And the severity of the 
 man's understanding would have given a reasonable answer 
 to the insinuations of the serpent : that was an ugly beast, 
 and his arguments not being of themselves convincing to a 
 wise person, either must put on advantages of a fair insinua- 
 tion and representment, or they are returned with scorn. 
 But when the beauteous hands of his young virgin-mistress d 
 became the orators, the temptation was an amorevolezza ; he 
 kisses the presenter, and hugs the ruin. Here, therefore, it is 
 our safest course, to make a retrenchment of all those excres- 
 cences of affections, which, like wild and irregular suckers, 
 draw away nourishment from the trunk, making it as sterile 
 
 d Habet namque voluptatem quandam admonitio uxoria, quum plurimum ametur 
 quod consuliU S. Chrysost.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 205 
 
 as itself is unprofitable. As we must restrain the inclinations 
 of nature, so also of society and relation, when they become 
 inconvenient, and let nothing of our family be so adopted, or 
 naturalized into our affections, as to create within us a new 
 concupiscence, and a second time spoil our nature : what God 
 intended to us for a help, let not our fondnesses convert into 
 a snare ; and he that is not ready to deny the importunities, 
 and to reject the interests, of a wife, or child, or friend, when 
 the question is for God, deserves to miss the comforts of a 
 good, and to feel the troubles of an imperious woman. 
 
 6. Thirdly : We also have ends and designs of our own, 
 some great purpose, upon which the greatest part of our life 
 turns : it may be, we are to raise a family, to recover a sunk 
 estate ; or else ambition, honour, or a great employment, is 
 the great hinge of all our greater actions ; and some men are 
 apt to make haste to be rich, or are to pass through a great 
 many difficulties to be honourable : and here the devil will 
 swell the hopes, and obstruct the passages ; he will heighten 
 the desire, and multiply the business of access, making the 
 concupiscence more impatient, and yet the way to the pur- 
 chase of our purposes so full of employment and variety, that 
 both the implacable desire, and the multitude of changes and 
 transactions, may increase the danger, and multiply the sin. 
 When the enemy hath observed our ends, he makes his 
 temptations to reflect from that angle which is direct upon 
 them, provoking to malice and impatience against whomso- 
 ever we find standing in our way, whether willingly or by 
 accident ; then follow naturally all those sins which are 
 instrumental to removing the impediments, to facilitating the 
 passage, to endearing our friends, to procuring more con- 
 fidents, to securing our hopes, and entering upon possession. 
 Simon Magus had a desire to be accounted some great one ; 
 and by that purpose he was tempted to sorcery and divina- 
 tion ; and with a new object he brought a new sin into the 
 world, adding simony to his sorcery, and taught posterity 
 that crime which, till then, had neither name nor being. 
 And those ecclesiastics, who violently aft'ect rich or pompous 
 prelacies, pollute themselves with worldly arts, growing covet- 
 ous as Syrian merchants, ambitious as the Levantine princes, 
 factious as the people, revengeful as jealousy, and proud as 
 conquerors and usurpers ; and, by this means, beasts are
 
 206 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 brought into the temple, and the temple itself is exposed to 
 sale, and the holy rites, as well as the beasts of sacrifice, are 
 made venal. To prevent the infinite inconveniences that 
 thrust themselves into the common and great roads of our 
 life, the best course is to cut our great channel into little 
 rivulets, making our ends the more, that we may be indif- 
 ferent to any, proposing nothing great, that our desires may 
 be little ; for so we shall be better able to digest the troubles 
 of an enemy, the contradictions of an unhandsome accident, 
 the crossing of our hopes ; because our desires are even, and 
 our ends are less considerable, and we can, with much readi- 
 ness, divert upon another purpose, having another ready with 
 the same proportion to our hopes and desires as the first. 
 Thus, if we propound to ourselves an honest employment or 
 a quiet retirement, a work of charity abroad or of devotion at 
 home, if we miss in our first setting forth, we return to shore, 
 where we can negotiate with content, it being alike to us 
 either to traffic abroad with more gain, or trade at home with 
 more safety. But when we once grow great in our desires, 
 fixing too earnestly upon one object, we either grow impa- 
 tient; as Rachel, " Give me children, or I die :" or take ill 
 courses and use unlawful means ; as Thamar, choosing rather 
 to lie with her father than to die without issue : or else are 
 miserable in the loss and frustration of our hopes ; like the 
 women of Ramah, who " would not be comforted." Let, 
 therefore, our life be moderate, our desires reasonable, our 
 hopes little, our ends none in eminence and prelation above 
 others : e for as the rays of light, passing through the thin air, 
 end in a small and undiscerned pyramis, but, reflected upon a 
 wall, are doubled, and increase the warmth to a scorching and 
 troublesome heat; so the desires of man, if they pass through 
 an even and an indifferent life towards the issues of an ordi- 
 nary and necessary course, they are little, and within com- 
 mand ; but if they pass upon an end, or aim of difficulty or 
 ambition, they duplicate, and grow to a disturbance : and we 
 have seen the even and temperate lives of indifferent persons 
 continue in many degrees of innocence; but the temptation 
 of busy designs is too great, even for the best of dispositions. 
 
 e Vim temperatam dii quoque provehunt 
 In innjus : iidem odere vires 
 Omne nefas uuimo movcntes.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 207 
 
 7. But these temptations are crasse and material, and 
 soon discernible ; it will require some greater observation to 
 arm against such as are more spiritual and immaterial. For 
 he hath apples to cozen children, and gold for men ; the king- 
 doms of the world for the ambition of princes, and the vanities 
 of the world for the intemperate ; he hath discourses and fair- 
 spoken principles to abuse the pretenders to reason, and he 
 h;ilh common prejudices for the more vulgar understandings. 
 Amongst these I choose to consider such as are by way of 
 principle or proposition. 
 
 8. The first great principle of temptation I shall note is a 
 general mistake, which excuses very many of our crimes 
 upon pretence of infirmity, calling all those sins to which by 
 natural disposition we are inclined (though, by carelessness 
 and evil customs, they are heightened to a habit), by the name 
 of sins of infirmity ; to which men suppose they have reason 
 and title to pretend. If, when they have committed a crime, 
 their conscience checks them, and they are troubled, and, 
 during the interval and abatement of the heats of desire, 
 resolve against it, and commit it readily at the next oppor- 
 tunity ; then they cry out against the weakness of their 
 nature, and think, as long as this body of death is about 
 them, it must be thus, and that this condition may stand 
 with the state of grace : and then the sins shall return period- 
 ically, like the revolutions of a quartan ague, well and ill 
 for ever, till death surprises the mistaker. This is a patron 
 of sins, and makes the temptation prevalent by an authentic 
 instrument; and they pretend the words of St. Paul, " For 
 the good that I would, that I do not ; but the evil that I 
 would not, that I do. For there is a law in my members 
 rebelling against the law of my mind, bringing me into 
 captivity to the law of sin." f And thus the state of sin is 
 mistaken for a state of grace, and the imperfections of the 
 law are miscalled the affections and necessities of nature, 
 that they might seem to be incurable, and the persons apt 
 for an excuse, therefore, because for nature there is no abso- 
 lute cure. But that these words of St. Paul may not become 
 a savour of death, and instruments of a temptation to us, it is 
 observable, that the apostle, by a fiction of person (as is 
 
 r Rom. vii. 19, 23.
 
 208 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 usual with him, g ) speaks of himself, not as in the state of 
 regeneration under the Gospel, but under the difficulties, 
 obscurities, insufficiencies, and imperfections of the law ; 
 which, indeed, he there contends to have been a rule good 
 and holy, apt to remonstrate our misery, because by its 
 prohibitions, and limits given to natural desires, it made 
 actions (before indifferent) now to be sins ; it added many 
 curses to the breakers of it, and, by an efficacy of contra- 
 riety, it made us more desirous of what was now unlawful : 
 but it was a covenant, in which our nature was restrained, 
 but not helped ; it was provoked, but not sweetly assisted ; 
 our understandings were instructed, but our wills not sancti- 
 fied, and there were no suppletories of repentance ; every 
 greater sin was like the fall of an angel, irreparable by any 
 mystery or express, recorded or enjoined. Now, of a man 
 under this covenant he describes the condition to be such, 
 that he understands his duty, but by the infirmities of nature 
 he is certain to fall, and by the helps of the law not strength- 
 ened against it, nor restored after it ; and therefore he calls 
 himself, under that notion, " A miserable man, sold under 
 sin," not doing according to the rules of the law, or the 
 dictates of his reason, but by the unaltered misery of his 
 nature certain to prevaricate. But the person described 
 here is not St. Paul, is not any justified person, not so 
 much as a Christian, but one who is under a state of direct 
 opposition to the state of grace ; as will manifestly appear, 
 if we observe the antithesis from St. Paul's own characters. 
 For the man here named is such as in whom " sin wrought 
 all concupiscence, in whom sin lived, and slew him," so that 
 he was dead in trespasses and sins; and although he " did 
 delight in the law after his inward man," that is, his under- 
 standing had intellectual complacences and satisfactions, 
 which afterwards he calls " serving the law of God with his 
 mind," that is, in the first dispositions and preparations of his 
 spirit, yet he could act nothing ; for the law in his members 
 did enslave him, " and brought him into captivity to the law 
 of sin;" h so that his person was full of actual and effective 
 lusts, he was a slave to sin, and dead in trespasses : but the 
 
 e Ut videre est, Rom. iii. 7. Gal. ii. 18. \ Cor. vi. 12 ; and x. 23, 29, 30 ; 
 and xiii. 2. 
 
 b Rom. vii. 8, 11, 22, 23, 25,
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 209 
 
 state of a regenerate person is such, as to have "crucified 
 the flesh, with the affections and lusts ;"' in whom sin did not 
 reign, not only in the mind, but even also not in the mortal 
 body ; over whom sin had no dominion ; in whom the old 
 man was crucified, and the body of sin was destroyed, and 
 sin not at all served. And to make the antithesis yet clearer, 
 in the very beginning of the next chapter the apostle saith, 
 "That the spirit of life in Christ Jesus had made him free 
 from the law of sin and death ;" k under which law> he com- 
 plained immediately before he was sold and killed, to shew 
 the person was not the same in these so different and contra- 
 dictory representments. No man in the state of grace can 
 say, "The evil that I would not, that I do;" if, by evil, 
 he means any evil that is habitual, or in its own nature 
 deadly. 
 
 9. So that now let no man pretend an inevitable necessity 
 to sin ; for if ever it comes to a custom or to a great viola- 
 tion, though but in a single act, it is a condition of carnality, 
 not of spiritual life ; and those are not the infirmities of 
 nature, but the weaknesses of grace, that make us sin so 
 frequently; which the apostle truly affirms to the same 
 purpose : " The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the 
 Spirit against the flesh ; and these are contrary the one to 
 the other : so that ye cannot (or that ye do not ') do the 
 things that ye would." This disability proceeds from the 
 strength of the flesh, and weakness of the Spirit : for he 
 adds, " But if ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not under the 
 law:" saying plainly, that the state of such a combat, and 
 disability of doing good, is a state of man under the law, or 
 in the flesh, which he accounts all one ; but every man that 
 is sanctified under the Gospel is led by the Spirit, and walks 
 in the Spirit, and brings forth the fruits of the Spirit. It is 
 not our excuse, but the aggravation of our sin, that we fall 
 again, in despite of so many resolutions to the contrary. 
 And let us not flatter ourselves into a confidence of sin, by 
 supposing the state of grace can stand with the custom of 
 any sin : for it is the state either of an animalis homo, 
 (as the apostle calls him,) n that is, a man in pure naturals, 
 
 1 Gal. v. 24. Rom. vi. 6, 12, 14. k Rom. viii. 2. 
 
 1 "Iva jttr; -row-n. m Gal. v. 17. D Rom. vii. 14. 
 
 VOL. II. T
 
 210 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 without the clarity of Divine revelations, who "cannot per- 
 ceive or understand the things of God ;" or else of the carnal 
 man, that is, a person, who, though in his mind he is con- 
 vinced, yet he is not yet freed from the dominion of sin, but 
 only hath his eyes opened, but not his bonds loosed. For 
 by the perpetual analogy and frequent expresses in Scripture, 
 the spiritual person, or the man " redeemed by the spirit of 
 life in Christ Jesus," is free from the law, and the dominion, 
 and the kingdom, and the power of all sin. " For to be 
 carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is 
 life and peace." 
 
 10. But sins of infirmity, in true sense of Scripture, 
 signify nothing but the sins of an unholy and unsanctified 
 nature, when they are taken for actions done against the 
 strength of resolution, out of the strength of natural appetite 
 and violence of desire ; and therefore, in Scripture, the state 
 of sin and the state of infirmity is all one. " For when 
 we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for 
 the ungodly," (saith the apostle :) p the condition in which 
 we were when Christ became a sacrifice for us, was cer- 
 tainly a condition of sin and enmity with God, and yet 
 this he calls a being without strength, or in a state of weak- 
 ness and infirmity ; which we, who believe all our strength 
 to be derived from Christ's death, and the assistance of 
 the Holy Spirit, the fruit of his ascension, may soon ap- 
 prehend to be the true meaning of the word. And in this 
 sense is that saying of our blessed Saviour, "The whole have 
 no need of a physician, but they that are weak:" for there- 
 fore " Christ came into the world to save sinners," those are 
 the persons of Christ's infirmary, whose restitution and re- 
 duction to a state of life and health was his great design." 1 
 So that whoever sin habitually, that is, constantly, periodi- 
 cally, at the revolution of a temptation, or frequently, or 
 easily, are persons who still remain in the state of sin and 
 death ; and their intervals of piety are but preparations to 
 a state of grace, which they may then be, when they are not 
 used to countenance or excuse the sin, or to flatter the person. 
 
 Rom. viii. 6. 
 
 P Rom. v. 6. 'Otrut Hftut iirtivuv, ravr'nrrn dfiSun, without strength ; that 
 is, ungodly. 
 
 i Vide August, lib. ii. c. 17. De Peccatorum Meritis, et Enclnr. 81.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 211 
 
 But if the intermediate resolutions of emendation (though 
 they never run beyond the next assault of passion or desire) 
 he taken for a state of grace, hlended with infirmities of 
 nature, they become destructive of all those purposes, 
 through our mistake, which they might have promoted, 
 if they had been rightly understood, observed, and cherished. 
 Sometimes, indeed, the greatness of a temptation may be- 
 come an instrument to excuse some degrees of the sin, and 
 make the man pitiable whose ruin seems almost certain, 
 because of the greatness and violence of the enemy, meeting 
 with a natural aptness : but then the question will be, 
 whither, and to what actions, that strong temptation carries 
 him? whether to a work of a mortal nature, or only to a 
 small irregularity ? that is, whether to death, or to a wound ? 
 for whatever the principle be, if the effect be death, the 
 man's case was therefore to be pitied, because his ruin was 
 the more inevitable ; not so pitied, as to excuse him from 
 the state of death. For let the temptation be never so 
 strong, every Christian man hath assistances sufficient to 
 support him, so as that, without his own yielding, no tempta- 
 tion is stronger than that grace which God offers him ; for 
 if it were, it were not so much as a sin of infirmity ; it were 
 no sin at all. This, therefore, must be certain to us ; when 
 the violence of our passions or desires overcomes our reso- 
 lutions and fairer purposes, against the dictate of our reason, 
 that indeed is a state of infirmity, but it is also of sin and 
 death, a state of immortification ; because the offices of 
 grace are to crucify the old man, that is, our former and 
 impurer conversation, to subdue the petulancy of our pas- 
 sions, to reduce them to reason, and to restore empire and 
 dominion to the superior faculties. So that this condition, 
 in proper speaking, is not so good as the infirmity of grace, 
 but it is no grace at all: for "whoever are Christ's, have 
 crucified the flesh, with the affections and lusts ;" r those 
 other imperfect, ineffective resolutions are but the first ap- 
 proaches of the kingdom of Christ, nothing but the clarities 
 of lightning, dark as soon as light ; and they therefore can- 
 not be excuses to us, because the contrary weaknesses (as 
 we call them) do not make the sin involuntary, but chosen 
 
 'Gal. v.24.
 
 212 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 and pursued, and, in true speaking, is the strength of the 
 lust, not the infirmity of a state of grace. 
 
 1 1 . But yet there is a condition of grace which is a 
 state of little and imperfect ones, such as are called in 
 Scripture "Smoking flax and bruised reeds;" which is a 
 state of the first dawning of the Sun of Righteousness, when 
 the lights of grace new rise upon our eyes; and then indeed 
 they are weak, and have a more dangerous neighbourhood of 
 temptations and desires, but they are not subdued by them : 5 
 they sin not by direct election ; their actions criminal are 
 but like the slime of Nilus, leaving rats half formed ; they 
 sin but seldom, and when they do it, it is in small instances, 
 and then also by surprise, by inadvertency, and then also 
 they interrupt their own acts, and lessen them perpetually ; 
 and never do an act of sinfulness, but the principle is such 
 as makes it to be involuntary in many degrees. For when 
 the understanding is clear, and the dictate of reason un- 
 disturbed and determinate, whatsoever then produces an 
 irregular action excuses not, because the action is not made 
 the less voluntary by it ; for the action is not made invo- 
 luntary from any other principle but from some defect of 
 understanding, either in act, or habit, or faculty. For where 
 there is no such defect, there is a full deliberation according 
 to the capacity of the man, and then the act of election that 
 follows is clear and full, and is that proper disposition which 
 makes him truly capable of punishment or reward respec- 
 tively. Now although, in the first beginnings of grace, there 
 is not a direct ignorance to excuse totally ; yet, because a 
 sudden surprise or an inadvertency is not always in our 
 power to prevent, these things do lessen the election and 
 freedom of the action: and then, because they are but 
 seldom, and never proceed to any length of time, or any 
 great instances of crime, and are everyday made still more 
 infrequent, because grace growing stronger, the observation 
 and advertency of the spirit, and the attendance of the inner 
 man, grows more effectual and busy : this is a state of the 
 imperfection of grace, but a state of grace it is. And it is 
 more commonly observed to be expressed in the imperfection 
 of our good action, than in the irregularity of bad actions: 
 
 S. August, lib. de Gratia et liber Arbit. c. 17, et c.29.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 213 
 
 and in this sense are those words of our blessed Saviour, 
 " The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak ;" which 
 in this instance was not expressed in sin, but in a natural 
 imperfection, which then was a recession from a civility, 
 a not watching with the Lord. And this is the only infir- 
 mity that can consist with the state of grace. 
 
 12. So that now we may lay what load we please upon 
 our nature, and call our violent and untnortified desires by 
 the name of an imperfect grace ; but then we are dangerously 
 mistaken, and flatter ourselves into an opinion of piety, when 
 we are " in the gall of bitterness ;" so making our misery 
 the more certain and irremediable, because we think it needs 
 nothing but a perpetuity and perseverance to bring us to 
 heaven. The violence of passion and desires is a miseiy 
 of nature, but a perfect principle of sin ; multiplying and 
 repeating the acts, but not lessening the malignity ; but sins 
 of infirmity, when we mean sins of a less and lower malice, 
 are sins of a less and imperfect choice, because of the un- 
 avoidable imperfection of the understanding. Sins of infir- 
 mity are always infirm sins ; that is, weak and imperfect in 
 their principle, and in their nature, and in their design ; that 
 is, they are actions incomplete in all their capacities ; but 
 then passions and periodical inclinations consisting with a 
 regular, and determined, and actual understanding, must 
 never be their principle ; for whatsoever proceeds thence 
 is destructive of spiritual life, and inconsistent with the 
 state of grace. But sins of infirmity, when they pretend to 
 a less degree of malignity and a greater degree of excuse, 
 are such as are little more than sins of pure and inculpable 
 ignorance ; for in that degree in which any other principle 
 is mixed with them, in the same degree they are criminal 
 and inexcusable. For as a sin of infirmity is pretended to 
 be little in its value and malignity, so it is certain, if it 
 be great in the instance it is not a sin of infirmity ; that is, 
 it is a state or act of death, and absolutely inconsistent with 
 the state of grace. 
 
 13. Secondly : Another principle of temptation, pregnant 
 with sin, and fruitful of monsters, is a weaker pretence, 
 which less wary and credulous persons abuse themselves 
 withal, pretending, as a ground for their confidence and 
 incorrigible pursuance of their courses, that they have a
 
 214 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 good meaning, that they intend sometimes well, and some- 
 times not ill ; and this shall be sufficient to sanctify their 
 actions and to hallow their sin. And this is of worse malice 
 when religion is the colour for a war, and the preservation of 
 faith made the warrant for destruction of charity, and a zeal 
 for God made the false light to lead us to disobedience to 
 man ; and hatred of idolatry is the usher of sacrilege, and the 
 defiance of superstition the introducer of profaneness, and 
 reformation made the colour for a schism, and liberty of 
 conscience the way to a bold and saucy heresy : for the end 
 may indeed hallow an indifferent action, but can never make 
 straight a crooked and irregular. It was not enough for 
 Saul to cry, " For God and the sacrifice," that he spared the 
 fat flocks of Amalek : and it would be a strange zeal and 
 forwardness that, rather than the altar of incense should not 
 smoke, will burn assafoetida or the marrow of a man's bones. 
 For as God will be honoured by us, so also in ways of his 
 own appointment : for we are the makers of our religion 
 if we, in our zeal for God, do what he hath forbidden us.* 
 And every sin committed for religion is just such a violence 
 done to it as it seeks to prevent or remedy. 
 
 14. And so it is if it be committed for an end or pretence 
 of charity as well as of religion. We must be curious that 
 no pretence engage us upon an action that is certainly 
 criminal in its own nature. Charity may sometimes require 
 our lives, but no obligation can endear a damnation to us ; 
 we are not bound to the choice of an eternal ruin to save 
 another. Indeed, so far as an option will go, it may concern 
 the excrescences of piety to choose, by a tacit or express act 
 of volition, " to become anathema for our brethren ;"" that is, 
 by putting a case and fiction of law to suppose it better, and 
 wish it rather that I should perish than my nation. Thus 
 far is charitable, because it is innocent ; for as it is great 
 love to our country, so it is no uncharitableness to ourselves : 
 for such options always are ineffective, and produce nothing 
 but rewards of charity and a greater glory. And the holy 
 Jesus himself, who only could be, and was, effectively ac- 
 cursed to save us, got it by an exceeding and mighty glorifi- 
 cation; and St. Paul did himself advantage by his charitable 
 
 * Vide Historiam Uzza, 2 Sam. vi. 6-9. Rom. ix. 3.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 215 
 
 devotion for his countrymen. But since God never puts the 
 question to us, so that either we or our nation must be 
 damned, he having fixed every man's final condition upon 
 his own actions, in the virtue and obedience of Christ, if 
 we mistake the expresses of charity, and suffer ourselves 
 to be damned indeed for God's glory or our brethren's good, 
 we spoil the duty and ruin ourselves when our option comes 
 to act. But it is observable, that although religion is often 
 pretended to justify a sin, yet charity is but seldom ; which 
 makes it full of suspicion that religion is but the cover to 
 the death's head, and at the best is but an accusing of God 
 that he is not willing or not able to preserve religion, with- 
 out our irregular and impious co-operations. But, however, 
 though it might concern us to wish ourselves rather accursed 
 than our religion, or our prince, or our country, should 
 perish (for I find no instances that it is lawful so much as 
 to wish it for the preservation of a single friend) ; yet it is 
 against charity to bring such a wish to pass, and by sin 
 to/lamn ourselves really for a good end either of religion or 
 charity. 
 
 15. Let us therefore serve God as he hath described the 
 way ; for all our accesses to him being acts of his free con- 
 cession and grace, must be by his own designation and 
 appointment. We might as well have chosen what shape 
 our bodies should be of, as of what instances the substance 
 of our religion should consist. 
 
 16. Thirdly : A third principle of temptation is an opin- 
 ion of prosecuting actions of civility, compliance, and 
 society, to the luxation of a point of piety and stricter duty : 
 and good natures, persons of humane and sweeter dispo- 
 sitions, are too apt to dash upon this rock of offence. But 
 the evil that I would note is, that there are some conditions 
 of men to whom a vice is so accustomed, that he that mingles 
 with them must handle the crime and touch the venom. 
 There are some vices which are national ; there are some 
 that are points of honour ; some are civilities of entertain- 
 ment ; and they are therefore accounted unavoidable, because 
 the understandings of men are degenerous as their manners, 
 and it is accounted sottish and fantastical not to communi- 
 cate in their accustomed loosenesses. Amongst some men 
 all their first addresses are drinkings, their entertainments
 
 216 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 intemperate beyond the permissions of Christian austerity ; 
 their drink is humorous, and their humours quarrelous ; and 
 it is dishonourable not to engage in duel, and venture your 
 soul to ascertain an empty reputation. These inconveniences 
 rely upon false opinions and vain fancies, having no greater 
 foundation than the sottish discourses of ignorant and un- 
 godly persons ; and they have no peculiar and appropriate 
 remedy, but a resolute severity of manners and a considera- 
 tion what is required of us as Christians to confront against 
 those fonder customs and expectations from us, as we engage 
 in the puddles of the world, and are blended in society, 
 
 17. To which purposes we must be careful not to engage 
 too freely in looser company, never without business or un- 
 avoidable accidents ; and when we mingle in affairs, it will 
 concern our safety to watch, lest multitude of talk, goodness 
 and facility of nature, the delight of company, and the free- 
 dom and ill-customed civilities do by degrees draw us away 
 from our guards and retirement of spirit. For in these cases 
 every degree of dissolution disarms us of our strengths ; and 
 if we give way so far as we think it tolerable, we instantly 
 and undiscernibly pass into unlawful arid criminal. But our 
 best defences are deposited in a severe and prudent under- 
 standing and discerning the sottishness of such principles, 
 which represent vice in civil language, and propound a crime 
 to you under the cover of kindness ; w.hich is just so much 
 recompense as it is satisfaction to a condemned person, that 
 he was accused by a witty orator and sentenced by an 
 eloquent judge. Remember always, that " the friendships 
 of the world are enmity with God ;" and that those societies 
 which are combined by relations of drink and wantonness, 
 and impertinence, and crimes, are either inconsiderable in 
 civility, or reason, or reputation ; no wise man is moved by 
 their testimony or discourses ; and they are so impotent, 
 rude, and undiscerning a theatre, that most commonly he is 
 the best man who from thence is the worst reported and 
 represented. 
 
 18. But in all the instances of this great evil, the very 
 stating the question right is above half the victory. For it is 
 a question between mistaken civility and certain duty ; piety 
 on one side, and the disguises of humanity on the other. 
 God and man are the parties interested ; and to counterpoise
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 217 
 
 the influence of the sight and face of man, (which being in a 
 visible communication, it is not in some natures to neglect or 
 contradict,) there are all the excellences of God, the effects 
 of his power, his certain presence and omniscience, the severi- 
 ties of his judgment, and the sweetness and invitation of his 
 mercies ; besides the prudence, wisdom, and satisfaction to 
 the spirit, when we wisely neglect such sottish and low abuses 
 and temptations to conform to the rules of reason and 
 duty, in compliance with the purposes of God and our own 
 felicities. 
 
 19. Thirdly : These ill-managed principles are dangers as 
 universal as an infected air; yet there are some diseases 
 more proper to the particular state of religion. First, to 
 young beginners in religion he represents the difficulties of 
 religion, and propounds the greater examples of holy persons, 
 and affrights them with those mountains of piety ; observing 
 where, and upon what instance of severity, his fancy will be 
 most apprehensive and afflicted : and this he fails not often 
 to represent, with a purpose, that, by believing no piety less 
 than the greatest can be good, he may despair of those 
 heights, and retire into the securities and indifferences of a 
 careless life. But this is to be cured by all those instruments 
 of piety, which in special are incentives of the love of God 
 and endearments of spiritual and religious affections ; and 
 particularly by consideration of the Divine goodness, "who 
 knows whereof we are made, and remembers that we are but 
 dust," and will require no more of us than according to our 
 powers and present capacities. But the subject-matter of 
 this temptation is considered and refuted in the discourse of 
 the love of God. x 
 
 20. But most commonly, young beginners are zealous 
 and high, and not so easily tempted to a recession, till after 
 a long time, by a revolution of affections, they are abated by 
 a defervescency in holy actions. The devil uses to prompt 
 them on ; not that he loves the piety and the progress, but 
 that he would engage the person in imprudences, and such 
 forwardnesses of expresses, which either are in their own 
 nature indiscretions, or from which, by reason of the inca- 
 pacity of the person, it is necessary for him to retire. A new 
 
 x Part 2. in Explicat. of the Decalogue, 1 Com.
 
 218 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 convert is like a bird newly entered into a net, through which 
 possibly she might pass without danger, if her fears and un- 
 reasonable strivings did not entangle her ; but when, by busy 
 and disturbed flutterings, she discomposes the order of it, 
 she is entangled and unpenned, and made a prey to her 
 treacherous enemy. Such are the indiscreet strivings, and 
 too forward enterprises of new penitents ; whom we shall ob- 
 serve too often undertaking great austerities, making vows, 
 and casting bands upon their liberty, and snares upon their 
 persons ; thinking nothing great enough to expiate their sin, 
 or to present to God, or to endear their services, or secure 
 their perseverance ; and therefore they lay a load of fetters 
 upon themselves, or rather cut off their legs, that they may 
 never go back ; therefore laying an obligation of vows and 
 intolerable burdens on themselves, that by these they may, 
 by a compendium of piety, redeem the time, and by those 
 make it impossible to prevaricate. But the observation of 
 the sad events and final accidents of these men, hath given 
 probation of the indiscretion of such furious addresses and 
 beginnings. And it was prudently done of Meletius, y of 
 Antioch, when he visited the diocesses of Syria, and the 
 several religious persons famous for severe undertakings; 
 espying that Simeon Stylites dwelt upon a pillar, and had 
 bound his leg with a strong chain of iron, he sent for a 
 smith, causing it to be knocked off, and said, "To a man 
 that loves God, his mind is a sufficient chain." For the 
 loads of voluntary austerities, rashly undertaken, make reli- 
 gion a burden, when their first heats expire ; and their vows, 
 which are intended to secure the practice and perpetuate the 
 piety, are but the occasions of an aggravate crime ; and the 
 vow does not secure the piety, but the weariness and satiety 
 of the duty tempts to the breaking of the vow, or at least 
 makes the man impatient, when he cannot persist with con- 
 tent, nor retire with safety. 
 
 21. It therefore concerns all spiritual guides, to manage 
 their new converts with sober counsels and moderate permis- 
 sions, knowing that sublime speculations in the metaphysics 
 are not fit entertainment for an infant understanding. There 
 is " milk for babes, and strong meat for men" of riper piety ; 
 
 J Theod. lib. v. c. 4.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 219 
 
 and it will employ all the regular strength of young beginners 
 to contest against the relics of those mischiefs which remain 
 since the expulsion of the old man, and to master those diffi- 
 culties which, hy the nature of the state, are certainly conse- 
 quent to so late mutation. And if we, by the furies of zeal 
 and the impatience of mistaken piety, are violent and indis- 
 creet in the destroying of our enemies, we probably may tread 
 the thistle down, and trample upon all its appearances, and 
 yet leave the root in the ground, with haste and imprudent 
 forwardness. Gentle and soft counsels are the surest enemies 
 to your vice, and the best conservators and promoters of a 
 virtuous state : but a hasty charge, and the conduct of a 
 young leader, may engage an early spirit in dangers and dis- 
 honours. And this temptation is of so much greater danger 
 because it hath a face of zeal, and meets with all encourage- 
 ments from without ; every man being apt to cherish a con- 
 vert, and to inflame his new fires : but few consider the in- 
 conveniences that are consequent to indiscreet beginnings, 
 and the worse events usually appendant to such inconve- 
 niences. 
 
 22. Indeed it is not usual, that prudence and a new- 
 kindled zeal meet in the same person : but it will therefore 
 concern the safety of new converts, who cannot guide them- 
 selves, to give themselves up to the conduct of an experi- 
 enced spiritual person, who being disinterested in those heats 
 of the first apprehensions, and being long taught by the ob- 
 servation of the accidents of a spiritual life upon what rocks 
 rashness and zeal usually do engage us, can best tell what 
 degrees and what instances of religion they may, with most 
 safety, undertake : but for the general, it is best in the 
 addresses of grace to follow the course of nature ; let there 
 be an infancy, and a childhood, and a vigorous youth ; and 
 by the divers and distant degrees of increment, let the persons 
 be established in wisdom and grace. But above all things, 
 let them be careful that they do not lay upon themselves 
 necessities of any lasting course, no vows of perpetuity in 
 any instance of uncommanded action or degree of religion: 
 for he may alter in his capacity and exterior condition ; he 
 may see by experience, that the particular engagement is 
 imprudent; he may, by the virtue of obedience, be engaged 
 on a duty inconsistent with the conveniences and advantages
 
 220 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 of the other ; and his very loss of liberty in an uncommanded 
 instance, may tempt him to inconvenience. But then, for 
 the single and transient actions of piety, although in them 
 the danger is less, even though the imprudence be great, yet 
 it were well if new beginners in religion would attempt 
 a moderate and an even piety, rather than actions of emi- 
 nence, lest they retire with shame, and be afflicted with 
 scruple, when their first heats are spent, and expire in weari- 
 ness and temptation. It is good to keep within the circuits 
 of a man's affections ; not stretching out all the degrees of 
 fancy and desire, but leaving the appetites of religion rather 
 unsatisfied, and still desiring more, than, by stretching out 
 the whole faculty, leave no desires but what are fulfilled and 
 wearied. 
 
 23. Thirdly : I shall not need here to observe such 
 temptations which are direct invitations to sin, upon occasion 
 of the piety of holy persons ; such as are security, too much 
 confidence, pride, and vanity : these are part of every man's 
 danger, and are to be considered upon their several argu- 
 ments. Here I was only to note the general instruments of 
 mischief. It remains now, that I speak of such remedies 
 and general antidotes, not which are proportioned to sins in 
 special, but such as are preventions, or remedies, and good 
 advices in general. 
 
 24. First : Let every man abstain from all occasions of 
 sin, as much as his condition will permit. And it were better 
 to do some violence to our secular affairs than to procure 
 apparent or probable danger to our souls. For if we see not 
 a way open and ready prepared to our iniquity, our desires 
 oftentimes are not willing to be troubled; but opportunity 
 gives life and activeness to our appetites. If David had not 
 from his towers beheld the private beauties of Bathsheba, 
 Uriah had lived, and his wife been unattempted ; but sin was 
 brought to him by that chance, and entering at the casements 
 of his eyes, set his heart on fire, and despoiled him of his 
 robes of honour and innocence. The riches of the wed;e of 
 
 o 
 
 gold, and the beauty of the Babylonish garment, made Achan 
 sacrilegious upon the place, who was innocent enough in his 
 preceding purposes : and therefore that soul that makes 
 itself an object to sin, and invites an enemy to view its pos- 
 sessions, and live in the vicinage, loves the sin itself; and he
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 221 
 
 that is pleased with the danger, would willingly be betrayed 
 into the necessity and the pleasure of the sin: for he can 
 have no other ends to entertain the hazards, but that he hath 
 a further purpose to serve upon them ; he loves the pleasure 
 of the sin, and therefore he would make the condition of sin- 
 ning certain and unavoidable. And therefore holy Scripture, 
 which is admirable and curious in the cautions and securities 
 of virtue, does not determine its precepts in the precise com- 
 mands of virtuous actions, but also binds up our senses, 
 obstructs the passage of temptation, blocks up all the ways 
 and avenues of vice, commanding us "to make a covenant 
 with our eyes ; not to look upon a maid ; not to sit with a 
 woman that is a singer ; not to consider the wine when it 
 sparkles, and gives its colour rightly in the cup ;" but " to 
 set a watch before our mouths, to keep the door of our lips ;" 
 and many more instances to this purpose, that sin may not 
 come so near as to be repulsed ; as knowing sin hath then 
 prevailed too far, when we give the denial to its solicitations. 
 25. We read a story of a virtuous lady, that desired of 
 St. Athanasius to procure for her, out of the number of the 
 widows fed from the ecclesiastical corban, an old woman, 
 morose, peevish, and impatient ; that she might, by the so- 
 ciety of so ungentle a person, have often occasion to exercise 
 her patience, her forgiveness, and charity. I know not how 
 well the counsel succeeded with her ; 1 am sure it was not 
 very safe : and to invite the trouble to triumph over it, is to 
 wage a war of an uncertain issue ; for no end but to get the 
 pleasures of the victory, which oftentimes do not pay for the 
 trouble, never for the danger. An Egyptian, who acknow- 
 ledged fire for his god, one day doing his devotions, kissed 
 his god after the manner of worshippers, and burnt his lips. 
 It was not in the power of that false and imaginary deity to 
 cure the real hurt he had done to his devoutest worshipper. 
 Just such a fool is he that kisses a danger, though with a 
 design of virtue, and hugs an opportunity of sin for an ad- 
 vantage of piety ; he burns himself in the neighbourhood of 
 the flame, and twenty to one but he may perish in its em- 
 braces. And he that looks out a danger, that he may over- 
 come it, does as did the Persian, who worshipping the sun, 
 looked upon him when he prayed him to cure his sore eyes. 
 The sun may as well cure a weak eye, or a great burden knit
 
 222 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 a broken arm, as a danger can do him advantage, that seeks 
 such a combat which may ruin him, and after which he rarely 
 may have this reward, that it may be said of him he had the 
 good fortune not to perish in his folly. It is easier to pre- 
 vent a mischief than to cure it ; and besides the pain of the 
 wound, it is infinitely more full of difficulty to cure a broken 
 leg, which a little care and observation would have preserved 
 whole. To recover from a sin is none of the easiest labours 
 that concern the sons of men ; and therefore it concerns 
 them rather not to enter into such a narrow strait, from 
 which they can never draw back their head without leaving 
 their hair and skin and their ears behind. If God please to 
 try us, he means us no hurt, and he does it with great reason 
 and great mercy ; but if we go to try ourselves, we may 
 mean well but not wisely : for as it is simply unlawful for 
 weak persons to seek a temptation, so for the more perfect it 
 is dangerous. We have enemies enough without, and one of 
 our own within : z but we become our own tempter when we 
 run out to meet the world, or invite the devil home, that we 
 may throw holy water upon his flames, and call the danger 
 nearer that we may run from it. a And certainly men are 
 more guilty of many of their temptations than the devil, 
 through their incuriousness or rashness doing as much mis- 
 chief to themselves as he can : for he can but offer ; and so 
 much we do when we run into danger. Such were those 
 stories of St. Antony provoking the devil to battle. If the 
 stories had been as true as the actions were rash and ridicu- 
 lous, the story had fastened a note of indiscretion upon that 
 good man ; though now I think there is nothing but a mark 
 of fiction and falsehood on the writer. 
 
 26. Secondly : Possibly without fault we may be engaged 
 in a temptation, but then we must be diligent to resist the first 
 beginnings : for when our strength is yet entire and unabated, 
 if we suffer ourselves to be overcome, and consent to its first 
 
 * Sed quid ego omne malum mundique hominumque maligni 
 Hostis ad invidiam detorqueo'? quum mala nostra 
 Ex nostris concreta animis, genus, et caput, et vim, 
 Quid sint, quid valeant, sumunt de corde parente. 
 
 Prud. Hamartig. 
 
 * Ecclus. xxi. 27. Quum exsecratur impius Satanam, suam ipsius animam 
 exsecratur.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 223 
 
 and weakest attempts, how shall we be able to resist when 
 it hath tired our contestation and wearied our patience, 
 when we are weaker and prevailed upon, and the temptation 
 is stronger and triumphant in many degrees of victory ? By 
 how much a hectic fever is harder to be cured than a tertian, 
 or a consumption of the lungs than a little distillation of 
 rheum upon the throat ; by so much is it harder to prevail 
 upon a triumphing lust than upon its first insinuations. But 
 the ways of resisting are of a different consideration, propor- 
 tionably to the nature of the crimes. 
 
 27. First : If the temptation be to crimes of pleasure and 
 sensuality, let the resistance be by flight : b for, in case of 
 lust, even to consider the arguments against it is half as great 
 temptation as to press the arguments for it ; for all consider- 
 ations of such allurements make the soul perceive something 
 of its relish, and entertain the fancy. Even the pulling pitch 
 from our clothes defiles the fingers ; and some adherences of 
 pleasant and carnal sins will be remanent even from those 
 considerations which stay within the circuit of the flames, 
 though but with purpose to quench the fire and preserve the 
 house. Chastity cannot suffer the least thought of the 
 reproaches of the spirit of impurity : and it is necessary to 
 all that will keep their purity and innocence against sensual 
 temptations, to avoid every thing that may prejudice deco- 
 rum. Libanius the sophist reports, that a painter being one 
 day desirous to paint Apollo upon a laurel-board, the colours 
 would not stick, but were rejected ; out of which his fancy 
 found out this extraction : that the chaste Daphne (con- 
 cerning whom the poets feign, that, flying from Apollo, 
 who attempted to ravish her, she was turned into a laurel- 
 tree) could not endure him even in painting, and rejected 
 him after the loss of her sensitive powers. And, indeed, 
 chaste souls do, even to death, resent the least image and 
 offer of impurity : whatsoever is like a sin of uncleanness, 
 he that means to preserve himself chaste must avoid, as he 
 would avoid the sin ; in this case there being no difference 
 but of degrees between the inward temptation and the crime. 
 
 b Time videre unde possis cadere ; noli fieri perversa simplicitate securus. 
 
 S. Aug.
 
 224 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 28. Secondly : If the temptation be to crimes of trouble- 
 some and preternatural desires, or intellectual nature, let the 
 resistance be made conserta manu, by a perfect fight, by the 
 amassing of such arguments in general, and remedies in par- 
 ticular, which are apt to become deleteries to the sin, and to 
 abate the temptation. But in both these instances the re- 
 sistance must at least be as soon as the attempt is, lest the 
 violence of the temptation outrun our powers : for if, against 
 our full strength, it hath prevailed to the first degrees, its 
 progress to a complete victory is not so improbable as were 
 its successes at the first beginnings. But to serve this and 
 all other ends in the resisting and subduing a temptation, 
 these following considerations have the best and most uni- 
 versal influence. 
 
 29. First : " Consideration of the presence of God," who 
 is witness of all our actions, and a revenger of all impiety. 
 This is so great an instrument of fear and religion, that who- 
 ever does actually consider God to be present, and considers 
 what the first consideration signifies, either must be restrained 
 from the present temptation, or must have thrown off all the 
 possibilities and aptnesses for virtue ; such as are modesty, 
 and reverence, and holy fear. For if the face of a man scat- 
 ters all base machinations, and we dare not act our crimes in 
 the theatre unless we be impudent as well as criminal ; much 
 more does the sense of a present Deity fill the places of our 
 heart with veneration and the awe of religion, when it is 
 thoroughly apprehended and actually considered. We see 
 not God, "he is not in our thoughts," when we run into 
 darkness to act our impurities. For we dare not commit 
 adultery if a boy be present ; behold, the boy is sent off with 
 an excuse, and God abides there, but yet we commit the 
 crime : it is because, as Jacob said at Bethel, " God was in 
 that place, and we knew not of it ;" and yet we neither 
 breathe, nor move an artery, but in him, and by his assist- 
 ance ; " In him we live, and move, and have our being." d 
 And, " All things are naked and open in his sight." 6 " The 
 iniquity of my people is very great ; for they say, The Lord 
 seeth not." f " Shall not he that made the eye, see ?" g " To 
 
 d Acts, xvii. 28. Heb. \v. 13. 
 
 1 Ezek. ix. 9. Jer. xxiii. 24. Psalm xcir. 9.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 225 
 
 him the night and day are both alike. " b These, and many 
 more to the same design, are the voices of Scripture, that our 
 spirits may retire into the beholding of God, to the purposes 
 of fear and holiness, with whom we do cohabit by the neces- 
 sities of nature and the condition of our essence, wholly in 
 dependence ; and then only we may sin securely, when we 
 can contrive to do it so that God may not see us. 
 
 30. There are many men who are " servants of the eyes,"' 
 as the apostle's phrase is ; who, when they are looked on, act 
 virtue with much pompousness and theatrical bravery ; k but 
 these men, when the theatre is empty, put off their upper 
 garment, and retire into their primitive baseness. Diogenes 
 endured the extremity of winter's cold, that the people might 
 wonder at his austerity and philosophical patience ; but Plato, 
 seeing the people admiring the man and pitying the suffer- 
 ance, told them, that the way to make him warm himself was 
 for them to be gone, and to take no notice of him. For they 
 that walk as in the sight of men, serve that design well 
 enough when they fill the public voice with noises and opi- 
 nions, and are not, by their purposes, engaged to act in 
 private ; but they who are servants of the eyes of God, and 
 walk as in the Divine presence, perceive the same restraints 
 in darkness, and closets, and grots, as in the light and midst 
 of theatres ; and that consideration imposes upon us a happy 
 necessity of doing virtuously, which presents us placed in the 
 eyes of our Judge. And, therefore, it was not unhandsomely 
 said of a Jewish doctor, " If every man would consider God 
 to be the great eye of the world, watching perpetually over 
 all our actions, and that his hand is indefatigable, and his ear 
 ever open, possibly sin might be extirpated from off the face 
 of the earth." And this is the condition of beatitude ; and 
 the blessed souls within their regions of light and felicity 
 cannot sin because of the vision beatifical, they always be- 
 
 h Psalin cxxxix. 12. ' Ephes. vi. 6. 'O^aX^aSat/A.*/. 
 
 k Non enim virtute ac studiis, ut haberentur philosopbi, laborabant; sed 
 vultum et tristitiam, et dissentientem u cicteris habitum, pessimis moribus 
 praetendebant. Quintil. lib. i. procem. 
 
 Ambitio, et luxuria, et impotentia, scenam desiderant ; sanabis ista, si ab- 
 sconderis. Senec. ep. 95. 
 
 Magna vobis, si dissimulate non vultis, injecta necessitas probitatis, cum 
 
 omnia agitis ante oculos judicis cunctn cernentis Koeth. lib. v. Consol. protd 
 
 vlt. 
 
 VOL. II. U
 
 226 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 hold the face of God : and those who partake of this state 
 by way of consideration, which is essential to the condi- 
 tion of the blessed, and derive it into practice and discourse, 
 in proportion to this shall retain an innocence and a part 
 of glory. 
 
 31. For it is a great declension of human reason, and a 
 disreputation to our spirits, that we are so wholly led by 
 sense that we will not walk in the regions of the Spirit, and 
 behold God by our eyes of faith and discourse, suffering our 
 course of life to be guided by such principles which dis- 
 tinguish our natures from beasts, and our conditions from 
 vicious, and our spirits from the world, and our hopes from 
 the common satisfactions of sense and corruption. The better 
 half of our nature is of the same constitution with that of 
 angels ; and, therefore, although we are drenched in matter 
 and the communications of earth, yet our better part was 
 designed to converse with God : and we had, besides the eye 
 of reason, another eye of faith put into our souls, and both 
 clarified with revelations and demonstrations of the Spirit, 
 expressing to us so visible and clear characters of God's 
 presence, that the expression of the same Spirit is, " We may 
 feel him, for he is within us," 1 and about us, and we are in 
 him, and in the comprehensions of his embracings, as birds 
 in the air, or infants in the wombs of their pregnant mothers. 
 And that God is pleased not to communicate himself to the 
 eyes of our body, but still to remain invisible, besides that it 
 is his own glory and perfection, it is also no more to us but 
 like a retreat behind a curtain, where, when we know our 
 Judge stands as an espial and a watch over our actions, we 
 shall be sottish if we dare to provoke his jealousy because 
 we see him not, when we know that he is close by, though 
 behind the cloud. 
 
 32. There are some general impressions upon our spirits 
 which, by way of presumption and custom, possess our per- 
 suasions, and make restraint upon us to excellent purposes ; 
 such as are the religion of holy places, reverence of our 
 parents, presence of an austere, an honourable, or a virtuous 
 
 1 Acts, xvii. 27. 
 
 YliTfifffjiiyei an ei Sttt 
 
 'Hf'ga IffffafiiYoi -ratTYi Qoiraffi* \T' aTav, 
 
 t ilfi/>li; Tl */ Ivtiftittf i$e/>utiris.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 227 
 
 person. 1 " For many sins are prevented by the company of a 
 witness, especially if, besides the ties of modesty, we have 
 also towards him an endearment of reverence and fair opi- 
 nion ; n and if he were with us in our privacies, he would 
 cause our retirements to be more holy. St. Ambrose reports 
 of the Virgin Mary, that she had so much piety and religion 
 in her countenance and deportment, that divers persons, 
 moved by the veneration and regard of her person, in her 
 presence have first commenced their resolutions of chastity 
 and sober living. However the story be, her person certainly 
 was of so express and great devotion and sanctity, that he 
 must needs have been of a very impudent disposition and 
 firm immodesty, who durst have spoken unhandsome language 
 in the presence of so rare a person. And why then any rude- 
 ness in the presence of God, if that were as certainly believed 
 and considered ? For whatsoever amongst men can be a re- 
 straint of vice or an endearment of virtue, all this is highly 
 verified in the presence of God, to whom our conscience, in 
 its very concealments, is as a fair table written in capital 
 letters by his own finger ; and then, if we fail of the advan- 
 tage of this exercise, it must proceed either from our dis- 
 honourable opinion of God, or our own fearless inadvertency, 
 or from a direct spirit of reprobation : for it is certain that 
 this consideration is, in its own nature, apt to correct our 
 manners, to produce the fear of God, and humility, and 
 spiritual and holy thoughts, and the knowledge of God and 
 of ourselves, and the consequents of all these, holy walking, 
 and holy comforts. And, by this only argument, St. Paph- 
 nutius and St. Ephrem are reported in church-story to have 
 converted two harlots from a course of dissolution to great 
 sanctity and austerity. 
 
 m Aliquem habeat animus quern revereatur, cujus auctoritate etiam secretum 
 tuum sanctius fiat. Quid prodest inclusam esse conscientiam? patemus Deo. 
 Senec, lib. i. ep. 11. 
 
 * Tiberius inter bona malaque mixtus, incolumi matre ; intestabilis srevitia, 
 sed obtectis libidinibus, dura Sejanum dilexit timuitve : postremo in scelera 
 siinul ac dedecora prorupit, postquam, remoto pudore et metu, suo tantum iri- 
 genio utebatur Tacit, lib. vi. c. 51. 
 
 Toiawra TOIVVV ilirvouv, vvrigxafov 
 
 MwSiv Tar il-rns avro; 11; ffavsift;. Sc)/>/ioc/. Aj. 125.
 
 228 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 33. But then this presence of God must not be a mere 
 speculation of the understanding ; though so only it is of very 
 great benefit and immediate efficacy, yet it must reflect as 
 well from the will as from discourse : and then only we walk 
 in the presence of God, when by faith we behold him present, 
 when we speak to him in frequent and holy prayers, when we 
 beg aid from him in all our needs, and ask counsel of him in 
 all our doubts, and before him bewail our sins, and tremble 
 at his presence. This is an entire exercise of religion. And 
 beside that the presence of God serves to all this, it hath also 
 especial influence in the disimprovement of temptations, be- 
 cause it hath in it many things contrariant to the nature and 
 efficacy of temptations ; such as are consideration, reverence, 
 spiritual thoughts, and the fear of God : for wherever this 
 consideration is actual, there either God is highly despised, 
 or certainly feared. In this case we are made to declare ; for 
 our purposes are concealed only in an incuriousness and in- 
 consideration ; but whoever considers God as present will, in 
 all reason, be as religious as in a temple, the reverence of 
 which place custom or religion hath imprinted in the spirits 
 of most men : so that, as Ahasuerus said of Haman, " Will 
 he ravish the queen in my own house?" aggravating the 
 crime by the incivility of the circumstance ; God may well 
 say to us, whose religion compels us to believe God every- 
 where present; since the Divine presence hath made all 
 places holy, and every place hath a Numen in it, even the 
 eternal God, we unhallow the place, and desecrate the ground 
 whereon we stand, supported by the arm of God, placed in 
 his heart, and enlightened by his eye, when we sin in so 
 sacred a presence. 
 
 34. The second great instrument against temptation is 
 " meditation of death."? Raderus reports, that a certain 
 virgin, to restrain the inordination of intemperate desires, 
 which were like thorns in her flesh, and disturbed her spiritual 
 peace, shut herself up in a sepulchre, and for twelve years 
 dwelt in that scene of death. It were good we did so too, 
 making tombs and coffins presential to us by frequent medi- 
 tation. For God hath given us all a definitive arrest in 
 Adam, and from it there lies no appeal ; but it is infallibly 
 
 P Tola philosophia nihil est nisi meditatio mortis. Plato.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 229 
 
 and unalterably " appointed for all men once to die," 11 or to 
 " be changed," to pass from hence to a condition of eternity, 
 good or bad. Now, because this law is certain/ and the 
 time and the manner of its execution is uncertain, and from 
 this moment eternity depends, and that after this life the final 
 sentence is irrevocable, that all the pleasures here are sudden, 
 transient, and unsatisfying, and vain, he must needs be a 
 fool that knows not to distinguish moments from eternity : s 
 and since it is a condition of necessity, established by Divine 
 decrees, and fixed by the indispensable laws of nature, that 
 we shall, after a very little duration, pass on to a condition 
 strange, not understood, then unalterable, and yet of great 
 mutation from this, even of greater distance from that in 
 which we are here, than this is from the state of beasts ; this, 
 when it is considered, must, in all reason, make the same 
 impression upon our understandings and affections, which 
 naturally all strange things, and all great considerations, are 
 apt to do ; that is, create resolutions and results passing 
 through the heart of man, such as are reasonable and prudent, 
 in order to our own felicities, that we neglect the vanities of 
 the present temptation, and secure our future condition, 
 which will, till eternity itself expires, remain such as we 
 make it to be by our deportment in this short transition and 
 passage through the world. 
 
 35. And that this discourse is reasonable, I am therefore 
 confirmed, because I find it to be to the same purpose used 
 by the Spirit of God, and the wisest personages in the world, 
 " My soul is always in my hand, therefore do I keep thy 
 commandments," 4 said David: he looked upon himself as a 
 dying person, and that restrained all his inordinations, and so 
 he prayed, " Lord, teach me to number my days, that I may 
 
 '' J>Iivo{ duv y&p Qxvaros au Sa/oajy ipa. Ovi at n &vav, OUT i-rif-TitSat vtcm;. 
 .Zschyl. 
 
 'Afavttffias S' ovx 'ifriv, JS' av ffuyayayris T TavratAaw TA<ZT' IxtTiet te'yoftiia, 
 Menand. 
 
 Vita humana prope uti ferrum est : si exerceas, conteritur; si non exerceas, 
 tainen rubigo interficit. Catoapud-d. Gei/.lib. xi. c. 2. 
 
 r rigoj fit* TO. a'XXz -rttvrtt afQaXnav tfn x-fatrrafffai' #/ J tcwirou, -roLiris 
 aifguTai urii%i(rrav iraX/v oixevftit. ^letrodor. Phil. 
 
 8 Dies iste quern tanquam extreraum reformidas, reterni natalis est. Per 
 hoc spatium, quod ab infantia patet in senectutem, in aliam natura? sumimur 
 partem. Senec. pp. 102. 
 
 1 Psalm rviA, 100.
 
 230 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 apply my heart unto wisdom." u And therefore the Egyptians 
 used to serve up a skeleton to their feasts, that the dissolu- 
 tions and vapours of wine might be restrained with that bunch 
 of myrrh, and the vanities of their eyes chastized by that sad 
 object : for they thought it unlikely a man should be trans- 
 ported far with any thing low or vicious, x that looked long 
 and often into the hollow eye-pits of a death's head, or dwelt 
 in a charnel-house. And such considerations make all the 
 importunity and violence of sensual desires to disband. For 
 when a man stands perpetually at the door of eternity, and, 
 as did John the almoner, every day is building of his sepulchre, 
 and every night one day of our life is gone and passed into 
 the possession of death, it will concern us to take care, that 
 the door leading to hell do not open upon us, that we be not 
 crushed to ruin by the stones of our grave, and that our death 
 become not a consignation to us to a sad eternity. For all 
 the pleasures of the whole world/ and in all its duration, 
 cannot make recompense for one hour's torment in hell : and 
 yet if wicked persons were to sit in hell for ever without any 
 change of posture, or variety of torment beyond that session, 
 it were insufferable beyond the endurance of nature : and 
 therefore, where little less than infinite misery in an infinite 
 duration shall punish the pleasures of sudden and transient 
 crimes, the gain of pleasure, and the exchange of banks here 
 for a condition of eternal and miserable death, is a permuta- 
 tion fit to be made by none but fools and desperate persons, 
 who made no use of a reasonable soul, but that they, in their 
 perishing, might be convinced of unreasonableness, and die 
 by their own fault. 
 
 36. The use that wise men have made, when they reduced 
 this consideration to practice, is, to believe every day to be 
 the last of their life : for so it may be, and, for aught we know, 
 it will ; and then think what you would avoid, or what you 
 would do, if you were dying, or were to-day to suffer death 
 by sentence and conviction ; and that, in all reason, and in 
 
 Psalm xc. 12. 
 
 * &KVO.TO; <rqo o<p4aX^wv 'icru trot x,a.S r,/u.ioa.y, mu oi/kit oiliroTl raruo irtvftr.irri, 
 eiiSi aiytti IfiSv^riffii; rttaf. Epict. Enchir. cap. 28. 
 y Linquenda tellus, et dooms, et placens 
 Uxor ; neque harum, quas colis, arbor um 
 Te, pneter invisas cupressos, 
 
 Ulla brevem dominum sequetur //>/. lib. ii. od. 11.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 231 
 
 proportion to the strength of your consideration, you will do 
 every day. For " that is the sublimity of wisdom, to do 
 those things living, which are to be desired and chosen by 
 dying persons." 2 An alarm of death, every day renewed, 
 and pressed earnestly, will watch a man so tame and soft, 
 that the precepts of religion will dwell deep in his spirit. 
 But they " that make a covenant with the grave, and put 
 the evil day far from them," they are the men that eat spiders 
 and toads for meat greedily, and a temptation to them is as 
 welcome as joy, and they seldom dispute the point in behalf 
 of piety or mortification : for they that look upon death at 
 distance, apprehend it not, but in such general lines and great 
 representments that describe it only as future and possible, 
 but nothing of its terrors or affrightments, or circumstances 
 of advantage, are discernible by such an eye, that disturbs its 
 sight, and discomposes the posture, that the object may seem 
 another thing than what it is truly and really. St. Austin, 
 with his mother, Monica, was led one day by a Roman praetor 
 to see the tomb of Caesar. Himself thus describes the corpse : 
 " It looked of a blue mould, the bone of the nose laid bare, 
 the flesh of the nether lip quite fallen off, his mouth full of 
 worms, and in his eye-pits two hungry toads feasting upon 
 the remanent portion of flesh and moisture ; and so he dwelt 
 in his house of darkness. " a And if every person, tempted by 
 an opportunity of lust or intemperance, would choose such a 
 room for his privacy, that company for his witness, that object 
 to allay his appetite, he would soon find his spirit more sober, 
 and his desires obedient. b I end this with the counsel of 
 St. Bernard, " Let every man, in the first address to his 
 actions, consider, whether, if he were now to die, he might 
 safely and prudently do such an act, and whether he would 
 not be infinitely troubled, that death should surprise him in 
 the present dispositions, and then let him proceed accord- 
 ingly." For, since " our treasure is in earthen vessels," which 
 
 z Hie est apex summae sapientia?, ea viventem facere, qua; morienti essent 
 appetenda. 
 
 * Ka< <yug \yu <r<ro$of fifii, 
 
 N/vaii pt.ya.\ns $a.<ri\ivea.s. ln Epitaph. Sardanapati. 
 
 b 'H/3a/f, 0/Xi fu/ti' rdx rms aXXa/ tmm'Ajtfttt iy*> ? faiui yccia. (*,i}.*t* 
 tfapai. Fragm. Theog, in Specula Monach.
 
 232 OF TEMPTATION. 
 
 may be broken in pieces by the collision of ten thousand 
 accidents, it were not safe to treasure up wrath in them ; for 
 if we do ,we shall certainly drink it in the day of recompense. 
 37. Thirdly: Before, and in, and after all this, the blessed 
 Jesus propounds prayer as a remedy against temptations : 
 " Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." For, 
 besides that prayer is the great instrument of obtaining victory 
 by the grace of God, as a fruit of our desires, and of God's 
 natural and essential goodness ; the very praying against a 
 temptation, if it be hearty, fervent, and devout, is a denying 
 of it, and part of the victory : for it is a disclaiming the 
 entertainment of it, it is a positive rejection of the crime ; 
 and every consent to it is a ceasing to pray, and to desire 
 remedy. And we shall observe, that whensoever we begin to 
 listen to the whispers of a tempting spirit, our prayers against 
 it lessen, as the consent increases ; there being nothing a 
 more direct enemy to the temptation than prayer, which, as 
 it is of itself a professed hostility against the crime, so it is a 
 calling in auxiliaries from above to make the victory more 
 certain. If temptation sets upon thee, do thou set upon God ; 
 for he is as soon overcome as thou art, so soon moved to 
 good as thou art to evil ; he is as quickly invited to pity thee 
 as thou art to ask him ; d provided thou dost not finally rest 
 in the petition, but pass into action, and endeavour by all 
 means human and moral, to quench the flame newly kindled 
 in thy bowels, before it come to devour the marrow of the 
 bones. For a strong prayer, and a lazy, incurious, unob- 
 servant walking, are contradictions in the discourses of re- 
 ligion. Ruffinus 6 tells us a story of a young man solicited 
 by the spirit of uncleanness, who came to an old religious 
 person, and begged his prayers. It was in that age, when 
 God used to answer prayers of very holy persons by more 
 clear and familiar significations of his pleasure, than he knows 
 now to be necessary. But after many earnest prayers sent 
 up to the throne of grace, and the young man not at all 
 
 c Matth. xxvi. 41. 
 
 11 Hie levare functuiu 
 
 Pauperem laboribus 
 
 Vocatus atque non vocatus audit. 7/cr. lib. ii. od. 18. 
 J,ib. iii. 13.
 
 OF TEMPTATION. 233 
 
 bettered, upon consideration and inquiry of particulars, he 
 found the cause to be, because the young man relied so upon 
 the prayers of the old eremite, that he did nothing at all to 
 discountenance his lust, or contradict the temptation. But 
 then he took another course, enjoined him austerities and 
 exercises of devotion, gave him rules of prudence and cau- 
 tion, tied him to work and to stand upon his guard ; and then 
 the prayers returned in triumph, and the young man trampled 
 upon his lust. And so shall I and you, by God's grace, if we 
 pray earnestly and frequently, if we watch carefully that we 
 be not surprised, if we be not idle in secret, nor talkative in 
 public, if we read Scriptures, and consult with a spiritual 
 guide, and make religion to be our work, that serving of God 
 IK- the business of our life, and our designs be to purchase 
 eternity ; then we shall walk safely, or recover speedily, and, 
 by doing advantages to piety, secure a greatness of religion, 
 and spirituality to our spirits and understanding. But re- 
 member, that when Israel fought against Amalek, Moses's 
 prayer and Moses's hand secured the victory, his prayer 
 grew ineffectual when his hands were slack ; to remonstrate 
 to us, that we must co-operate with the grace of God, praying 
 devoutly, and watching carefully, and observing prudently, 
 and labouring with diligence and assiduity. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 Eternal and most merciful Father, I adore thy wisdom, provi- 
 dence, and admirable dispensation of affairs, in the spiritual 
 kingdom of our Lord Jesus, that thou, who art infinitely 
 good, dost permit so many sadnesses and dangers to dis- 
 compose that order of things and spirits, which thou didst 
 create innocent and harmless, and dost design to great and 
 spiritual perfections ; that the emanation of good from 
 evil, by thy overruling power and excellences, may force 
 glory to thee from our shame, and honour to thy wisdom, 
 by these contradictory accidents and events. Lord, have 
 pity upon me in these sad disorders, and with mercy know 
 ray infirmities. Let me, by suffering what thou pleasest, 
 co-operate to the glorification of thy grace and magnifying 
 thy mercy ; but never let me consent to sin, but, with the 
 power of thy majesty, and mightiness of thy prevailing
 
 234- OF BAPTISM. 
 
 inercy, rescue me from those throngs of dangers and 
 enemies, which daily seek to deflower that innocence, with 
 which thou didst clothe my soul in the new birth. Behold, 
 O God, how all the spirits of darkness endeavour the 
 extinction of our hopes, and the dispersion of all those 
 graces, and the prevention of all those glories, which the 
 holy Jesus hath purchased for every loving and obedient 
 soul. Our very meat and drink are full of poison, our 
 senses are snares, our business is various temptation, our 
 sins are inlets to more, and our good actions made occa- 
 sions of sins. Lord, deliver me from the malice of the 
 devil, from the fallacies of the world, from my own folly ; 
 that I be not devoured by the first, nor cheated by the 
 second, nor betrayed by myself: but let thy grace, which 
 is sufficient for me, be always present with me ; let thy 
 Spirit instruct me in the spiritual warfare, arming niy 
 understanding, and securing my will, and fortifying my 
 spirit with resolutions of piety, and incentives of religion, 
 and deleteries of sin ; that the dangers I am encompassed 
 withal, may become unto me an occasion of victory and 
 triumph, through the aids of the Holy Ghost, and by the 
 cross of the Lord Jesus, who hath, for himself and all his 
 servants, triumphed over sin, and hell, and the grave, even 
 all the powers of darkness, from which, by the mercies of 
 Jesus, and the merits of his passion, now and ever, deliver 
 me, and all thy faithful people. Amen. 
 
 DTSCOURSE VI. 
 
 Of Baptism. 
 PART I. 
 
 1 . WHEN the holy Jesus was to begin his prophetical office, 
 and to lay the foundation of his Church on the corner-stone, 
 he first tempered the cement with water, and then with 
 blood, and afterwards built it up by the hands of the Spirit : 
 himself entered at that door, by which his disciples for ever 
 after were to follow him ; for therefore he went "in at the
 
 OF BAPTISM. 235 
 
 door of baptism, that he might hallow the entrance, which 
 himself made to the house he was now building. 
 
 2. As it was in the old, so it is in the new creation ; out 
 of the waters God produced every living creature : and when 
 at first " the Spirit moved upon the waters," and gave life, it 
 was the type of what was designed in the renovation. Every 
 thing that lives now, " is born of water and the Spirit;" and 
 Christ, who is our Creator and Redeemer in the new birth, 
 opened the fountains, and hallowed the stream : Christ, who 
 is our Life, went down into the waters of baptism ; and we, 
 who descend thither, find the effects of life ; it is living 
 water, of which whoso drinks needs not to drink of it again, 
 for " it shall be in him a well of water, springing up to life 
 eternal." 3 
 
 3. But because every thing is resolved into the same 
 principles from whence they are taken ; the old world, 
 which by the power of God came from the waters, by their 
 own sin fell into the waters again, and were all drowned, 
 and only eight persons were saved by an ark : and the 
 world renewed upon the stock and reserves of that mercy 
 consigned the sacrament of baptism in another figure ; for 
 then God gave his sign from heaven, that by water the 
 world should never again perish ; but he meant that they 
 should be saved by water : for " baptism, which is a figure 
 like to this,' doth also now save us, by the resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ." h 
 
 4. After this the Jews report that the world took up the 
 doctrine of baptisms, in remembrance that the iniquity of the 
 old world was purged by water ; and they washed all that 
 came to the service of the true God, and, by that baptism, 
 bound them to the observation of the precepts which God 
 gave to Noah. 
 
 5. But when God separated a family for his own special 
 service, he gave them a sacrament of initiation, but it was a 
 sacrament of blood, the covenant of circumcision : and this 
 was the forerunner of baptism, but not a type ; when that 
 Avas abrogated, this came into the place of it, and that con- 
 signed the same faith which this professes. But it could not 
 properly be a type, whose nature is, by a likeness of matter 
 
 a John, iv. 14. b 1 Pet. iii. 21.
 
 236 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 or ceremony, to represent the same mystery. Neither is 
 a ceremony, as baptism truly is, properly capable of having 
 a type ; itself is but a type of a greater mysteriousness. 
 And the nature of types is, in shadow to describe by dark 
 lines a future substance: so that, although circumcision 
 might be a type of the effects and graces bestowed in bap- 
 tism, yet of the baptism or ablution itself it cannot be 
 properly, because of the unlikeness of the symbols and 
 configurations, and because they are both equally distant 
 from substances, which types are to consign and represent. 
 The first bishops of Jerusalem, and all the Christian Jews 
 for many years, retained circumcision together with baptism ; 
 and Christ himself, who was circumcised, was also baptized ; 
 and therefore it is not so proper to call circumcision a type 
 of baptism : it was rather a seal and sign of the same cove- 
 nant to Abraham, and the fathers, and to all Israel, as 
 baptism is to all ages of the Christian Church. 
 
 6. And because this rite could not be administered to all 
 persons, and was not at all times after its institution, God 
 was pleased by a proper and specific type to consign this 
 rite of baptism, which he intended to all, and that for ever : 
 and God, when the family of his Church grew separate, 
 notorious, numerous, and distinct, sent them into their own 
 country by a baptism, through which the whole nation 
 passed ; for *' all the fathers were under the* cloud, and 
 all passed through the sea, and were all baptized unto 
 Moses in the cloud, and in the sea," d so by a double figure 
 foretelling, that as they were initiated to Moses's law by the 
 cloud above and the sea beneath, so should all the persons 
 of the Church, men, women, and children, be initiated unto 
 Christ by the Spirit from above and the water below : for it 
 was the design of the apostle in that discourse, to represent 
 that the fathers and we were equal as to the privileges of the 
 covenant; he proved that we do not exceed them, and it 
 ought therefore to be certain, that they do not exceed us, 
 nor their children ours. 
 
 7. But after this, something was to remain, which might 
 not only consign the covenant which God made with 
 
 c Umbra in lege, imago in evangelic, veritas in coc-lo. S. Ambr. 
 d 1 Cor. x. 1, 2.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 237 
 
 Abraham, but be as a passage from the fathers, through the 
 synagogue to the Church, from Abraham by Moses to 
 Christ : and that was circumcision, which was a rite which 
 God chose to be a mark to the posterity of Abraham, to 
 distinguish them from the nations which were not within 
 the covenant of grace, and to be "a seal of the righteous- 
 ness of faith," which God made to be the spirit and life of 
 the covenant. 
 
 8. But because circumcision, although it was ministered 
 to all the males, yet it was not to the females, although they 
 and all the nation were baptized and initiated into " Moses 
 in the cloud and in the sea ; " therefore the children of Israel, 
 by imitation of the patriarchs, the posterity of Noah, used 
 also ceremonial baptisms to their women, and to their prose- 
 lytes, and to all that were circumcised ; and the Jews deliver, 
 that Sarah and Rebecca, when they were adopted into the 
 family of the Church, that is, of Abraham and Isaac, were 
 baptized : and so were all strangers that were married to the 
 sons of Israel. And that we may think this to be typical of 
 Christian baptism, the doctors of the Jews had a tradition, 
 that when the Messias would come there should be so many 
 proselytes that they could not be circumcised, but should 
 be baptized. The tradition proved true, but not for their 
 reason. 
 
 But that this rite of admitting into mysteries and institu- 
 tions, and offices of religion by baptisms, was used by the 
 posterity of Noah, or at least very early among the Jews, 
 besides the testimonies of their own doctors, I am the rather 
 induced to believe, because the heathens had the same rite 
 in many places and in several religions : so they initiated 
 disciples into the secrets of Mithra ; e and the priests of 
 Cotytto were called Baptse, because by baptism they were 
 admitted into the religion ; f and they thought murder, incest, 
 rapes, and the worst of crimes, were purged by dipping 
 in the sea or fresh springs ; g and a proselyte is called in 
 Arrianus Beftaw'svos, Intinctus, a baptized person. 
 
 9. But this ceremony of baptizing was so certain and 
 
 e Tertul. de Prescript, c. 40. f Scholiast, in Juv. Sat. ii. lib. i, 
 
 B O nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina caxlis 
 Toll! fluminea posse putatis aqua.
 
 238 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 usual among the Jews in their admitting proselytes and 
 adopting into institutions, that to baptize and to make 
 disciples are all one ; and when John the Baptist, by an 
 order from Heaven, went to prepare the way to the coming 
 of our blessed Lord, he preached repentance, and baptized all 
 that professed they did repent. He taught the Jews to live 
 good lives, and baptized with the baptism of a prophet, such 
 as was not unusually done by extraordinary and holy persons 
 in the change or renewing of discipline or religion. Whether 
 " John's baptism was from Heaven or of men ?" Christ asked 
 the Pharisees. That it was from Heaven the people therefore 
 believed, because he was a prophet and a holy person : but 
 it implies also that such baptisms are sometimes from men, 
 that is, used by persons of an eminent religion, or extra- 
 ordinary fame for the gathering of disciples and admitting 
 proselytes : and the disciples of Christ did so too ; h even 
 before Christ had instituted the sacrament for the Christian 
 Church, the disciples that came to Christ were baptized by 
 his apostles. 
 
 10. And now we are come to the gates of baptism. All 
 these till John were but types and preparatory baptisms, 
 and John's baptism was but the prologue to the baptism 
 of Christ. The Jewish baptisms admitted proselytes to 
 Moses and to the law of ceremonies : John's baptism called 
 them to believe in the Messias now appearing, and to repent 
 of their sins, to enter into the kingdom which was now 
 at hand, and preached that repentance which should be for 
 the remission of sins. His baptism remitted no sins,' but 
 preached and consigned repentance, which, in the belief of 
 the Messias, whom he pointed to, should pardon sins. But 
 because he was taken from his office before the work was 
 completed, the disciples of Christ finished it : they went 
 forth preaching the same sermon of repentance and the 
 approach of the kingdom, and baptized, or made proselytes 
 or disciples, as John did ; only they (as it is probable) 
 baptized in the name of Jesus, which it is not so likely John 
 
 h John, iv. 2. 
 
 1 Audi quid Scripture doceant: Joannis baptisraa non tarn peccata dimisit, 
 ijuAm baptisma pcenitentia; fuit in peccatorum remissionem, idque in futuram 
 remissionem, quae esset postea per sanctificationem Christ! subsequutura. 
 Hieronym. adv. Lncifernm.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 239 
 
 did. And this very thing might be the cause of the different 
 forms of baptism recorded in the Acts, k of " baptizing in the 
 name of Jesus," 1 and at other times " in the name of the 
 Father, Son, and Holy Ghost;"" 1 the former being the 
 manner of doing it in pursuance of the design of John's 
 baptism, and the latter the form of institution by Christ for 
 the whole Christian Church, appointed after his resurrection ; 
 the disciples at first using promiscuously what was used by 
 the same authority, though with some difference of mystery. 
 
 11. The holy Jesus having found his way ready pre- 
 pared by the preaching of John, and by his baptism, and 
 the Jewish manner of adopting proselytes and disciples into 
 the religion, a way chalked out for him to initiate disciples 
 into his religion, took what was so prepared, and changed 
 it into a perpetual sacrament. He kept the ceremony, that 
 they who were led only by outward things might be the 
 better called in, and easier enticed into the religion, when 
 they entered by a ceremony which their nation always used 
 in the like cases : and, therefore, without change of the out- 
 ward act, he put into it a new spirit, and gave it a new 
 grace, and a proper efficacy ; he sublimed it to higher ends, 
 and adorned it with stars of heaven ; he made it to signify 
 greater mysteries, to* convey greater blessings, to consign 
 the bigger promises, to cleanse deeper than the skin, and to 
 carry proselytes further than the gates of the institution. 
 For so he was pleased to do in the other sacrament: he 
 took the ceremony which he found ready in the custom of 
 the Jews, where the major-domo, after the paschal supper, 
 gave bread and wine to every person of his family ; he 
 changed nothing of it without, but transferred the rite to 
 greater mysteries, and put his own spirit to their sign, and 
 it became a sacrament evangelical. It was so also in the 
 matter of excommunication, where the Jewish practice was 
 made to pass into Christian discipline : without violence and 
 noise " old things became new," while he fulfilled the law, 
 making it up in full measures of the Spirit. 
 
 12. By these steps baptism passed on to a Divine evan- 
 gelical institution, which we find to be consigned by three 
 evangelists:" "Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, 
 
 k Vide supra, Sect ix. n. 1. ' Acts, viii. 16 ; ii. 38. 
 
 m Matt, xxviii. 19. " Matt, xxviii, 19.
 
 240 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Ghost." It was one of the last command- 
 ments the holy Jesus gave upon the earth, when he taught 
 his apostles " the things which concerned his kingdom." 
 For " he that helieveth and is baptized shall be saved:" 
 but " unless a man be born of water and the Holy Spirit, 
 he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven ;" p agreeable 
 to the decretory words of God by Abraham in the circum- 
 cision, to which baptism does succeed in the consignation 
 of the same covenant and the same spiritual promises," q 
 "The uncircumcised child, whose flesh is not circumcised, 
 that soul shall be cut off from his people ; he hath broken 
 my covenant." The Manichees, Seleucus, Hermias, and 
 their followers/ people of a day's abode and small interest, 
 but of malicious doctrine, taught baptism not to be neces- 
 sary, not to be used upon this ground ; because they sup- 
 posed that it was proper to John to baptize with water, and 
 reserved for Christ, as his peculiar, to " baptize with the 
 Holy Ghost and with fire." Indeed Christ baptized none 
 otherwise ; he sent his Spirit upon the Church in Pentecost, 
 and baptized them with fire, the Spirit appearing like a 
 flame : but he appointed his apostles to baptize with water, 
 and they did so, and their successors after them, every where 
 and for ever, not expounding but obeying the preceptive 
 words of their Lord, which were almost the last that he 
 spake upon earth. And I cannot think it needful to prove 
 this to be necessary by any more arguments, for the words 
 are so plain that they need no exposition ; and yet if they 
 had been obscure, the universal practice of the apostles and 
 the Church for ever, is a sufficient declaration of the com- 
 mandment: no tradition is more universal, no, not of Scripture 
 itself; no words are plainer, no, not the ten commandments : 
 and if any suspicion can be superinduced by any jealous or 
 less discerning person, it will need no other refutation, but to 
 turn his eyes to those lights by which himself sees Scripture 
 to be the word of God, and the commandments to be the 
 declaration of his will. 
 
 13. But that which will be of greatest concernment in 
 
 Mark, xvi. 16. P John, iii. 5. 
 
 1 Gen. xvii. 14, r S. Aug. Haeres. 4<", .">".
 
 OF BAPTISM. 241 
 
 this affair, is, to consider the great benefits which are con- 
 veyed to us in this sacrament ; for this will highly conclude, 
 that the precept was for ever, which God so seconds with his 
 grace and mighty blessings ; and the susception of it neces- 
 sary, because we cannot be without those excellent things, 
 which are the graces of the sacrament. 
 
 14. First : The first fruit is, that " in baptism we are 
 admitted to the kingdom of Christ," presented unto him, 
 consigned with his sacrament, enter into his militia, give 
 up our understandings and our choice to the obedience of 
 Christ, and, in all senses that we can, become his disciples, 
 witnessing a good confession, and undertaking a holy life : 
 and therefore, in Scripture, fj,a$r,Ttvzjv and paw'fyiv are con- 
 joined in their significations, as they are in the mystery ; it 
 is a giving up our names to Christ, and it is part of the 
 foundation, or the first principles, of the religion, as appears 
 in St. Paul's catechism ; s it is so the first thing, that it is for 
 babes and neophytes, in which they are matriculated and 
 adopted into the house of their Father, and taken into the 
 hands of their mother. Upon this account, baptism is called 
 in antiquity, " Ecclesiae janua, porta gratiae, et primus 
 introitus sanctorum ad eeternam Dei et ecclesiae consuetu- 
 dinem : i the gate of the church, the door of grace, the first 
 entrance of the saints to an eternal conversation with God 
 and the Church." St. Bernard calls it, " Sacramentum initia- 
 tionis, et intrantium Christianismum investituram : the sacra- 
 ment of initiation, and the investiture of them that enter into 
 the religion." And the person so entering is called wrsifffAivos 
 and ffv/x,ara,r&tifj,svo$," one of the religion, or a proselyte and 
 convert, and one added to the number of the Church, in 
 imitation of that of St. Luke, 6 Kuoiog Kgo<Kr<8u ffufyfAivous rp 
 ixx^riff/q., " God added to the Church those that should be 
 saved ;" x just as the Church does to this day and for ever, 
 baptizing infants and catechumens : ocafypevoi vgoffri'6tvrat, 
 they are added to the Church, that they may be added to the 
 Lord, and the number of the inhabitants of heaven. 
 
 15. Secondly : The next step beyond this is " adoption 
 into the covenant,"? which is an immediate consequent of the 
 
 Heb. vi. 1. S. August, lib. ii. c. 1. de Cat. Rudib. 
 
 u Just. Martyr. Apol. 2. x Acts, ii. 47. 
 
 y Ta jSasTT/ir/ta xai viodf'ias X^i" rvy^dmi. -Cyril. Hierosol. Catec. %. 
 VOL. II. X
 
 242 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 first presentation ; this being the first act of man, that the 
 first act of God. And this is called by St. Paul, a being 
 " baptized in one Spirit into one body," 2 that is, we are made 
 capable of the communion of saints, the blessings of the 
 faithful, the privileges of the Church : by this we are, as 
 St. Luke calls it, nray^voi tic ?ur)v a/clw6v, a ordained, or dis- 
 posed, '* put into the order of eternal life," being made 
 members of the mystical body, under Christ our Head. 
 
 16. Thirdly : And therefore " baptism is a new birth," 
 by which we enter into the new world, the new creation, 
 the blessings and spiritualities of the kingdom : and this 
 is the expression which our Saviour himself used to Nico- 
 demus, " Unless a man be born of water and the Spirit ;"' 
 and it is by St. Paul called Xovrgfa KaXij"ytvfata$, c " the laver 
 of regeneration ; " for now we begin to be reckoned in a new 
 census, or account ; God is become our Father, Christ our 
 elder Brother, the Spirit " the earnest of our inheritance," 
 the Church our Mother ; our food is the body and blood 
 of our Lord, faith is our learning, religion our employment, 
 and our whole life is spiritual, and heaven the object of our 
 hopes, and the mighty price of our high calling.* 1 And from 
 this time forward we have a new principle put into us, the 
 spirit of grace, which, besides our soul and body, is a principle 
 of action, of one nature, and shall, with them, enter into the 
 portion of our inheritance. And, therefore, the primitive 
 Christians, who consigned all their affairs, and goods, and 
 writings, with some marks of their Lord, usually writing 
 'ijjtroDf XgigT'og, 0soD bios, 2wr^, " Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 
 our Saviour, " made it an abbreviature by writing only the 
 capitals, thus, I. X. 0. T. 2., which the heathens, in mockery 
 and derision, made 'I%06$, which signifies a fish, and they 
 used it for Christ, as a name of reproach : but the Christians 
 owned the name, and turned it into a pious metaphor, and 
 were content that they should enjoy their pleasure in the 
 acrostic ; but upon that occasion Tertullian speaks perti- 
 nently to this article, " Nos pisciculi, secundum fyd-jv nostrum 
 
 1 Cor. xii. 13. Acts, xiii. 40. 
 
 b John, iii. 5. c Titus, iii. 5. 
 
 d Aut ftatrrifftn eig%ri iri^av fi'iav ymTou ri/u,7v, ri vrctkiyyitio'ia, KOLI tfyi>a.yif, 
 <fu/.a.x,Tr l a l oi, KOU <puriffft,os.Damasc. lib i v. Orth. Fid. c. 10.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 213 
 
 Jesum Christum, in aqua nascimur : e Christ, whom you call 
 a fish, we acknowledge to be our Lord and Saviour ; and we, 
 if you please, are the little fishes; for we are born in water, 
 thence we derive our spiritual life." And because from 
 henceforward we are a new creation, the Church uses to 
 assign new relations to the catechumens, spiritual fathers, 
 and susceptors ; and, at their entrance into baptism, the 
 Christians and Jewish proselytes did use to cancel all secular 
 affections to their temporal relatives. " Nee quicquarn prius 
 imbuimtur quam contemnere deos, exuere patriam, parentes, 
 liberos, fratres, vilia habere," f said Tacitus of the Christians : 
 which was true in the sense only that Christ said, " He that 
 doth not hate father and mother for my sake, is not worthy 
 of me ;" that is, he that doth not hate them prce me, rather 
 than forsake me, forsake them, is unworthy of me. 
 
 17. Fourthly: " In baptism all our sins are pardoned," 
 according to the words of a prophet, " I will sprinkle clean 
 water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your filthi- 
 ness." g " The catechumen descends into the font a sinner, 
 he arises purified ; he goes down the son of death, he comes 
 up the son of the resurrection ; he enters in the son of folly 
 and prevarication, he returns the son of reconciliation ; he 
 stoops down the child of wrath, and ascends the heir of 
 mercy ; he was the child of the devil, and now he is the 
 servant and the son of God." They are the words of Ven. 
 Bede concerning this mystery , h And this was ingeniously 
 signified by that Greek inscription upon a font, which is so 
 prettily contrived, that the words may be read after the 
 Greek or after the Hebrew manner, and be exactly the same ; 
 NPFON ANOMHMA, MH MONAN OYIN, " Lord, wash my 
 sin, and not my face only." And so it is intended and pro- 
 mised : " Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, 
 and call on the name of the Lord," 1 said Ananias to Saul ; 
 for " Christ loved the Church, and gave himself for it, that 
 he might sanctify and cleanse it, r<2 Xour^w rot udaros sv fr^an, 
 with the washing of water in the word ;" k that is, baptism in 
 the Christian religion : and therefore Tertullian calls baptism 
 
 e Lib. de Baptis. c. 1. t Lib. v. Hist. 
 
 ' Lzek. xxxvi. J>5. tlirnvu i /SaVr/ir/tat tit atytfii rui aiu,xoriat 
 Kicen. 
 
 h Lib. i. c. 3. in Joann. I Acts, xxii. 16. k Eph. T. 26.
 
 244 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 " lavacrum compendiatum," 1 a compendious laver, that is, 
 an entire cleansing the soul in that one action justly and 
 rightly performed. In the rehearsal of which doctrine it 
 was not an unpleasant etymology, that Anastasius Sinaita 
 gave of baptism, /3aTr/<r/Aa, quasi pdvTaiffpa, sv $ /SaXXsra/, 
 fyow K/vrei, ro vrai'tpa, " in which our sins are thrown off:" 
 and they fall like leeches when they are full of blood and 
 water, or like the chains from St. Peter's hands at the 
 presence of the angel. Baptism is avsxkoyusTos aipusig apaonuv, 
 an entire full forgiveness of sins, so that they shall never be 
 called again to scrutiny. 
 
 Omnia daemonis arma 
 
 His merguntur aquis, quibus ille renascitur infans, 
 Qui captivus erat - ."m 
 
 The captivity of the soul is taken away by the blood of 
 redemption, and the fiery darts of the devil are quenched 
 by these salutary waters ; and what the flames of hell are 
 expiating or punishing to eternal ages, that is washed off 
 quickly in the holy font, and an eternal debt paid in an 
 instant. For so sure as the Egyptians were drowned in the 
 Red Sea, so sure are our sins washed in this holy flood : for 
 this is a red sea too : these waters signify the blood of Christ : 
 " These are they that have washed their robes, and made 
 them white in the blood of the Lamb." To a//t 
 a^a/g/, xai TO irviv/j,a ayv/fyi' ro a//xa did 
 a vdaros, " The blood of Christ cleanseth us, the 
 water cleanseth us. the Spirit purifies us ; the blood by the 
 Spirit, the Spirit by the water," all in baptism, and in pur- 
 suance of that baptismal state. These three are they that 
 " bear record in earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood ;" 
 
 1 Lib. V. adv. MarC. C. 9. Ga^aiwt xXi/u *u.ira. TUI i 
 Cr. Proo. 
 
 Annon ita credimus, quia omne genus peccati, cum ad salutare lavacrum 
 veniinus, aufertur Origen, Horn. 15. in Josu. 
 
 Ecce quicquid iuiquitatum sempiternus ignis excoquere et expiare vir 
 posset, subito sacro fonte submersum est, et de asternis debitis brevissimo lavacri 
 compendio cum indulgentissimu creditore transactum est. Ambros.lib. i. cap. 7. 
 de Paenit. 
 
 Qui dicit peccata in baptismo non funditus dimitti, dicat in Mari Rubro 
 s non veraciter mortuos. S. Greg. M. lib. ix. ep. 39. 
 
 01 Arator, lib. ii. Hist. Apostol. n Rev. vii. 14. 
 
 1 John, i. 7. Acts, xxii. 16. Tit. iii. 5. Heb. ix. 1-4.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 245 
 
 xai oi rgtf; 115 ro tv tin, " these three agree in one," or are to 
 one purpose ; p they agree in baptism, and in the whole pur- 
 suance of the assistances which a Christian needs all the days 
 of his life. And therefore St. Cyril calls baptism, ruv rn 
 Xs/<rro-j xo&ruj.druv dvrirwzov, " the antitype of the passions of 
 Christ." It does preconsign the death of Christ, and does 
 the infancy of the work of grace, but not weakly ; it brings 
 from death to life ; and though it brings us but to the birth 
 in the new life, yet that is a greater change than is in all 
 the periods of our growth to manhood, to " a perfect man in 
 Christ Jesus." 
 
 18. Fifthly : Baptism does not only pardon our sins, but 
 puts us into a state of pardon for the time to come. For 
 baptism is the beginning of the new life, and an admission of 
 us into the evangelical covenant, which on our parts con- 
 sists in a sincere and timely endeavour to glorify God by 
 faith and obedience ; and on God's part, he will pardon what 
 is past, assist us for the future, and not measure us by grains 
 and scruples, or exact our duties by the measure of an angel, 
 but by the span of a man's hand. So that by baptism we 
 are consigned to the mercies of God and the graces of the 
 Gospel ; that is, that our pardon be continued, and our piety 
 be a state of repentance. And, therefore, that baptism, which 
 in the Nicene creed we profess to be for " the remission of 
 sins," is called in the Jerusalem creed, " the baptism of re- 
 pentance ; " that is, it is the entrance of a new life, the gate 
 to a perpetual change and reformation, all the way continuing 
 our title to, and hopes of, forgiveness of sins. And this 
 excellence is clearly recorded by St. Paul : " The kindness 
 and love of God our Saviour towards man hath appeared ; 
 not by works of righteousness which we have done :" q that 
 is, the formality of the Gospel covenant, not to be exacted by 
 the strict measures of the law : " but according to his mercy 
 he saved us," that is, by gentleness and remissions, by pitying 
 and pardoning us, by relieving and supporting us ; because 
 " he remembers that we are but dust." And all this mercy 
 we are admitted to, and is conveyed to us, did XourgoS vaXiy- 
 yivee/ag, " by the laver of regeneration, and the renewing of 
 the Holy Ghost." And this plain, evident doctrine, was 
 
 P 1 John, v. 8. 1 Tit. iii. 4, 5.
 
 246 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 observed, explicated, and urged against the Messalians, who 
 said that baptism was like a razor ; that cuts away all the sins 
 that were past, or presently adhering, but not the sins of our 
 future life t Ov&s yd% rvuro fj,ovov efoi'yyzX/.iTCti ro /tMHfrifgwv, a/./.cc 
 rd rovruv f&ti^u xai nXsionga' appa^MV yag ken riv (MAXfattM dya- 
 %uv, xai rri; ego/nivy; dva<rrdaica$, T-JKOS, xai xoivuv/'a ruv dzff-ro7i-/. r JJ'j 
 xai ftsrouff/a r5jj &s<S t ronxr l g avaffTafftug, xal //xar/ov 
 i %iruv !i/po<ruvjj?, xal <froX},, pwros/dfo, /iaXXof 5= aur/} 
 f cos/ " This sacrament promises more and greater things ; 
 it is the earnest of future good things, the type of the resur- 
 rection, the communication of the Lord's passion, the par- 
 taking of his resurrection, the robe of righteousness, the gar- 
 ment of gladness, the vestment of light, or rather light itself." 
 And for this reason it is that baptism is not to be repeated, 
 because it does at once all that it can do at a hundred 
 times ; for it admits us to the condition of repentance and 
 evangelical mercy ; to a state of pardon for our infirmities 
 and sins, which we timely and effectually leave ; and this is a 
 thing that can be done but once, as a man can begin but 
 once. He that hath once entered in at this gate of life, is 
 always in possibility of pardon, if he be in a possibility of 
 working and doing, after the manner of a man, that which he 
 hath promised to the Son of God. And this was expressly 
 delivered and observed by St. Austin: 5 " That which the 
 apostle says, ' Cleansing him with the washing of water in 
 the word,' is to be understood, that in the same laver of 
 regeneration and word of sanctification, all the evils of the 
 regenerate are cleansed and healed ; not only the sins that 
 are past, which are all now remitted in baptism, but also 
 those that are contracted afterwards by human ignorance and 
 infirmity : not that baptism be repeated as often as we sin, 1 
 but because by this, which is once administered, is brought 
 to pass, that pardon of all sins, not only of those that are 
 past, but also those which will be committed afterwards, is 
 obtained." The Messalians denied this, and it was part of 
 their heresy in the undervaluing of baptism ; and for it they 
 are most excellently confuted by Isidore Pelusiot, in his third 
 
 r Theodor. Ep. de div. Deer. cap. de Bapt f 
 Lib. de Nuptiis, c. 23, &c. Tract. 124. in Joan. 
 1 Vide Salmer, torn. xiii. p. 487.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 247 
 
 book, epistle 195, to the Count Hermin, whither I refer the 
 reader. 
 
 19. In proportion to this doctrine it is, that the holy 
 Scripture calls upon us to live a holy lite, in pursuance of this 
 grace of baptism. And St. Paul recalls the lapsed Galatians 
 to their covenant, and the grace of God stipulated in bap- 
 tism : " Ye are all children of God, by faith in Jesus Christ ;" u 
 that is, " heirs of the promise, and Abraham's seed;" that 
 promise which cannot be disannulled, increased, or diminished, 
 but is the same to us as it was to Abraham, the same before 
 the law and after. Therefore do not you hope to be "justi- 
 fied by the law ;" for you are entered into the covenant of 
 faith, and are to be justified thereby. This is all your hope ; 
 by this you must stand for ever, or you cannot stand at all ; 
 but by this you may : for " you are God's children by faith," 
 that is, not by the law, or the covenant of works. And that 
 you may remember whence you are going, and return again, 
 he proves that they are the children of God by faith in Jesus 
 Christ, because they " have been baptized into Christ,"" and 
 so " put on Christ." This makes you children, and such as 
 are "to be saved by faith," that is, a covenant, " not of 
 works," but of pardon in Jesus Christ, the author and 
 establisher of this covenant. For this is the covenant made 
 in baptism, that " being justified by his grace, we shall be 
 heirs of life eternal : for by grace," that is, by favour, remis- 
 sion, and forgiveness in Jesus Christ, " ye are saved." This 
 is the only way that we have of being justified, and this must 
 remain as long as we are in hopes of heaven : for besides this 
 we have no hopes : and all this is stipulated and consigned 
 in baptism, and is of force after our fallings into sin and 
 risings again. In pursuance of this, the same apostle de- 
 clares, that the several states of sin are so many recessions 
 from the state of baptismal grace ; and if we arrive to the 
 direct apostasy, and renouncing of, or a contradiction to, the 
 state of baptism, we are then unpardonable, because we are 
 fallen from our state of pardon. This St. Paul conditions 
 most strictly, in his epistle to the Hebrews : " This is the 
 covenant I will make in those days ; I will put my laws in 
 their hearts ; and their sins and iniquities will I remember no 
 
 Gal. iii. 26, 2\ Ver. 27.
 
 248 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 more. Now where remission of these is, there is no more 
 offering for sin ;" y that is, our sins are so pardoned, that we 
 need " no more oblation ;" we are then made partakers of the 
 death of Christ, which we afterwards renew in memory, and 
 eucharist, and representment. But the great work is done in 
 baptism ; for so it follows, " Having boldness to enter into 
 the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, 
 that is, by the veil of his flesh," his incarnation. But how do 
 we enter into this ? Baptism is the door, and the ground of 
 this confidence for ever : for so he adds, t( Let us draw near 
 with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts 
 sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed 
 with pure water." This is the consignation of this blessed 
 state, and the gate to all this mercy. " Let us hold fast the 
 profession of our faith," z that is, the religion of a Christian, 
 the faith into which we were baptized; for that is the faith that 
 justifies and saves us : let us therefore hold fast this profes- 
 sion of this faith, and do all the intermedial works, in order 
 to the conservation of it ; such as are, assembling in the 
 communion of saints, (the use of the word and sacrament is 
 included in the precept,) mutual exhortation, good example,* 
 and the like : " For if we sin wilfully, after we have received 
 the knowledge of the truth," that is, if we sin against the 
 profession of this faith, and hold it not fast, but let the faith 
 and the profession go wilfully, which afterwards he calls "a 
 treading under foot the Son of God, accounting the blood of 
 the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing," 
 and " a doing despite to the Spirit of grace," viz. which 
 moved upon those waters, and did illuminate him in baptism ; 
 if we do this, " there is no more sacrifice for sins," no more 
 deaths of Christ, into which you may be baptized ; that is, 
 you are fallen from the state of pardon and repentance, into 
 which you were admitted in baptism, and in which you con- 
 tinue so long as you have not quitted your baptismal rights 
 and the whole covenant. Contrary to this is that which St. 
 Peter calls " making our calling and election sure," that is, a 
 doing all that which may continue us in our state of baptism 
 and the grace of the covenant. And between these two 
 
 O 
 
 J Heb. x. 16, 19, 29. * T?f Uir/Jaf' sell, ad futurum respiciens.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 249 
 
 states, of absolute apostasy from, and entirely adhering to 
 and securing, this state of calling and election, are all the 
 intermedial sins, and being overtaken in single faults, or 
 declining towards vicious habits, which in their several pro- 
 portions are degrees of danger and insecurity ; which St. 
 Peter calls XJ^TJV xa$agiff/A6u TUV craXa/ avrov apaenuv " a forget- 
 ting our baptism, or purification from our sins." b And in this 
 sense are those words, " The just shall live by faith," that is, 
 by that profession which they made in baptism ; from which 
 if they swerve not, they shall be supported in their spiritual 
 life. It is a grace which, by virtue of the covenant consigned 
 in baptism, does, like a centre, transmit effluxes to all the 
 periods and portions of our life ; our whole life, all the periods 
 of our succeeding hopes, are kept alive by this. This con- 
 sideration is of great use, besides many other things, to re- 
 prove the folly of those, who in the Primitive Church deferred 
 their baptism till their death-bed ; because baptism is a laver 
 of sanctification, and drowns all our sins, and buries them in 
 the grave of our Lord, they thought they might sin securely 
 upon the stock of an after-baptism ; for unless they were 
 strangely prevented by a sudden accident, a death-bed bap- 
 tism they thought would secure their condition : but early 
 some of them durst not take it, much less in the beginning of 
 their years, that they might at least gain impunity for their 
 follies and heats of their youth. Baptism hath influence into 
 the pardon of all our sins, committed in all the days of our 
 folly and infirmity ; and so long as we have not been bap- 
 tized, so long we are out of the state of pardon : and there- 
 fore an early baptism is not to be avoided, upon this mistaken 
 fancy and plot upon heaven ; it is the greater security towards 
 the pardon of our sins, if we have taken it in the beginning 
 of our days. 
 
 20. Sixthly : The next benefit of baptism, which is also a 
 verification of this, is " a sanctification of the baptized person 
 by the Spirit of grace." 
 
 Sanctus in hunc coelo descendit Spiritus amnem, 
 
 Coelestique sacras fonte maritat aquas : 
 Concipit unda Deum, sanctamque liquoribus almis 
 
 Edit ab <eterno semine progeniem. 
 
 b 2 Pet. i. 9. Vide Part II. Disc. 9. of Repentance, num. 9. ad 31. 
 c Paul. Ep. 12. ad Serenum.
 
 250 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 The Holy Ghost descends upon the waters of baptism, and 
 makes them prolific, apt to produce children unto God : and 
 therefore St. Leo compares the font of baptism to the womb 
 of the blessed Virgin, when it was replenished with the Holy 
 Spirit. And this is the baptism of our dearest Lord : his 
 ministers baptize with water ; our Lord at the same time veri- 
 fies their ministry with giving the Holy Spirit. They are 
 joined together by St. Paul : " We are, by one Spirit, bap- 
 tized into one body ;" d that is, admitted into the Church, by 
 baptism of water and the Spirit. This is that which our 
 blessed Lord calls " a being born of water and of the Spirit."' 
 By water we are sacramentally dead and buried ; by the Spirit 
 we are made alive. But because these are mysterious ex- 
 pressions, and, according to the style of Scripture, high and 
 secret in spiritual significations, therefore, that we may un- 
 derstand what these things signify, we must consider it by 
 its real effects, and what it produces upon the soul of a 
 man. 
 
 21. First: It is the suppletory of original righteousness, 
 by which Adam was at first gracious with God, and which he 
 lost by his prevarication. It was in him a principle of wis- 
 dom and obedience, a relation between God and himself, a 
 title to the extraordinary mercies of God, and a state of 
 friendship. When he fell, he was discomposed in all ; the 
 links of the golden chain and blessed relation were broken ; 
 and it so continued in the whole life of man, which was 
 stained with the evils of this folly and the consequent mis- 
 chiefs. And, therefore, when we began the world again, 
 entering into the articles of a new life, God gave us his 
 Spirit, to be an instrument of our becoming gracious persons, 
 and of being in a condition of obtaining that supernatural end 
 which God at first designed to us. And, therefore, as our 
 baptism is a separation of us from unbelieving people ; so the 
 descent of the Holy Spirit upon us, in our baptism, is a con- 
 signing or marking us for God, as the sheep of his pasture, 
 as the soldiers of his army, as the servants of his household. 
 We are so separated from the world, that we are appropriated 
 to God ; so that God expects of us duty and obedience ; and 
 all sins are acts of rebellion and undutifulness. Of this 
 
 d 1 Cor. xii. 13. * Join, iii. 5. Basil, de Spir. S. c. 15.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 251 
 
 nature was the sanctification of Jeremiah, and John the Bap- 
 tist, from their mothers' womb ; that is, God took them to 
 his own service, by an early designation, and his Spirit 
 marked them to a holy ministry. To this also relates that of 
 St. Paul, whom God by a decree separated from his mother's 
 womb, to the ministry of the Gospel : the decree did antedate 
 the act of the Spirit, which did not descend upon him until 
 the day of his baptism. What these persons were, in order 
 to exterior ministries, that all the faithful are, in order to 
 faith and obedience ; consigned in baptism, by the Spirit of 
 God, to a perpetual relation to God, in a continual service 
 and title to his promises. And in this sense the Spirit of 
 God is called <s$oaylc,, a seal/ " In whom also, after that ye 
 believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise :" B 
 ro (Atv vduo xa^a/gsi, ro ds xvt5'j,a efgayl^d rqv ^jyjjv' " The water 
 washes the body, and the Spirit seals the soul," viz. to a 
 participation of those promises which he hath made, and to 
 which we receive a title by our baptism. 
 
 22. Secondly: The second effect of the Spirit is light or 
 illumination ; that is, the Holy Spirit becomes unto us the 
 author of holy thoughts and firm persuasions, and " sets to 
 his seal that the word of God is true," into the belief of 
 which we are then baptized, and makes faith to be a grace, 
 and the understanding resigned, and the will confident, and 
 the assent stronger than the premises, and the propositions 
 to be believed, because they are beloved ; and we are taught 
 the ways of godliness after a new manner, that is, we are 
 made to perceive the secrets of the kingdom, and to love 
 religion, and to long for heaven and heavenly things, and to 
 despise the world, and to have new resolutions, and new per- 
 ceptions, and new delicacies, in order to the establishment of 
 faith, and its increments and perseverance. Tj? 
 
 aviSe&iis 6 &sos, oiovii &POV 
 God sits in the soul, when it is illuminated in 
 baptism, as if he sat in his throne ;" that is, he rules by a 
 firm persuasion, and entire principles of obedience. And 
 therefore baptism is called in Scripture, pwr/<r//,oj, and the bap- 
 tized <pcuTiaev7is, illuminated : " Cull to mind the former days, 
 
 f 2 Cor. i. 22. Eph. iv. 30. John, vi. 27. 
 K Eph. i. 13. S. Cyril. Hieros. Catec. 3. 
 h S. Basil, in Psalm xxviii.
 
 252 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 in which you were illuminated."' And the same phrase is in 
 the sixth to the Hebrews, 1 where the parallel places expound 
 each other. For that which St. Paul calls d--a% puTi<ti'ivrt$, 
 " once illuminated," he calls after, Xa/3ovr; rr t v ex/'yvuaiv 7r t g 
 dXjjSg/aj, " a receiving the knowledge of the truth :" and that 
 you may perceive this to be wholly meant of baptism, the 
 apostle expresses it still by synonymas : " Tasting of the 
 heavenly gift, and made partakers ofthe Holy Ghost, sprinkled 
 in our hearts from an evil conscience, and washed in our 
 bodies with pure water j" 1 all which also are a syllabus, or 
 collection, of the several effects of the graces bestowed in 
 baptism. But we are now instancing in that which relates 
 most properly to the understanding, in which respect the 
 Holy Spirit also is called anointing or unction ; and the mys- 
 tery is explicated by St. John : " The anointing which ye 
 have received of him, abideth in you : and ye need not that 
 any man teach you, but as the same anointing teacheth you 
 of all things."" 1 
 
 23. Thirdly : The Holy Spirit descends upon us in bap- 
 tism, to become the principle of a new life, to become a holy 
 seed, springing up to holiness ; and is called by St. John, 
 ffvigfia 0fou, " the seed of God :" n and the purpose of it we 
 are taught by him : " Whosoever is born of God," (that is, he 
 that is regenerated and entered into this new birth,) " doth 
 not commit sin ; for his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot 
 sin, because he is born of God." The Spirit of God is the 
 Spirit of life ; and now that he, by the Spirit, is born anew, 
 he hath in him that principle, which, if it be cherished, will 
 grow up to life, to life eternal. And this is " the Spirit of 
 sanctification, the victory over the world," the deletery of 
 concupiscence, the life of the soul, and the perpetual prin- 
 ciple of grace sown in our spirits, in the day of our adoption 
 to be the sons of God, and members of Christ's body. But 
 take this mystery in the words of St. Basil: " There are 
 two ends proposed in baptism ; to wit, to abolish the body of 
 sin, that we may no more bring forth fruit unto death ; and 
 to live in the Spirit, and to have our fruit to sanctification. 
 The water represents the image of death, receiving the body 
 
 1 Heb. x. 32. * Ver. 4. > Heb. vi. 4. 
 
 m 1 John, ii. 20, 27. "1 John, iii. 9. Lib. de Spir. S. c. 18.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 253 
 
 in its bosom, as in a sepulchre ; but the quickening Spirit 
 sends upon us a vigorous Mvapiv, power or efficacy, even from 
 the beginning renewing our souls from the death of sin unto 
 life : for as our mortification is perfected in the water, so the 
 Spirit works life in us." To this purpose is the discourse of 
 St. Paul : having largely discoursed of our being baptized 
 into the death of Christ, he adds this as the corollary of all ;P 
 " He that is dead q is freed from sin ;" that is, being mortified 
 and buried 1 " in the waters of baptism, we have a new life of 
 righteousness put into us, we are quitted from the dominion 
 of sin, and are planted together in the likeness of Christ's 
 resurrection,* that henceforth we should not serve sin. 1 
 
 24. Fourthly : But all these intermedial blessings tend to 
 a glorious conclusion, for baptism does also consign us to a 
 holy resurrection. It takes the sting of death from us, by 
 burying us together with Christ ; and takes off sin, which is 
 the sting of death : and then we shall be partakers of a 
 blessed resurrection. This we are taught by St. Paul : 
 " Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into 
 Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death? For if we have 
 been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall 
 be also in the likeness of his resurrection." That declares 
 the real event in its due season. But because baptism con- 
 signs it, and admits us to a title to it, we are said, with St. 
 Paul, to be " risen with Christ in baptism ; buried with him 
 in baptism, wherein also you are risen with him, through the 
 faith of the operation of God, which hath raised him from 
 the dead." x Which expression I desire to be remembered, 
 that by it we may better understand those other sayings of 
 the apostle, of " putting on Christ in baptism, putting on the 
 new man," &c. for these only signify s-ri^i^fAa,, or the design 
 on God's part, and the endeavour and duty on man's. We 
 are then consigned to our duty, and to our reward ; we un- 
 dertake one, and have a title to the other. And though men 
 of ripeness and reason enter instantly into their portion of 
 work, and have present use of the assistances, and something 
 of their reward in hand ; yet we cannot conclude, that those 
 
 P Rom. vi. 7. 1 Xj<rTov aWv, i. e. *>/>/. Plutarch. 
 
 T Ibid. ver. 4. Ver. 5. 
 
 1 Ver. 6. Vide Disc. 9. of Repentance, n. 46. 
 
 u Rom. vi. 3, 5. x Col. ii. 12.
 
 254 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 that cannot do it presently are not baptized rightly, because 
 they are not in capacity to " put on the new man" in right- 
 eousness, that is, in an actual holy life ; for they may " put 
 on the new man" in baptism, just as " they are risen with 
 Christ : " which, because it may be done by faith before it is 
 done in real event, and it may be done by sacrament and 
 design before it be done by a proper faith ; so also may our 
 putting on the new man be, it is done sacramentally, and 
 that part, which is wholly the work of God, does only antedate 
 the work of man, which is to succeed in its due time, and is 
 after the manner of preventing grace. But this is by the by. 
 In order to the present article, baptism is by Theodoret called 
 [Mrovela. r?j; dtexonxriz avaffrdfftu$, " a participation of the Lord's 
 resurrection." 
 
 25. Fifthly and lastly : " By baptism we are saved : " that 
 is, we are brought from death to life here, and that is " the 
 first resurrection ; " and we are brought from death to life 
 hereafter, by virtue of the covenant of the state of grace, into 
 which in baptism we enter, and are preserved from the second 
 death, and receive a glorious and an eternal life. " He that 
 believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved, " y said our blessed 
 Saviour ; and, " according to his mercy he saved us, by the 
 washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost." z 
 
 26. After these great blessings, so plainly testified in 
 Scripture and the doctrine of the Primitive Church, which are 
 regularly consigned and bestowed in baptism, I shall less 
 need to descend to temporal blessings, or rare contingences, 
 or miraculous events, or probable notices of things less cer- 
 tain. Of this nature are those stories recorded in the writings 
 of the Church, a that Constantine was cured of a leprosy in 
 baptism ; Theodosius recovered of his disease, being baptized 
 by the bishop of Thessalonica ; and a paralytic Jew was cured 
 as soon as he became a Christian, and was baptized by Atticus 
 of Constantinople ; and Bishop Arnulph baptizing a leper, also 
 cured him, said Vincentius Bellovacensis. It is more consider- 
 able, which is generally and piously believed by very many emi- 
 nent persons in the Church, that, at our baptism, God assigns 
 an angel-guardian, (for then the catechumen, being made a 
 servant and a brother to the Lord of angels, is sure not to want 
 
 J Mark, xvi. 16. Titus, iii. 5. 
 
 1 Xiceph. lib. vii. c. 35. Socr. lib. v. c. 6. Idem, lib. vii. c. 7.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 255 
 
 the aids of them who " pitch their tents round about them 
 that fear the Lord," b ) and that this guard and ministry is then 
 appointed when themselves are admitted into the inheritance 
 of the promises : and their title to salvation is hugely agree- 
 ahle to the words of St. Paul, " Are they not all ministering 
 spirits, sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of 
 salvation?" where it appears, that the title to the inherit- 
 ance is the title to this ministry, and therefore must begin 
 and end together. But I insist not on this, though it seems 
 to me hugely probable. All these blessings put into one 
 syllabus, have given to baptism many honourable appellatives 
 in Scripture and other divine writers," 1 calling it dvayimjovc, 
 , op/jj/ia Tgo; Qsov, o^jj/xa cr^of ougavov, j&MkXs/ftf wgo^cvov, 
 
 x>.?iSa rr,g /Saff/Xs/a; ruv oveavuv, {Ai'/dl.riv rrsoiro/^v d^E/w 
 V) eKtP<t>rri>j,a, dpp'afScuva, eve^veov, axodsi^iv avdxTtffiv, 
 v, sacramentuni vitae et aeternae salutis : "A new birth, 
 a regeneration, a renovation, a chariot carrying us to God, 
 the great circumcision, a circumcision made without hands, 
 the key of the kingdom, the paranymph of the kingdom, the 
 earnest of our inheritance, the answer of a good conscience, 
 the robe of light, the sacrament of a new life and of eternal 
 salvation." "Aeierov pw \>buo. This is celestial water, springing 
 from the sides of the rock upon which the Church was built, 
 when the rock was smitten with the rod of God. 
 
 27. It remains now that we inquire what concerns our 
 duty, and in what persons, or in what dispositions, baptism 
 produces all these glorious effects : for the sacraments of the 
 Church work in the virtue of Christ, but yet only upon such 
 as are servants of Christ, and hinder not the work of the 
 Spirit of grace. For the water of the font, and the Spirit of 
 the sacrament, ^are indeed to wash away our sins, and to 
 purify our souls ; but not unless we have a mind to be puri- 
 fied. The sacrament works pardon for them that hate their 
 sin, and procures grace for them that love it. They that are 
 guilty of sins, must repent of them, and renounce them, and 
 they must make a profession of the faith of Christ, and give, 
 or be given, up to the obedience of Christ ; and then they are 
 rightly disposed. " He that believeth,and is baptized, shall 
 
 b Psalm xxxiv. 7. c Heb. i. 14. 
 
 d Basil. Theod. Epiphan. Nazianc. Col. ii. iJ. Cyril. Hieros. Dionys. 
 Areop. Aug. libi ii. c. 13. contra Ciescon. Gram.
 
 256 OF BAPTISM. 
 
 be saved,"' saith Christ; and St. Peter called out to the 
 whole assembly, " Repent, and be baptized, every one of 
 you." f Concerning this, Justin Martyr 8 gives the same ac- 
 count of the faith and practice of the Church ; "Offoi av xf&Zxft 
 xai viarsvuffiv, &c. " Whosoever are persuaded, and believe 
 those things to be true, which are delivered and spoken by 
 us, and undertake to live accordingly, they are commanded 
 to fast and pray, and to ask of God remission of their former 
 sins, we also praying together with them, and fasting. Then 
 they are brought to us where water is, and are regenerated in 
 the same manner of regeneration by which we ourselves are 
 regenerated." For in baptism, St. Peter observes, there are 
 two parts, the body and the spirit ; that is, gaor.b; axfosfftf 
 p-jvov, " the putting away the filth of the flesh, " h that is, the 
 material washing ; and this is baptism no otherwise than a 
 dead corpse is a man : the other is ffuvsidqffws aya&r^ kxtpJirwa, 
 " the answer of a good conscience towards God," that is, the 
 conversion of the soul to God ; that is the effective disposi- 
 tion in which baptism does save us. And in the same sense 
 are those sayings of the primitive doctors to be understood, 
 " Anima non lavatione, sed responsione sancitur,"' the soul 
 is not healed by washing (viz.) alone, but by the answer, the 
 s<rteurr,fj,a in St. Peter, the correspondent of our part of the 
 covenant : for that is the perfect sense of this unusual ex- 
 pression. And the effect is attributed to this, and denied to 
 the other, when they are distinguished. So Justin Martyr 
 affirms : " The only baptism that can heal us, is repentance, 
 and the knowledge of God. For what need is there of that 
 baptism, that can only cleanse the flesh and the body ? Be 
 washed in your flesh from wrath and covetousness, from envy 
 and hatred ; and behold the body is pure." k And Clemens 
 Alexandrinus, upon that proverbial saying,"!^/ w Xour|u7, d/.7.a 
 vfxf) xc&agog, " Be not pure in the laver, but in the mind," adds, 
 " I suppose than an exact and a firm repentance is a sufficient 
 purification to a man; if judging and considering ourselves 
 for the facts we have done before, we proceed to that which 
 is before us, considering that which follows, and cleansing or 
 washing our mind from sensual affections, and from former 
 sins." Just as we use to deny the effect to the instrumental 
 
 e Mark, xvi. 16. 'Acts, ii. 38. 8 Apol. ad Anton. Caes. 
 
 b 1 Pet. iii. 21. ' Tert. de Res. Cam. k Ad Tryphon. Jud.
 
 OF BAPTISM. 257 
 
 cause, and attribute it to the principal, in the manner of 
 speaking, when our purpose is to affirm this to be the princi- 
 pal, and of chief influence. So we say, it is not the good 
 lute, but the skilful hand, that makes the music : it is not the 
 body, but the soul, that is the man : and yet he is not the 
 man without both. For baptism is but the material part in 
 the sacrament, "it is the Spirit that giveth life;" whose 
 work is faith and repentance, begun by himself without the 
 sacrament, and consigned in the sacrament, and actuated and 
 increased in the co-operation of our whole life. And there- 
 fore baptism is called in the Jerusalem creed, tv /3a<jrr/<r/za 
 psravotag tig atpeffiv TUV a^agr/wi*, " one baptism of repentance 
 for the remission of sins :" and by Justin Martyr, 1 Xour^v rfo 
 s KO.I 7r t $ yvuffttus TOV soD, o vwtg rrjs dvopiaz TUV Xauv ro\> 
 v-cv, " the baptism of repentance, and the knowledge 
 of God, which was made for the sins of the people of God." 
 He explains himself a little after, TO ftavnepa, TO pom xadagiaai 
 TOVTO psTavoTjaavras dwdpsvov, " baptism that can only cleanse 
 them that are penitent." " In sacramentis Trinitati occurrit 
 fides credentium et professio, quae apud acta conficitur ange- 
 lorum, ubi miscentur coelestia et spiritualia semina ; ut sancto 
 germine nova possit renascentium indoles procreari, ut dum 
 Trinitas cum fide concordat, qui natus fuerit seculo, renascatur 
 spiritualiter Deo. Sic fit hominuna Pater Deus, sancta fit 
 mater ecclesia," said Optatus. m " The faith and profession 
 of the believers meets with the ever-blessed Trinity, and is 
 recorded in the register of angels, where heavenly and spi- 
 ritual seeds are mingled ; that from so holy a spring may be 
 produced a new nature of the regeneration, that while the 
 Trinity (viz. that is invocated upon the baptized) meets with 
 the faith of the catechumen, he that was born to the world, 
 may be born spiritually to God. So God is made a Father to 
 the man, and the holy Church a mother." Faith and repent- 
 ance strip the old man naked, and make him fit for baptism ; 
 and then the Holy Spirit, moving upon the waters, cleanses 
 the soul, and makes it to put on the new man, who grows up 
 to perfection and a spiritual life, to a life of glory, by our 
 verification of our undertaking in baptism on our part, and 
 the graces of the Spirit on the other. For the waters pierce 
 
 1 Dial, dum Tryph. " Lib. ii. adv. Farm. 
 
 VOL. II. Y
 
 258 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 no further than the skin, till the person puts off his affection 
 to the sin that he hath contracted ; and then he may say, 
 " Aquae intraverunt usque ad animam meam," " The waters 
 are entered even unto my soul, to purify and cleanse it, by 
 the washing of water, and the renewing by the Holy Spirit." 
 The sum is this : n BCCCT/^O/AEVO/ pwr/^o/xg^a, <puri?6fj.tvoi viofoiovftsda, 
 C/oT9/OL>/iKo; Tt7.iiovju,ida, n}.io{jfj.ivoi aSavari^ofteQu' " Being bap- 
 tized we are illuminated, being illuminated we are adopted to 
 the inheritance of sons, being adopted we are promoted 
 towards perfection, and being perfected we are made im- 
 mortal." 
 
 Quisquis in hos fontes vir venerit, exeat inde 
 Semideus, tactis cito uobilitetur in undis. 
 
 28. This is the whole doctrine of baptism, as it is in itself 
 considered, without relation to rare circumstances or acci- 
 dental cases ; and it will also serve to the right understanding 
 of the reasons, why the Church of God hath, in all ages, 
 baptized all persons that were within her power, for whom 
 the Church could stipulate that they were, or might be, 
 relatives of Christ, sons of God, heirs of the promises, and 
 partners of the covenant, and such as did not hinder the 
 work of baptism upon their souls. And such were not only 
 persons of age and choice, but the infants of Christian 
 parents. For the understanding and verifying of which 
 truth, I shall only need to apply the parts of the former 
 discourse to their particular case, premising first these 
 propositions. 
 
 Of baptizing Infants. 
 PART II. 
 
 1. BAPTISM is the key in Christ's hand, and therefore opens 
 as he opens, and shuts by his rule : and as Christ himself did 
 not do all his blessings and effects unto every one, but gave 
 to every one as they had need ; so does baptism. Christ did 
 not cure all men's eyes, but them only that were blind ; 
 
 n Clem. Alex. lib. i. Paedag. c. 6.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 259 
 
 " Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to re- 
 pentance ; " that is, they that lived in the fear of God, 
 according to the covenant in which they were debtors, were 
 indeed improved and promoted higher by Christ, but not 
 called to that repentance to which he called the vicious 
 Gentiles, and the adulterous persons among the Jews, and 
 the hypocritical Pharisees. There are some so innocent that 
 they " need no repentance," saith the Scripture; meaning, 
 that though they do need contrition for their single acts of 
 sin, yet they are within the state of grace, and need not 
 repentance as it is a conversion of the whole man. And so 
 it is in baptism, which does all its effects upon them that 
 need them all, and some upon them that need but some : and 
 therefore, as it pardons sins to them that have committed 
 them, and do repent and believe ; so to the others, who have 
 not committed them, it does all the work which is done to 
 the others above or besides that pardon. 
 
 2. Secondly : When the ordinary effect of a sacrament is 
 done already by some other efficiency or instrument, yet the 
 sacrament is still as obligatory as before, not for so many 
 reasons or necessities, but for the same commandment. Bap- 
 tism is the first ordinary current in which the Spirit moves 
 and descends upon us ; and where God's Spirit is, they are 
 the sons of God, for Christ's Spirit descends upon none but 
 them that are his : and yet Cornelius, a who had received the 
 Holy Spirit, and was heard by God, and visited by an angel, 
 and accepted in his alms, and fastings, and prayers, was tied 
 to the susception of baptism. To which may be added, that 
 the receiving the effects of baptism beforehand was used as 
 an argument the rather to administer baptism. The effect of 
 which consideration is this, that baptism and its effect may 
 be separated, and do not always go in conjunction ; the effect 
 may be before, and therefore much rather may it be after, its 
 susception ; the sacrament operating in the virtue of Christ, 
 even " as the Spirit shall move : according to that saying of 
 St. Austin, b " Sacrosancto lavacro inchoata innovatio novi 
 hominis perficiendo perficitur in aliis citius, in aliis tardius ; " 
 and St. Bernard, " Lavari quidem cit6 possumus, sed ad 
 
 * Acts, x. 47. b Aug. de Moribus Eccles. Catb. lib. i. c. 35. 
 
 c Bern. Serin, de Ccena Dom.
 
 260 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 sanandum multa curatione opus est." " The word of regener- 
 ation, that is begun in the ministry of baptism, is perfected 
 in some sooner ; in some, later. We may soon be washed ; 
 but to be healed is a work of a long cure." 
 
 3. Thirdly : The dispositions, which are required to the 
 ordinary susception of baptism, are not necessary to the 
 efficacy, or required to the nature, of the sacrament, but 
 accidentally, and because of the superinduced necessities of 
 some men ; and therefore the conditions are not regularly to 
 be required. But, in those accidents, it was necessary for a 
 Gentile proselyte to repent of his sins, and to believe in 
 Moses's law, before he could be circumcised : but Abraham 
 was not tied to the same conditions, but only to faith in God ; 
 but Isaac was not tied to so much ; and circumcision was not 
 of Moses, but of the fathers : and yet, after the sanction of 
 Moses's law, men were tied to conditions, which were then 
 made necessary to them that centered into the covenant, but 
 not necessary to the nature of the covenant itself. And so it 
 is in the susception of baptism : if a sinner enters into the 
 font, it is necessary he be stripped of those appendages, 
 which himself sewed upon his nature, and then repentance 
 is a necessary disposition : if his understanding hath been a 
 stranger to religion, polluted with evil principles and a false 
 religion, it is necessary he have an actual faith, that he be 
 given in his understanding up to the obedience of Christ. 
 And the reason of this is plain ; because, in these persons, 
 there is a disposition contrary to the state and effects of 
 baptism ; and therefore they must be taken off by their con- 
 traries, faith and repentance, that they may be reduced to the 
 state of pure receptives. And this is the sense of those words 
 of our blessed Saviour, " Unless ye became like one of these 
 little ones, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven ; " 
 that is, ye cannot be admitted into the gospel covenant, 
 unless all your contrarieties and impediments be taken from 
 you, and you be as apt as children to receive the new inimis- 
 sions from heaven. And this proposition relies upon a great 
 example, and a certain reason. The example is our blessed 
 Saviour, who was " nullius pcenitentiae debitor ; " he had com- 
 mitted no sin, and needed no repentance ; he needed not to be 
 saved by faith, for of faith he was " the author and finisher," 
 and the great object, and its perfection and reward : and yet
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 261 
 
 he was baptized by the baptism of John, the baptism of re- 
 pentance. And therefore it is certain that repentance and 
 faith are not necessary to the susception of baptism, but 
 necessary to some persons that are baptized. For it is ne- 
 cessary we should much consider the difference. If the 
 sacrament by any person may be justly received in whom 
 such dispositions are not to be found, then the dispositions 
 are not necessary or intrinsical to the susception of the sacra- 
 ment ; and yet some persons coming to this sacrament may 
 have such necessities of their own as will make the sacrament 
 ineffectual without such dispositions. These I call necessary 
 to the person, but not to the sacrament ; that is, necessary 
 to all such, but not necessary to all absolutely. And faith 
 is necessary sometimes where repentance is not ; sometimes 
 repentance and faith together, and sometimes otherwise. 
 When Philip d baptized the eunuch, he only required of him 
 to believe, not to repent. But St. Peter, 6 when he preached 
 to the Jews, and converted them, only required repentance ; 
 which, although it in their case implied faith, yet there was 
 explicit stipulation for it : they had " crucified the Lord of 
 life ;" f and if they would come to God by baptism they must 
 renounce their sin ; that was all was then stood upon. It is 
 as the case is, or as the persons have superinduced necessities 
 upon themselves. In children the case is evident as to the 
 one part, which is equally required : I mean repentance ; the 
 not doing of which cannot prejudice them as to the susception 
 of baptism, because they, having done no evil, are not bound 
 to repent ; and to repent is as necessary to the susception of 
 baptism as faith is. But this shews that they are acci- 
 dentally necessary ; that is, not absolutely, not to all, not to 
 infants : and if they may be excused from one duty which is 
 indispensably necessary to baptism, why they may not from 
 the other, is a secret which will not be found out by these 
 whom it concerns to believe it. 
 
 4. And therefore when our blessed Lord made a stipula- 
 tion, and express commandment for faith, with the greatest 
 annexed penalty to them that had it not, " he that belie veth 
 not, shall be damned," the proposition is not to be verified or 
 understood as relative to every period of time ; for then no 
 
 d Acts, viii. 37. ' Acts, ii, 38. f Acts, iii. 15.
 
 262 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 man could be converted from infidelity to the Christian faith, 
 and from the power of the devil to the kingdom of Christ, 
 but his present infidelity shall be his final ruin. It is not 
 therefore yvupr,, but y^la, not a sentence, but a use, a predic- 
 tion and intermination. It is not like that saying, " God is 
 true, and every man a liar," and, " Every good and every 
 perfect gift is from above ;" for these are true in every in- 
 stant, without reference to circumstances : but, *' he that 
 believeth not, shall be damned," is a prediction, or that which 
 in rhetoric is called %fe/, or a use, because this is the affirma- 
 tion of that which usually or frequently comes to pass ; such 
 as this : " He that strikes with the sword, shall perish by 
 the sword ; he that robs a church, shall be like a wheel," of 
 a vertiginous and unstable estate ; "he that loves wine and 
 oil, shall not be rich :" and therefore it is a declaration of that 
 which is universally or commonly true ; but not so that in 
 what instant soever a man is not a believer, in that instant it 
 is true to say he is damned ; for some are called the third, 
 some the sixth, some the ninth hour ; and they that come 
 in, being first called, at the eleventh hour, shall have their 
 reward : so that this sentence stands true at the day and the 
 judgment of the Lord, not at the judgment or day of man. 
 And in the same necessity as faith stands to salvation, in the 
 same it stands to baptism ; that is, to be measured by the 
 whole latitude of its extent. Our baptism shall no more do 
 all its intention, unless faith supervene, than a man is in 
 possibility of being saved without faith ; it must come in its 
 due time, but is not indispensably necessary in all instances 
 and periods. Baptism is the seal of our election and adop- 
 tion ; and as election is brought to effect by faith and its 
 consequents, so is baptism : but to neither is faith necessary 
 as to its beginning and first entrance. To which also I add 
 this consideration, that actual faith is necessary, not to the 
 susception, but to the consequent effects of baptism, appears, 
 because the Church, and particularly the apostles, did baptize 
 some persons who had not faith, but were hypocrites ; such 
 as were Simon Magus, Alexander the coppersmith, Demas, 
 and Diotrephes ; and such was Judas when he was baptized, 
 and such were the Gnostic teachers. For the effect depends 
 upon God, who knows the heart, but the outward susception 
 depends upon them, who do not know it : which is a certain
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 263 
 
 argument, that the same faith which is necessary to the effect 
 of the sacrament, is not necessary to its susception ; and if it 
 can be administered to hypocrites, much more to infants ; if 
 to those who really hinder the effect, much rather to them 
 that hinder not. And if it be objected that the Church does 
 not know but the pretenders have faith, but she knows infants 
 have not ; I reply, that the Church does not know but the 
 pretenders hinder the effect, and are contrary to the grace of 
 the sacrament, but she knows that infants do not : the first 
 possibly may receive the grace, the other cannot hinder it. 
 
 5. But besides these things, it is considerable that, when 
 it is required, persons have faith. It is true they that require 
 baptism should give a reason why they do ; so it was in the 
 case of the eunuch baptized by Philip : but this is not to be 
 required of others that do not ask it, and yet they may be of 
 the Church and of the faith ; for by faith is also understood 
 the Christian religion, and the Christian faith is the Christian 
 religion, and of this a man may be, though he make no con- 
 fession of his faith, as a man may be of the Church, and yet 
 not be of the number of God's secret ones ; and to this more 
 is required than to that : to the first it is sufficient that he 
 be admitted by a sacrament or a ceremony ; which is infal- 
 libly certain, because hypocrites and wicked people are in the 
 visible communion of the Church, and are reckoned as mem- 
 bers of it, and yet to them there was nothing done but the 
 ceremony administered ; and therefore when that is done to 
 infants they also are to be reckoned in the Church communion. 
 And indeed, in the examples of Scripture, we find more in- 
 serted into the number of God's family by outward ceremony 
 than by the inward grace. Of this number were all those who 
 were circumcised the eighth day, who were admitted thither, 
 as the woman's daughter was cured in the Gospel, by the 
 faith of their mother, their natural parents, or their spiritual ; 
 to whose faith it is as certain God will take heed, as to their 
 faith who brought one to Christ who could not come himself, 
 the poor paralytic ; for when Christ saw their faith he cured 
 their friend : and yet it is to be observed, that Christ did use 
 to exact faith, actual faith, of them that came to him to be 
 cured : " According to your faith be it unto you." g The case 
 
 e Matt. ix. 29.
 
 264 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 is equal in its whole kind. And it is considerable what Christ 
 saith to the poor man that came in behalf of his son, " All 
 things are possible to him that believeth :" h it is possible for 
 a son to receive the blessing and benefit of his father's faith ; 
 and it was so in his case, and is possible to any ; for " to faith 
 all things are possible." And as to the event of things, it is 
 evident in the story of the Gospel that the faith of their 
 relatives was equally effective to children and friends or ser- 
 vants, absent or sick, as the faith of the interested person 
 was to himself: as appears, beyond all exception, in the case 
 of the friends of the paralytic, let down with cords through 
 the tiles ; of the centurion,' in behalf of his servant ; of the 
 nobleman, for his son sick at Capernaum ; k of the Syrophoe- 
 nician, for her daughter : and Christ required faith of no sick 
 man, but of him that presented himself to him, 1 and desired 
 for himself that he might be cured, as it was in the case of 
 the blind man. Though they could not believe, yet Christ 
 required belief of them, that came to him in their behalf. 
 And why then it may not be so, or is not so, in the case of 
 infants' baptism, I confess it is past my skill to conjecture. 
 The reason on which this further relies is contained in the 
 next proposition. 
 
 6. Fourthly : No disposition or act of man can deserve 
 the first grace, or the grace of pardon : for so long as a man 
 is unpardoned he is an enemy to God, and as a dead person ; 
 and unless he be prevented by the grace of God, cannot do 
 a single act in order to his pardon and restitution ; so that 
 the first work which God does upon a man is so wholly his 
 own that the man hath nothing in it but to entertain it ; that 
 is, not to hinder the work of God upon him. And this is 
 done in them that have in them nothing that can hinder the 
 work of grace, or in them who remove the hinderances. Of 
 the latter sort are all sinners who have lived in a state con- 
 trary to God ; of the first are they who are prevented by the 
 grace of God before they can choose ; that is, little children, 
 and those that become like unto little children. So that faith 
 and repentance are not necessary at first to the reception of 
 the first grace, but by accident. If sin have drawn curtains, 
 and put bars and coverings to the windows, these must be 
 
 h Mark, ix. 23. ' Matt. viii. 13. k John, iv. 50. ' Matt. ix. 28.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 265 
 
 taken away ; and that is done by faith and repentance : but 
 if the windows be not shut, so that the light can pass through 
 them, the eye of Heaven will pass in and dwell there. "No 
 man can come unto me, unless my Father draw him ;" m that 
 is, the first access to Christ is nothing of our own, but wholly 
 of God ; and it is as in our creation, in which we have an 
 obediential capacity, but co-operate not ; only if we be con- 
 trary to the work of grace, that contrariety must be taken off, 
 else there is no necessity. And if all men, according to 
 Christ's saying, must " receive the kingdom of God as little 
 children," 11 it is certain, little children do receive it; they 
 receive it as all men ought ; that is, without any impediment 
 or obstruction, without any thing within that is contrary to 
 that state. 
 
 7. Fifthly : Baptism is not to be estimated as one act, 
 transient and effective to single purposes ; but it is an en- 
 trance to a conjugation and a state of blessings. All our life 
 is to be transacted by the measures of the Gospel covenant, 
 and that covenant is consigned by baptism ; there we have our 
 title and adoption to it : and the grace that is then given to 
 us, is like a piece of leaven put into a lump of dough, and 
 faith and repentance do, in all the periods of our life, put it 
 into fermentation and activity. Then the seed of God is put 
 into the ground of our hearts, and repentance waters it, and 
 faith makes it subactum solum, the ground and furrows apt 
 to produce fruits : and therefore faith and repentance are 
 necessary to the effect of baptism, not to its susception; that 
 is, necessary to all those parts of life in which baptism does 
 operate, not to the first sanction or entering into the covenant. 
 The seed may lie long in the ground, and produce fruits in its 
 due season, if it be refreshed with " the former and the latter 
 rain ; " that is, the repentance that first changes the state, and 
 converts the man, and afterwards returns him to his title, and 
 recalls him from his wanderings, and keeps him in the state 
 of grace, and within the limits of the covenant: and all the 
 way faith gives efficacy and acceptation to this repentance ; 
 that is, continues our title to the promise of not having 
 righteousness exacted by the measures of the law, but by the 
 
 m John, vi. 44. n Mark, x. 15.
 
 266 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 covenant and promise of grace, into which we entered in 
 baptism, and walk in the same all the days of our life. 
 
 8. Sixthly : The Holy Spirit, which descends upon the 
 waters of baptism, does not instantly produce its effects in 
 the soul of the baptized ; and when he does, it is irregularly, 
 and as he pleases. "The Spirit bloweth where it listeth, and 
 no man knoweth whence it corneth, nor whither it goeth:" 
 and the catechumen is admitted into the kingdom, yet " the 
 kingdom of God cometh not with observation :" and this 
 saying of our blessed Saviour was spoken of " the kingdom 
 of God that is within us;" p that is, the spirit of grace, the 
 power of the Gospel put into our hearts, concerning which 
 he affirmed, that it operates so secretly, that it comes not 
 with outward show ; " neither shall they say, Lo here, or lo 
 there." Which thing I desire the rather to be observed, 
 because, in the same discourse, which our blessed Saviour 
 continued to that assembly, he affirms this "kingdom of God" 
 to belong unto " little children, " q this kingdom, that " cometh 
 not with outward significations," or present expresses, this 
 kingdom that is within us. For the present, the use I make 
 of it is this : that no man can conclude that this kingdom of 
 power, that is, the spirit of sanctification, is not come upon 
 infants, because there is no sign or expression of it. It is 
 " within us," therefore it hath no signification. It is " the 
 seed of God ;" and it is no good argument to say, here is no 
 seed in the bowels of the earth, because there is nothing 
 green upon the face of it. For the Church gives the sacra- 
 ment, God gives the grace of the sacrament. But because 
 he does not always give it at the instant, in which the Church 
 gives the sacrament (as if there be a secret impediment in 
 the suscipient), and yet afterwards does give it, when the 
 impediment is removed (as to them that repent of that 
 impediment), it follows, that the Church may administer 
 rightly,, even before God gives the real grace of the sacra- 
 ment: and if God gives this grace afterwards by parts, and 
 yet all of it is the effect of that covenant, which was con- 
 signed in baptism ; he that defers some, may defer all, and 
 verify every part, as well as any part. For it is certain, that, 
 
 Luke, xvii. 20. P Verse 21. i Luke, xviii. 16.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 267 
 
 in the instance now made, all the grace is deferred ; in infants, 
 it is not certain but that some is collated or infused : however, 
 be it so or no, yet upon this account the administration of the 
 sacrament is not hindered. 
 
 9. Seventhly : When the Scripture speaks of the effects 
 of, or dispositions to, baptism, it speaks in general expres- 
 sions, as being most apt to signify a common duty, or a 
 general effect, or a more universal event, or the proper order 
 of things : but those general expressions do not " supponere 
 universaliter;" that is, are not to be understood exclusively 
 to all, that are not so qualified, or universally of all susci- 
 pients, or of all the subjects of the proposition. When the 
 prophets complain of the Jews, that they are fallen from God, 
 and turned to idols, and walk not in the way of their fathers ; 
 and at other times the Scripture speaks the same thing of 
 their fathers, that they walked perversely toward God, "start- 
 ing aside like a broken bow ; " in these and the like expres- 
 sions, the holy Scripture uses a synecdoche, or signifies many 
 only, under the notion of a more large and indefinite expres- 
 sion : for neither were all the fathers good, neither did all the 
 sons prevaricate ; but among the fathers there were enough 
 to recommend to posterity by way of example, and among the 
 children there were enough to stain the reputation of the age; 
 but neither the one part nor the other was true of every single 
 person. St. John the Baptist spake to the whole audience, 
 saying, "O generation of vipers!" and yet he did not mean 
 that all Jerusalem and Judea, that "went out to be baptized 
 of him," were such ; but he, under an undeterminate reproof, 
 intended those that were such, that is, especially the priests 
 and the Pharisees. And it is more considerable yet in the 
 story of the event of Christ's sermon in the synagogue, upon 
 his text taken out of Isaiah, " all wondered at his gracious 
 words, and bare him witness ; " r and a little after, " all they 
 in the synagogue were filled with wrath : " that is, it was 
 generally so, but hardly to be supposed true of every single 
 person, in both the contrary humours and usages. Thus 
 Christ said to the apostles, " Ye have abode with me in my 
 temptations;" and yet Judas was all the way a follower of 
 interest and the bag, rather than Christ, and afterwards none 
 
 r Luke, iv. 22, 28.
 
 268 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 of them all did abide with Christ in his greatest temptations. 
 Thus, also, to come nearer the present question, the secret 
 effects of election, and of the Spirit, are in Scripture attri- 
 buted to all that are of the outward communion. So St. 
 Peter calls all the Christian strangers of the eastern dis- 
 persion, " elect according to the foreknowledge of God the 
 Father;" 5 and St. Paul saith of all the Roman Christians, and 
 the same of the Thessalonians, that their " faith was spoken 
 of in all the world : " and yet amongst them it is not to be 
 supposed, that all the professors had an unreprovable faith, 
 or that every one of the Church of Thessalonica was an excel- 
 lent and a charitable person ; and yet the apostle useth this 
 expression, " Your faith groweth exceedingly, and the charity 
 of every one of you all towards each other aboundeth."' 
 These are usually significant of a general custom or order of 
 things, or duty of men, or design, and natural or proper 
 expectation of events. Such are these also in this very 
 question, " As many of you as are baptized into Christ, have 
 put on Christ ; " that is, so it is regularly, and so it will be in 
 its due time, and that is the order of things, and the designed 
 event : but from hence we cannot conclude of every person, 
 and in every period of time, " This man hath been baptized," 
 therefore "now he is clothed with Christ, he hath put on 
 Christ ; " nor thus, " This person cannot, in a spiritual sense, 
 as yet put on Christ," therefore " he hath not been baptized," 
 that is, " he hath not put him on in a sacramental sense." 
 Such is the saying of St. Paul, "Whom he hath predesti- 
 nated, them he also called; and whom he called, them he 
 also justified ; and whom he justified, them he also glorified :" u 
 this also declares the regular event, or at least the order of 
 things, and the design of God, but not the actual verification 
 of it to all persons. These sayings concerning baptism in 
 the like manner are to be so understood, that they cannot 
 exclude all persons from the sacrament, that have not all 
 those real effects of the sacrament at all times, which some 
 men have at some times, and all men must have at some time 
 or other, viz., when the sacrament obtains its last intention 
 But he that shall argue from hence, that children are not 
 rightly baptized, because they cannot in a spiritual sense put 
 
 1 Pet. i. 2. ' 2 Tbess. i. 3. u Rom. viii. 30.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 269 
 
 on Christ, concludes nothing, unless these propositions did 
 signify universally, and at all times, and in every person, and 
 in every manner : which can no more pretend to truth, than 
 that all Christians are God's elect, and all that are baptized 
 are saints, and all that are called are justified, and all that are 
 once justified, shall be saved finally. These things declare 
 only the event of things, and their order, and the usual effect 
 and the proper design, in their proper season, in their limited 
 proportions. 
 
 10. Eighthly : A negative argument for matters of fact 
 in Scripture cannot conclude a law, or a necessary or a 
 regular event. And therefore, supposing that it be not inti- 
 mated, that the apostles did baptize infants, it follows not 
 that they did not ; and if they did not, it does not follow that 
 they might not, or that the Church may not. For it is un- 
 reasonable to argue, the Scripture speaks nothing of the 
 baptism of the holy Virgin-mother, therefore she was not 
 baptized. The words and deeds of Christ are infinite, which 
 are not recorded, and of the acts of the apostles we may 
 suppose the same in their proportion : and therefore what 
 they did not, is no rule to us, unless they did it not because 
 they were forbidden. So that it can be no good argument to 
 say the apostles are not read to have baptized infants, there- 
 fore infants are not to be baptized : but thus, we do not find 
 that infants are excluded from the common sacraments and 
 ceremonies of Christian institution, therefore we may not 
 presume to exclude them. For although the negative of a 
 fact is no good argument, yet the negative of a law is a very 
 good one. We may not say the apostles did not, therefore 
 we may not : but thus they were not forbidden to do it, 
 there is no law against it, therefore it may be done. No 
 man's deeds can prejudicate a Divine law expressed in general 
 terms, much less can it be prejudiced by those things that 
 were not done. " That which is wanting cannot be num- 
 bered, " x cannot be effectual; therefore, "Baptize all nations," 
 must signify all that it can signify, all that are reckoned in 
 the capitations and accounts of a nation. Now, since all 
 contradiction to this question depends wholly upon these two 
 grounds, the negative argument in matter of fact, and the 
 
 * Eccles. i. 15.
 
 270 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 pretences that faith and repentance are required to baptism ; 
 since the first is wholly nothing, and infirm upon an infinite 
 account, and the second may conclude that infants can no 
 more be saved than be baptized, because faith is more neces- 
 sary to salvation than to baptism; it being said, " He that 
 believeth not, shall be damned," and it is not said, " He that 
 believeth not, shall be excluded from baptism :" it follows 
 that the doctrine of those that refuse to baptize their infants, 
 is, upon both its legs, weak, and broken, and insufficient. 
 
 11. Upon the supposition of these grounds, the baptism 
 of infants according to the perpetual practice of the Church 
 of God, will stand firm and unshaken upon its own base. 
 For, as the eunuch said to Philip, "What hinders them to 
 be baptized?" If they can receive benefit by it, it is in- 
 fallibly certain that it belongs to them also to receive it, and 
 to their parents to procure it ; for nothing can deprive us of 
 so great a grace but an unworthiness, or a disability. They 
 are not disabled to receive it if they need it, and if it does 
 them good ; and they have neither done good nor evil, and 
 therefore they have not forfeited their right to it. This, 
 therefore, shall be the first great argument or combination of 
 inducements, Infants receive many benefits by the suscep- 
 tion of baptism, and therefore, in charity and in duty, we are 
 to bring them to baptism. 
 
 12. First : The first effect of baptism is, that in it we are 
 admitted to the kingdom of Christ, offered and presented 
 unto him. In which certainly there is the same act of 
 worship to God, and the same blessing to the children of 
 Christians, as there was in presenting the first-born among 
 the Jews. For our children can be God's own portion as 
 well as theirs: and as they presented the first-born to God, 
 and so acknowledged that God might have taken his life in 
 sacrifice, as well as the sacrifice of the Lamb, or the oblation 
 of a beast ; yet, when the right was confessed, God gave 
 him back again and took a lamb in exchange, or a pair of 
 doves : so are our children presented to God as forfeit, and 
 God might take the forfeiture and not admit the babe to the 
 promises of grace ; but when the presentation of the child 
 and our acknowledgment is made to God, God takes the 
 Lamb of the world in exchange, and he hath paid our for- 
 feiture, and the children are " holy unto the Lord." And
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 271 
 
 what hinders here? Cannot a cripple receive an alms at the 
 beautiful gate of the temple, unless he go thither himself? 
 or cannot a gift be presented to God by the hands of the 
 owners, and the gift become holy and pleasing to God 
 without its own consent? The parents have a portion of 
 the possession : children are blessings, and God's gifts, and 
 the father's greatest wealth, and, therefore, are to be given 
 again to him. In other things we give something to God of 
 all that he gives us ; all we do not, because our needs force 
 us to retain the greater part, and the less sanctifies the 
 whole : but our children must all be returned to God ; for 
 we may love them, and so may God too, and they are the 
 better our own by being made holy in their presentation. 
 Whatsoever is given to God is holy, every thing in its pro- 
 portion and capacity; a lamb is holy, when it becomes a 
 sacrifice ; and a table is holy, when it becomes an altar ; and 
 a house is holy, when it becomes a church ; and a man is 
 holy, when he is consecrated to be a priest ; and so is every 
 one that is dedicated to religion : these are holy persons, 
 the others are holy things. And infants are between both : 
 they have the sanctification that belongs to them, the holiness 
 that can be of a reasonable nature offered and destined to 
 God's service ; but not in that decree that is in an under- 
 
 9 O 
 
 standing, choosing person. Certain it is, that infants may 
 be given to God ; and if they may be they must be : for it-is 
 not here as in goods, where we are permitted to use all, or 
 some, and give what portion we please out of them ; but 
 we cannot do our duty towards our children unless we give 
 them wholly to God and offer them to his service and to his 
 grace. The first does honour to God; the second does 
 charity to the children. The effects and real advantages will 
 appear in the sequel. In the meantime, this argument 
 extends thus far, that children may be presented to God 
 acceptably in order to his service. And it was highly pre- 
 ceptive, when our blessed Saviour commanded, that we 
 should "suffer little children to come to" him: and when 
 they came, they carried away a blessing along with them. 
 He was desirous they should partake of his merits : he is not 
 willing, neither is it his Father's will, " that any of these 
 little ones should perish." And, therefore, he died for them, 
 and loved and blessed them : and so he will now, if they be
 
 272 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 brought to him, and presented as candidates of the religion 
 and of the resurrection. Christ hath a blessing for our 
 children ; but let them come to him, that is, be presented at 
 the doors of the Church to the sacrament of adoption and 
 initiation ; for I know no other way for them to come. 
 
 13. Secondly : Children may be adopted into the cove- 
 nant of the gospel, that is, " made partakers of the com- 
 munion of saints," which is the second effect of baptism ; 
 parts of the Church members of Christ's mystical body, and 
 put into the order of eternal life. Now concerning this, it is 
 certain the Church clearly hath power to do her offices in 
 order to it. The faithful can pray for all men, they can do their 
 piety to some persons with more regard and greater earnest- 
 ness ; they can admit whom they please in their proper dis- 
 positions to a participation of all their holy prayers, and com- 
 munions, and preachings, and exhortations : and if all this be 
 a blessing, and all this be the actions of our own charity, who 
 can hinder the Church of God from admitting infants to the 
 communion of all their pious offices, which can do them 
 benefit in their present capacity ? How this does necessarily 
 infer baptism, I shall afterwards discoursed But, for the 
 present, I enumerate, that the blessings of baptism are com- 
 municable to them ; they may be admitted into a fellow- 
 ship of all the prayers and privileges of the Church, and the 
 communion of saints, in blessings, and prayers, and holy 
 offices. But that which is of greatest persuasion and con- 
 vincing efficacy in this particular is, that the children of the 
 Church are as capable of the same covenant as the children 
 of the Jews : but it was the same covenant that circumcision 
 did consign, a spiritual covenant under a veil, and now it is 
 the same spiritual covenant without the veil ; which is 
 evident to him that considers it, thus : 
 
 14. The words of the covenant are these : " I am the 
 almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect : I will 
 multiply thee exceedingly : thou shall be a father of many 
 nations : thy name shall not be Abram, but Abraham : 
 nations and kings shall be out of thee : I will be a God unto 
 thee, and unto thy seed after thee : and, I will give all the 
 land of Canaan to thy seed : and, all the males shall be 
 
 i Sect. xxv. &c.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 273 
 
 circumcised ; and it shall be a token of the covenant be- 
 tween me and thee: and, he that is not circumcised shall be 
 cut off from his people." 2 The covenant which was on 
 Abraham's part was, " To walk before God, and to be 
 perfect ;" on God's part, to bless him with a numerous issue, 
 and them with the land of Canaan : and the sign was cir- 
 cumcision, the token of the covenant. Now, in all this there 
 was no duty to which the posterity was obliged, nor any 
 blessing which Abraham could perceive or feel, because 
 neither he nor his posterity did enjoy the promise for many 
 hundred years after the covenant : and, therefore, as there 
 was the duty for the posterity, which is not here expressed ; 
 so there was a blessing for Abraham, which was concealed 
 under the leaves of a temporal promise, and which we shall 
 better understand from them, whom the Spirit of God hath 
 taught the mysteriousness of this transaction. The argu- 
 ment, indeed, and the observation, is wholly St. Paul's.* 
 Abraham and the patriarchs " died in faith, not having re- 
 ceived the promises," viz. of a possession in Canaan. " They 
 saw the promises afar off," they embraced them, and looked 
 through the cloud, and the temporal veil : this was not it : 
 they might have returned to Canaan, if that had been the 
 object of their desires, and the design of the promise : but 
 they desired and did seek a country ; but it was a better, 
 and that a heavenly. This was the object of their desire, 
 and the end of their search, and the reward of their faith, 
 and the secret of their promise. And therefore circumcision 
 was " a seal of the righteousness of faith which he had 
 before his circumcision, " b before the making this covenant; 
 and therefore it must principally relate to an effect and a 
 blessing greater than was afterwards expressed in the tem- 
 poral promise : which effect was " forgiveness of sins, a not 
 imputing to us our infirmities, justification by faith, account- 
 ing that for righteousness :" and these effects or graces were 
 promised to Abraham, not only for his posterity after the 
 flesh, but his children after the Spirit, even to all that shall 
 believe, and " walk in the steps of that faith of our father 
 Abraham which he walked in, being yet uncircumcised." 
 
 1 Gen. xvii. l,&c. Heb. xi. 13-16. 
 
 b Rom. iv. 3, c>, 7, 8, 11, 12. 
 
 VOL. II. Z
 
 274 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 15. This was no other but the covenant of the Gospel, 
 though afterwards otherwise consigned : for so the apostle 
 expressly affirms, that Abraham was the father of circum- 
 cision (viz. by virtue of this covenant), " not only to them 
 that are circumcised, but to all that believe: for this 
 promise was not through the law" of works, or of circum- 
 cision, " but of faith." And, therefore, as St. Paul observes, 
 God promised that Abraham should be a father, not of that 
 nation only, but " of many nations, and the heir of the 
 world ; that the blessing of Abraham might come on the 
 Gentiles through Jesus Christ, " d that we might receive the 
 promise of the Spirit through faith. " And if ye be Chris t's, 
 then ye are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the 
 promise." Since, then, the covenant of the Gospel is the 
 covenant of faith, and not of works; and the promises are 
 spiritual, not secular ; and Abraham, the father of the faith- 
 ful Gentiles as well as the circumcised Jews ; and the heir 
 of the world, not by himself, but by his seed, or the Son of 
 Man, our Lord Jesus : it follows, that the promises which 
 circumcision did seal, were the same promises which are 
 consigned in baptism ; the covenant is the same, only that 
 God's people are not impaled in Palestine, and the veil is 
 taken away, and the temporal is passed into spiritual ; and 
 the result will be this, " That to as many persons, and in as 
 many capacities, and in the same dispositions as the promises 
 were applied and did relate in circumcision, to the same they 
 do belong and may be applied in baptism." 6 And let it be 
 remembered, that the covenant which circumcision did sign, 
 was a covenant of grace and faith ; the promises were of the 
 Spirit, or spiritual ; it was made before the law, and could 
 not be rescinded by the legal covenant ; nothing could be 
 added to it, or taken from it ; and we that are partakers of 
 this grace, are therefore partakers of it by being Christ's 
 servants, united to Christ, and so are become Abraham's 
 seed, as the apostle at large and professedly proves in divers 
 places, but especially in the fourth to the Romans, and the 
 
 c Rom, iv. 11,13, 17. d Gal. iii. 14, 29. 
 
 e Oi ruirai t TU aftea jjVav, ri Jk aXriS-iia i ru \va,yyi\'ttu' \x.i7 ya.^ rt KlgiTOftri 
 eaoxixr, vorn^irrtffitffa. %t>ntf, la; rrii p.i'ydXys itt fire fir, f, Tauriffn TOU fia'Trifffta.ros 
 T9V iriai'rtpAvovros n/&&t a.'to aput^'rr,/^a.ruv, xttt fffy^tzyiffwras r,uii; tif oveft.it 0ai 
 Epiphan. lib. i. Httres. 8. soil. Epicureor.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 275 
 
 third to the Galatians. And, therefore, if infants were then 
 admitted to it, and consigned to it by a sacrament, which 
 they understood not any more than ours do, there is not any 
 reason why ours should not enter in at the ordinary gate and 
 door of grace as well as they. Their children were circum- 
 cised the eighth day, but were instructed afterwards, when 
 they could inquire what these things meant. Indeed their 
 proselytes were first taught, then circumcised ; so are ours 
 baptized : but their infants were consigned first ; and so 
 must ours. 
 
 16. Thirdly: In baptism we are born again; and this 
 infants need in the present circumstances, and for the same 
 great reason that men of age and reason do. For our natural 
 birth is either of itself insufficient, or is made so by the fall 
 of Adam and the consequent evils, that nature alone, or our 
 first birth, cannot bring us to heaven, which is a supernatural 
 end, that is, an end above all the power of our nature as now 
 it is. So that if nature cannot bring us to heaven, grace 
 must, or we can never get thither; if the first birth cannot, a 
 second must : but the second birth spoken of in Scripture is 
 baptism; " a man must be born of water and the Spirit." 
 And therefore baptism is faurobv craX/y/gvstf/as, " the laver of 
 a new birth. " f Either, then, infants cannot go to heaven any 
 way that we know of, or they must be baptized. To say 
 they are to be left to God, is an excuse, and no answer: for 
 when God hath opened the door, and calls that the " entrance 
 into heaven," we do not leave them to God, when we will not 
 carry them to him in the way which he hath described, and 
 at the door which himself hath opened : we leave them 
 indeed, but it is but helpless and destitute: and though God 
 is better than man, yet that is no warrant to us; what it will 
 be to the children, that we cannot warrant or conjecture. 
 And if it be objected, that to the new birth are required dis- 
 positions of our own, which are to be wrought by and in 
 them that have the use of reason : besides that this is wholly 
 against the analogy of a new birth, in which the person to be 
 born is wholly a passive, and hath put into him the principle, 
 that in time will produce its proper actions ; it is certain that 
 they that can receive the new birth are capable of it. The 
 
 ' Tit. iii. 5.
 
 276 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 effect of it is a possibility of being saved, and arriving to 
 a supernatural felicity. If infants can receive this effect, 
 then also the new birth, without which they cannot receive 
 the effect. And if they can receive salvation, the effect of 
 the new birth, what hinders them but they may receive that, 
 that is in order to that effect, and ordained only for it, and 
 which is nothing of itself, but in its institution and relation, 
 and which may be received by the same capacity, in which 
 one may be created, that is, a passivity, or a capacity obe- 
 diential ? 
 
 17. Fourthly: Concerning pardon of sins, which is one 
 great effect of baptism, it is certain that infants have not that 
 benefit, which men of sin and age may receive. He that 
 hath a sickly stomach drinks wine, and it not only refreshes 
 his spirits, but cures his stomach : he that drinks wine, and 
 hath not that disease, receives good by his wine, though it 
 does not minister to so many needs ; it refreshes, though it 
 does not cure him : and when oil is poured upon a man's 
 head, it does not always heal a wound, but sometimes makes 
 him a cheerful countenance, sometimes it consigns him to be 
 a king, or a priest. So it is in baptism: it does not heal 
 the wounds of actual sins, because they have not committed 
 them ; but it takes off the evil of original sin : whatsoever is 
 imputed to us by Adam's prevarication, is washed off by the 
 death of the second Adam, 8 into which we are baptized. 
 But concerning original sin, because there are so many 
 disputes which may intricate the question, I shall make use 
 only of that, which is confessed on both sides, and material 
 to our purpose. Death came upon all men by Adam's sin, 
 and the necessity of it remains upon us, as an evil consequent 
 of the disobedience. For though death is natural, yet it was 
 kept off from man by God's favour ; which, when he lost, 
 the banks were broken, and the water reverted to its natural 
 course, and our nature became a curse, and death a punish- 
 ment. Now, that this also relates to infants so far, is certain, 
 because they are sick, and die. This the Pelagians denied 
 not. h But to whomsoever this evil descended, for them 
 
 f Rom. v. 17, 18. 
 
 h Vide Aug. lib. iv. contra Duas Epistolas Pelag. c. 4. 1. 6. contra Jur. 
 cap. 4.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 277 
 
 also a remedy is provided by the second Adam ; " That as 
 in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive ;" 
 that is, at the day of judgment : then death shall be de- 
 stroyed. In the meantime, death hath a sting and a bitter- 
 ness, a curse it is, and an express of the Divine anger : and 
 if this sting be not taken away here, we shall have no parti- 
 cipation of the final victory over death. Either, therefore, 
 infants must be for ever without remedy in this evil conse- 
 quent of their father's sin, or they must be adopted into the 
 participation of Christ's death, which is the remedy. Now 
 how can they partake of Christ's death, but by baptism into 
 his death ? For if there be any spiritual way fancied, it will, 
 by a stronger argument, admit them to baptism : for if they 
 can receive spiritual effects, they can also receive the out- 
 ward sacrament ; this being denied only upon pretence they 
 cannot have the other. If there be no spiritual way extra- 
 ordinary, then the ordinary way is only left for them. If 
 there be an extraordinary, let it be shewn, and Christians 
 will be at rest concerning their children. One thing only I 
 desire to be observed, that Pelagius denied original sin, but 
 yet denied not the necessity of infants' baptism ; and being 
 accused of it in an epistle to Pope Innocent the First, he 
 purged himself of the suspicion, and allowed the practice, 
 but denied the inducement of it: which shews, that their 
 arts are weak that think baptism to be useless to infants, if 
 they be not formally guilty of the prevarication of Adam. 
 By which I also gather, that it was so universal, so primitive 
 a practice, to baptize infants, that it was greater than all 
 pretences to the contrary : for it would much have conduced 
 to the introducing his opinion against grace and original sin, 
 if he had destroyed that practice which seemed so very 
 much to have its greatest necessity from the doctrine he 
 denied. But against Pelagius, and against all that follow 
 the parts of his opinion, it is of good use which St. Austin, 
 Prosper, 1 and Fulgentius, argue ; it' infants are punished for 
 Adam's sin, then they are also guilty of it in some sense. 
 " Nimis enina impium est hoc de Dei sentire justitia, quod a 
 prsevaricatione liberos cum reis voluerit esse damnatos :" So 
 Prosper. " Dispendia quse flentes nascendo testantur, dicito 
 
 1 Prosper contra Collatorem, c. 20.
 
 278 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 quo merito sub justissimo et omnipotentissirao judice eis, si 
 nullum peccatum attrahant, arrogentur," said St. Austin. 
 For the guilt of it signifies nothing but the obligation to the 
 punishment ; and he that feels the evil consequent, to him 
 the sin is imputed ; not as to all the same dishonour, or 
 moral accounts, but to the more material, to the natural 
 account : and, in holy Scripture, the taking off the punish- 
 ment is the pardon of the sin ; and in the same degree the 
 punishment is abolished, in the same God is appeased, and 
 then the person stands upright, being reconciled to God by 
 his grace. Since, therefore, infants have the punishment of 
 gin, it is certain that sin is imputed to them ; and, therefore, 
 they need being reconciled to God by Christ : and if so, then 
 when they are baptized into Christ's death, and into his 
 resurrection, their sins are pardoned, because the punishment 
 is taken off, the sting of natural death is taken away, because 
 God's anger is removed, and they shall partake of Christ's 
 resurrection ; which because baptism does signify and con- 
 sign, they also are to be baptized. To which also add this 
 appendant consideration, that whatsoever the sacraments do 
 consign, that also they do convey and minister : they do it, 
 that is, God by them does it, lest we should think the 
 sacraments to be mere illusions, and abusing us by deceitful 
 ineffective signs: and, therefore, to infants the grace of a 
 title to a resurrection and reconciliation to God, by the 
 death of Christ, is conveyed, because it signifies and con- 
 signs this to them more to the life and analogy of resem- 
 blance, than circumcision to the infant sons of Israel. I end 
 this consideration with the words of Nazianzen: 'H ytwr,<sig ex. 
 /3oiKrigfj,aTOS vav airlt yiv'tfftus xdXvfAfAa vesiTefAvti, xai Kgbf rqv 
 avca ^ur,v fKavdytr " Our birth, by baptism, does cut off every 
 unclean appendage of our natural birth, and leads us to 
 a celestial life." k And this, in children, is, therefore, more 
 necessary, because the evil came upon them without their 
 own act of reason and choice, and, therefore, the grace and 
 remedy ought not to stay the leisure of dull nature, and the 
 formalities of the civil law. 
 
 18. Fifthly: The baptism of infants does to them the 
 greatest part of that benefit, which belongs to the remission 
 
 k Orat. 40. de Baptis.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 279 
 
 of sins: for baptism is a state of repentance and pardon for 
 ever. This I suppose to be already proved ; to which I only 
 add this caution, that the Pelagians, to undervalue the neces- 
 sity of supervening grace, affirmed, that baptism did minister 
 to us grace sufficient to live perfectly, and without sin for 
 ever. Against this St. Jerome sharply declaims, and affirms 
 " Baptismum praeterita donare peccata, non futuram servare 
 justitiam ;" 1 that is, " non statim justum facit et omni 
 plenum justitia," as he expounds his meaning in another 
 place. 111 " Vetera peccata conscindit, novas virtutes non 
 tribuit ; dimittit a carcere, et dimisso, si laboraverit, prae- 
 mia pollicetur." Baptism does not so forgive future sins, 
 that we may do what we please, or so as we need not labour, 
 and watch, and fear, perpetually, and make use of God's 
 grace to actuate our endeavours ; but puts us into a state of 
 pardon, that is, in a covenant of grace, in which so long as 
 we labour and repent, and strive to do our duty, so long our 
 infirmities are pitied, and our sins certain to be pardoned, 
 upon their certain conditions : that is, by virtue of it we are 
 capable of pardon, and must work for it, and may hope it. 
 And, therefore, infants have a most certain capacity and 
 proper disposition to baptism : for sin creeps before it can 
 go; and little indecencies are soon learned, and malice is 
 before their years, and they can do mischief and irregularities 
 betimes ; and though we know not when, nor how far, they are 
 imputed in every month of their lives, yet it is an admirable 
 art of the Spirit of grace, to put them into a state of pardon, 
 that their remedy may at least be as soon as their necessity : 
 and therefore Tertullian and Gregory Nazianzen advised the 
 baptism of children to be at three or four years of age ; 
 meaning, that they then begin to have little inadvertencies 
 and hasty follies, and actions so evil as did need a lavatory. 
 But if baptism hath an influence upon sins in the succeeding 
 portions of our life, then it is certain, that their being pre- 
 sently innocent does not hinder, and ought not to retard, the 
 sacrament : and therefore Tertullian's " Quid festinat in- 
 nocens aetas ad remissionem peccatorum ? n What need 
 innocents hasten to the remission of sins?" is soon answered. 
 It is true, they need not in respect of any actual sins ; for so 
 
 1 Lib. iii. adv. Pelag. m Lib. i. in initio. n Lib. de Baptis. c. 18.
 
 280 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 they are innocent : but in respect of the evils of their nature 
 derived from their original, and in respect of future sins in 
 the whole state of their life, it is necessary they be put into a 
 state of pardon before they sin ; because some sin early, some 
 sin later; and, therefore, unless they be baptized so early 
 as to prevent the first sins, they may chance die in a sin, 
 to the pardon of which they have yet derived no title from 
 Christ. 
 
 19. Sixthly : The next great effect of baptism which 
 children can have, is the spirit of sanctification ; and if they 
 can be " baptized with water and the Spirit," it will be sacri- 
 lege to rob them of so holy treasures. And concerning this, 
 although it be with them as St. Paul says of heirs, " The 
 heir, so long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, 
 though he be lord of all;" and children, although they re- 
 ceive the spirit of promise, and the spirit of grace, yet in 
 respect of actual exercise they differ not from them that have 
 them not at all : yet this hinders not, but they may have 
 them. For as the reasonable soul and all its faculties are in 
 children, will, and understanding, passions, and powers of 
 attraction and propulsion ; yet these faculties do not operate 
 or come abroad, till time and art, observation and experience, 
 have drawn them forth into action : so may the Spirit of 
 grace, the principle of Christian life, be infused, and yet lie 
 without action till, in its own day, it is drawn forth. For in 
 every Christian there are three parts concurring to his inte- 
 gral constitution, body, and soul, and spirit ; and all these 
 have their proper activities and times ; but " every one in his 
 own order, first that which is natural, then that which is 
 spiritual." And what Aristotle said, " A man first lives the 
 life of a plant, then of a beast, and lastly of a man," is true 
 in this sense : and the more spiritual the principle is, the 
 longer it is before it operates, because more things concur to 
 spiritual actions than to natural ; and these are necessary, 
 and therefore first ; the other are perfect, and therefore last. 
 And who is he that so well understands the philosophy of 
 this third principle of a Christian's life, the spirit, as to know 
 how or when it is infused, and how it operates in all its 
 periods, and what it is in its being and proper nature ; and 
 whether it be like the soul, or like the faculty, or like a 
 habit ; or how or to what purposes, God, in all varieties, does
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 281 
 
 dispense it ? These are secrets, which none but bold people 
 use to decree, and build propositions upon their own dreams. 
 That which is certain is, That the Spirit is the principle of a 
 new life, or a new birth : That baptism is the laver of this 
 new birth : That it is the seed of God, and may lie long in 
 the furrows before it springs up : That from the faculty to 
 the act, the passage is not always sudden and quick : That 
 the Spirit is " the earnest of our inheritance," that is, of re- 
 surrection to eternal life : which inheritance, because children 
 we hope shall have, they cannot be denied to have its seal 
 and earnest ; that is, if they shall have all, they are not to be 
 denied a part. That children have some effects of the Spirit, 
 and therefore do receive it, and are " baptized with the 
 Spirit," and therefore may with water : which thing is there- 
 fore true and evident, because some children are sanctified, 
 as Jeremiah and the Baptist, and therefore all may. And 
 because all sanctification of persons is an effect of the 
 Holy Ghost, there is no peradventure but they, that can 
 be sanctified by God, can, in that capacity, receive the Holy 
 Ghost. And all the ground of dissenting here, is only upon 
 a mistake ; because infants do no act of holiness, they sup- 
 pose them incapable of the grace of sanctification. Now, 
 sanctification of children is their adoption to the inheritance 
 of sons, their presentation to Christ, their consignation to 
 Christ's service and to resurrection, their being put into a 
 possibility of being saved, their restitution to God's favour, 
 which naturally, that is, as our nature is depraved and 
 punished, they could not have. And, in short, the case is 
 this. Original righteousness was in Adam after the manner 
 of nature, but it was an act or effect of grace ; and by it men 
 were not made, but born righteous. The inferior faculties 
 obeyed the superior, the mind was whole and right, and con- 
 formable to the Divine image, the reason and the will always 
 concurring, the will followed reason, and reason followed the 
 laws of God; and so long as a man had not lost this, he 
 was pleasing to God, and should have passed to a more 
 perfect state. Now because this, if Adam had stood, should 
 
 Tfiv avSgaiirt/av ifuffiv aj^SSsv * TUV Qtiuv ctytt^ui dveYiTus i%aXifSfifct?ar n 
 vro\uVK-ffrtiri) T^uri ^la^i^irai, KOI <rov <fSt>ovt>n>v Savcirov iri^a.}. Dionys. Areop. 
 Eccles. Ilier. c. 3. par. 3.
 
 282 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 have been born with every child, there was in infants a prin- 
 ciple, which was the seed of holy life here, and a blessed 
 hereafter ; and yet the children should have gone in the road 
 of nature then as well as now, and the Spirit should have 
 operated at nature's leisure; God, being the giver of both, 
 would have made them instrumental to, and perfective of, each 
 other, but not destructive. Now what was lost by Adam,? is 
 restored by Christ ; the same righteousness, only it is not 
 born, but superinduced ; not integral, but interrupted ; but 
 such as it is, there is no difference, but that the same or the 
 like principle may be derived to us from Christ, as there 
 should have been from Adam, that is, a principle of obe- 
 dience, a regularity of faculties, a beauty in the soul, and a 
 state of acceptation with God. And we see also in men of 
 understanding and reason, " the Spirit of God dwells in 
 them," which Tatianus describing, uses these words : jj 8s 
 ^u^sr) ug-TTio mwtflM rqg 8vva,/J,euz avrov [o-vsu/xaros] x.sxrji/a,f?j, " The 
 soul is possessed with sparks, or materials, of the power of 
 the Spirit ;" and yet it is sometimes ineffective and unactive, 
 sometimes more, sometimes less, and does no more do its 
 work at all times, than the soul does at all times understand. 
 Add to this, that if there be in infants naturally an evil prin- 
 ciple, a proclivity to sin, an ignorance and pravity of mind, a 
 disorder of affections, (as experience teaches us there is, 
 and the perpetual doctrine of the Church, and the universal 
 mischiefs issuing from mankind, and the sin of every man, 
 does witness too much,) why cannot infants have a good 
 principle in them, though it works not till its own season, as 
 well as an evil principle? If there were not, by nature, some 
 evil principle, it is not possible that all the world should 
 choose sin. In free agents it was never heard, that all indi- 
 viduals loved and chose the same thing, to which they were 
 not naturally inclined. Neither do all men choose to marry, 
 neither do all choose to abstain ; and in this instance there 
 is a natural inclination to one part. But of all the men 
 and women in the world, there is no one that hath never 
 sinned : " If we say that we have no sin, we deceive our- 
 
 P Ut quod perdideramus in Adam, i. e. secundum imaginem et similitudinem 
 esse Dei, hoc in Jesn Christo reciperemus. Irentfus, lib. iii. c. 30.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 283 
 
 selves, and the truth is not in us," q said an apostle. If, 
 therefore, nature hath in infants an evil principle, which ope- 
 rates when the child can choose, but is all the while within 
 the soul ; either infants have by grace a principle put into 
 them, or else " sin abounds, where grace does not super- 
 abound," expressly against the doctrine of the apostle. The 
 event of this discourse is, That if infants be capable of the 
 Spirit of grace, there is no reason but they may and ought to 
 be baptized, as well as men and women ; unless God had 
 expressly forbidden them, which cannot be pretended : and 
 that infants are capable of the Spirit of grace, I think is made 
 very credible. " Christus infantibus infans factus, sanctificans 
 infantes," said Irenseus ; " Christ became an infant among the 
 infants, and does sanctify infants :" r and St. Cyprian affirms, 
 " Esse apud omnes, sive infantes sive majores natu, unam 
 divini muneris sequitatem : There is the same dispensation of 
 the Divine grace to all alike, to infants as well as to men." 
 And in this royal priesthood, as it is in the secular, kings 
 may be anointed in their cradles. " Dat (Deus) sui Spiritus 
 occultissimam gratiam, quam etiam latenter infundit in par- 
 vulis : s God gives the most secret grace of his Spirit, which he 
 also secretly infuses into infants." And if a secret infusion be 
 rejected, because it cannot be proved at the place and at the 
 instant, many men that hope for heaven will be very much 
 to seek for a proof of their earnest, and need an earnest of 
 the earnest. For all that have the Spirit of God cannot in 
 all instants prove it, or certainly know it : neither is it de- 
 fined, by how many indices the Spirit's presence can be 
 proved or signified. And they limit the Spirit too much, and 
 understand it too little, who take accounts of his secret 
 workings, and measure them by the material lines and 
 methods of natural and animal effects. And yet, because 
 whatsoever is holy, is made so by the Holy Spirit, we are 
 certain that the children of believing, that is, of Christian 
 parents, are holy. St. Paul affirmed it, and by it hath dis- 
 tinguished ours from the children of unbelievers, and our 
 marriages from theirs. And because the children of the 
 heathen, when they come to choice and reason, may enter 
 
 i \ John, i. 8. Ep. ad Fiden.lih. iii. ep. 8. 
 
 S. Aug. lib. de Pec. Mer. et Remiss, c. 9.
 
 284 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 into baptism and the covenant, if they will ; our children have 
 no privilege beyond the children of Turks or heathens, unless 
 it be in the present capacity, that is, either by receiving the 
 Holy Ghost immediately, and the promises, or at least having 
 a title to the sacrament, and entering by that door. If they 
 have the Spirit, nothing can hinder them from a title to the 
 water ; and if they have only a title to the water of the sacra- 
 ment, then they shall receive the promise of the Holy Spirit, 
 the benefits of the sacrament : else their privilege is none at 
 all, but a dish of cold water, which every village-nurse can 
 provide for her new-born babe. 
 
 20. But it is in our case as it was with the Jews' children : 
 our children are a holy seed ; for if it were not so with 
 Christianity, how could St. Peter move the Jews to Christ- 
 ianity, by telling them " the promise was to them and their 
 children ?" For if our children be not capable of the Spirit 
 of promise and holiness, and yet their children were holy, it 
 had been a better argument to have kept them in the syna- 
 gogue, than to have called them to the Christian Church. 
 Either, therefore, 1. There is some holiness in a reasonable 
 nature, which is not from the Spirit of holiness ; or else, 
 2. our children do receive the Holy Spirit, because they are 
 holy ; or if they be not holy, they are in a worse condition 
 under Christ than under Moses ; or if none of all this be 
 true, then our children are holy by having received the Holy 
 Spirit of promise ; and, consequently, nothing can hinder 
 them from being baptized. 
 
 21. And, indeed, if the Christian Jews, whose children 
 are circumcised, and made partakers of the same promises, 
 and title, and inheritance, and sacraments, which themselves 
 had at their conversion to the faith of Christ, had seen their 
 children now shut out from these new sacraments, it is not to 
 be doubted, but they would have raised a storm greater than 
 could easily have been suppressed, since about their circum- 
 cisions they had raised such tragedies and implacable dispu- 
 tations. And there had been great reason to look for a 
 storm ; for their children were circumcised, and if not bap- 
 tized, then they were left under a burden, which their fathers 
 were quit of: for St. Paul said, " Whosoever is circumcised, 
 is a debtor to keep the whole law." These children, there- 
 fore, that were circumcised, stood obliged, for want of bap-
 
 OK BAPTIZING INFANTS. 285 
 
 tism, to perform the law of ceremonies, to be presented into 
 the temple, to pay their price, to be redeemed with silver and 
 gold, to be hound by the law of pollutions and carnal ordi- 
 nances ; and therefore, if they had been thus left, it would be 
 no wonder if the Jews had complained and made a tumult: 
 they used to do it for less matters. 
 
 22. To which let this be added : That the first book of 
 the New Testament was not written till eight years after 
 Christ's ascension, and St. Mark's Gospel twelve years. In 
 the meantime, to what Scriptures did they appeal ? By the 
 analogy or proportion of what writings did they end their 
 questions ? Whence did they prove their articles ? They 
 only appealed to the Old Testament, and only added what 
 their Lord superadded. Now either it must be said, that our 
 blessed Lord commanded that infants should not be baptized, 
 which is nowhere pretended ; and if it were, cannot at all be 
 proved : or, if by the proportion of Scriptures they did serve 
 God, and preach the religion, it is plain that by the analogy 
 of the Old Testament, that is, of those Scriptures by which 
 they proved Christ to be corne and to have suffered, they 
 also approved the baptism of infants, or the admitting them 
 to the society of the faithful Jews, of which also the Church 
 did then principally consist. 
 
 23. Seventhly: That baptism, which consigns men and 
 women to a blessed resurrection, doth also equally consign 
 infants to it, hath nothing, that I know of, pretended against 
 it ; there being the same signature and the same grace, and 
 in this thing all being alike passive, and we no way co- 
 operating to the consignation and promise of grace. And 
 infants have an equal necessity, as being liable to sickness 
 and groaning with as sad accents, and dying sooner than 
 men and women, and less able to complain, and more apt to 
 be pitied, and broken with the unhappy consequents of a 
 short life and a speedy death, " et infelicitate priscorurn 
 hominum," with the infelicity and folly of their first parents; 
 and therefore have as great need as any : and that is capacity 
 enough to receive a remedy for the evil, which was brought 
 upon them by the fault of another. 
 
 24. Eighthly : And after all this, if baptism be that 
 means which God hath appointed to save us, it were well if 
 we would do our parts towards infants' final interest : which,
 
 286 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 whether it depends upon the sacrament and its proper grace, 
 we have nothing to rely upon but those texts of Scripture 
 which make baptism the ordinary way of entering into the 
 state of salvation : save only we are to add to this, that because 
 of this law, since infants are not personally capable, but the 
 Church for them, as for all others indefinitely, we have reason 
 to believe, that their friends' neglect shall by some way be 
 supplied ; but hope hath in it nothing beyond a probability. 
 This we may be certain of, that naturally we cannot be heirs 
 of salvation, for " by nature we are children of wrath ;" and 
 therefore an eternal separation from God is an infallible con- 
 sequent to our evil nature : either, therefore, children must 
 be put into the state of grace, or they shall dwell for ever 
 where God's face does never shine. Now there are but two 
 ways of being put into the state of grace and salvation ; the 
 inward by the Spirit, and the outward by water ; which regu- 
 larly are together. If they be renewed by the Spirit, " what 
 hinders them to be baptized, who receive the Holy Ghost as 
 well as we?" If they are not capable of the Spirit, they are 
 capable of water ; and if of neither, where is their title to 
 heaven, 1 which is neither internal nor external, neither spi- 
 ritual nor sacramental, neither secret nor manifest, neither 
 natural nor gracious, neither original nor derivative ? And 
 well may we lament the death of poor babes, that are a/3a<rro/, 
 concerning whom, if we neglect what is regularly prescribed 
 to all that enter heaven, without any difference expressed or 
 case reserved, we have no reason to be comforted over our 
 dead children, but may " weep as they that have no hope." 
 We may hope when our neglect was not the hinderance, 
 because God hath wholly taken the matter into his own 
 hand, and then it cannot miscarry ; and though we know 
 nothing of the children, yet we know much of God's good- 
 ness : but when God hath permitted it to us, that is, offered 
 and permitted children to our ministry, whatever happens to 
 the innocents, we may well fear, lest God will require the 
 souls at our hands : and we cannot be otherwise secure, but 
 that it will be said concerning our children, which St. Am- 
 brose used in a case like this : " Anima ilia potuit salva fieri, 
 
 ' Nisi quis renatus fuerit, &c. Utique nullum excipit, non infantem, non 
 aliqua prajventum necessitate. Ambr. deAbrah. Patr. lib. ii. c. 11.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 287 
 
 si habuisset purgationem : u This soul might have gone to 
 God, if it had been purified and washed." We know God is 
 good, infinitely good ; but we know it is not at all good to 
 tempt his goodness : and he tempts him that leaves the usual 
 way, and pretends it is not made for him, and yet hopes to 
 be at his journey's end, or expects to meet his child in 
 heaven, when himself shuts the door against him, which, for 
 aught he knows, is the only one that stands open. St. Austin 
 was severe in this question against unbaptized infants : there- 
 fore he is called " durus pater infantum ;" though I know 
 not why the original of that opinion should be attributed to 
 him, since St. Ambrose said the same before him, as appears 
 in his words before quoted. 
 
 25. And now that I have enumerated the blessings, which 
 are consequent to baptism, and have also made apparent, 
 that infants can receive these blessings, I suppose I need not 
 use any other persuasions to bring children to baptism. If 
 it be certain they may receive these good things by it, it is 
 certain they are not to be hindered of them, without the 
 greatest impiety, and sacrilege, and uncharitableness in the 
 world. Nay, if it be only probable that they receive these 
 blessings, or if it be but possible they may, nay, unless it be 
 impossible they should, and so declared by revelation or de- 
 monstratively certain ; it were intolerable unkindness and 
 injustice to our pretty innocents, to let their crying be un- 
 pitied, and their natural misery eternally irremediable, and 
 their sorrows without remedy, and their souls no more ca- 
 pable of relief than their bodies of physic, and their death 
 left with the sting in, and their souls without spirits to go to 
 God, and no angel-guardian to be assigned them in the 
 assemblies of the faithful, and they not to be reckoned in 
 the accounts of God and God's Church. All these are sad 
 stories. 
 
 26. There are in Scripture very many other probabilities, 
 to persuade the baptism of infants ; but because the places 
 admit of divers interpretations, the arguments have so many 
 diminutions, and the certainty that is in them, is too fine for 
 easy understandings, I have chosen to build the ancient doc- 
 trines upon such principles, which are more easy and certain, 
 
 u Lib. ii. c. ll.de Abrah. Patriarc.
 
 288 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 and have not been yet sullied and rifled with the contentions 
 of an adversary. This only I shall observe, That the words 
 of our blessed Lord, " Unless a man be born of water and the 
 Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven," cannot 
 be expounded to the exclusion of children, but the same ex- 
 positions will also make baptism not necessary for men : for 
 if they be botli necessary ingredients, water and the Spirit, 
 then let us provide water, and God will provide the Spirit; if 
 we bring wood to the sacrifice, he will provide a lamb. And 
 if they signify distinctly, one is ordinarily as necessary as the 
 other ; and then infants must be baptized, or not be saved. 
 But if one be exegetical and explicative of the other, and by 
 *' water and the Spirit" is meant only the purification of the 
 Spirit, then where is the necessity of baptism for men ? It 
 will be, as the other sacrament, at most but highly conve- 
 nient, not simply necessary ; and all the other places will 
 easily be answered, if this be avoided. But, however, these 
 words being spoken in so decretory a manner, are to be used 
 with fear and reverence ; and we must be infallibly sure, by 
 some certain infallible arguments, that infants ought not to 
 be baptized, or we ought to fear concerning the effect of 
 these decretory words. I shall only add two things, by way 
 of corollary to this discourse. 
 
 27. That the Church of God, ever since her numbers were 
 full, hath, for very many ages, consisted almost wholly of 
 assemblies of them who have been baptized in their infancy : 
 and although, in the first callings of the Gentiles, the chiefest 
 and most frequent baptisms were of converted and repenting 
 persons and believers ; yet, from the beginning also, the 
 Church hath haptized the infants of Christian parents ; ac- 
 cording to the prophecy of Isaiah : "Behold I will lift up 
 my hands to the Gentiles, and set up a standard to the 
 people ; and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy 
 daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders."" Con- 
 cerning which I shall not only bring the testimonies of the 
 matter of fact, but either a report ot an apostolical tradition, 
 or some argument from the fathers, which will make their 
 testimony more effectual in all that shall relate to the 
 question. 
 
 * Isa. ilix. 22.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 289 
 
 28. The author of the book of ecclesiastical hierarchy, 
 attributed to St. Denis the Areopagite, takes notice, that 
 certain unholy persons and enemies to the Christian religion 
 think it a ridiculous thing that infants, who as yet cannot 
 understand the Divine mysteries, should be partakers of the 
 sacraments ; and that professions and abrenunciations should 
 be made by others for them and in their names. He answers, 
 that "Holy men, governors of churches, have so taught, 
 having received a tradition from their fathers and elders in 
 Christ." By which answer of his, as it appears that he him- 
 self was later than the Areopagite ; so it is so early by him 
 affirmed, that even then there was an ancient tradition for 
 the baptism of infants, and the use of godfathers in the 
 ministry of the sacrament. Concerning which, it having been 
 so ancient a constitution of the Church, it were well if men 
 would rather humbly and modestly observe, than, like scorners, 
 deride it ; in which they shew their own folly, as well as im- 
 modesty. For what indecency or incongruity is it, that our 
 parents, natural or spiritual, should stipulate for us, when it 
 is agreeable to the practice of all the laws and transactions of 
 the world, an effect of the communion of saints, and of 
 Christian economy ? For why may not infants be stipulated 
 for as well as we? All were included in the stipulation 
 made with Adam ; he made a losing bargain for himself, and 
 we smarted for his folly : and if the faults of parents, and 
 kings, and relatives, do bring evil upon their children, and 
 subjects, and correlatives, it is but equal that our children 
 may have benefit also by our charity and piety. But con- 
 cerning making an agreement for them, we find that God 
 was confident concerning Abraham, that " he would teach 
 his children :" and there is no doubt but parents have great 
 power, by strict education and prudent discipline, to efforrn 
 the minds of their children to virtue. Joshua did expressly 
 undertake for his household : "I and my house will serve 
 the Lord." And for children we may better do it, because, 
 till they are of perfect choice, no government in the world is 
 so great as that of parents over their children, in that which 
 can concern the parts of this question; for they rule over 
 their understandings, and children know nothing but what 
 they are told, and they believe it infinitely. And it is a rare 
 art of the Spirit, to engage parents to bring them up well, 
 
 VOL. II. A A
 
 290 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 " in the nurture and admonition of the Lord ; " and they are 
 persons obliged by a superinduced band ; they are to give 
 them instructions and holy principles, as they give them 
 meat. And it is certain, that parents may better stipulate 
 for their children, than the Church can for men and women : 
 for they may be present impostors and hypocrites, as the 
 church-story tells of some, and consequently are Taga/Sa-r- 
 r/Vra/, not really converted, and ineffectively baptized ; and, 
 the next day, they may change their resolution, and grow 
 weary of their vow. And that is the most that children can 
 do, when they come to age : and it is very much in the 
 parents, whether the children shall do any such thing or no. 
 
 purus et iusons 
 
 (Ut me collaudem), si vivo et charus amicis, 
 
 Causa fuit Pater his 
 
 Ipse mihi custos incorruptissinms omnes 
 Circum doctores aderat. Quid ruulta 1 pudicum 
 (Qui primus virtutis honos) servavit ab omni 
 Non solum facto, verum opprobrio quoque turpi : 
 
 ob hoc mine 
 
 Laus illi debetur, et a me gratia major. I 
 
 For education can introduce a habit and a second nature, 
 against which children cannot kick, unless they do some 
 violence to themselves and their inclinations. And although 
 it fails too often whenever it fails, yet we pronounce prudently 
 concerning future things, when we have a less influence into 
 the event than in the present case (and therefore are more 
 unapt persons to stipulate), and less reason in the thing itself, 
 (and therefore have not so much reason to be confident.) Is 
 not the greatest prudence of generals instanced in their fore- 
 seeing future events, and guessing at the designs of their 
 enemies ? concerning which they have less reason to be con- 
 fident, than parents of their children's belief of the Christian 
 creed. To which I add this consideration ; That parents or 
 godfathers may therefore safely and prudently promise, that 
 their children shall be of the Christian faith ; because we not 
 only see millions of men and women, who not only believe 
 the whole creed only upon the stock of their education, but 
 there are none that ever do renounce the faith of their 
 
 J Horat. lib. i. Sat. 6.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 291 
 
 country and breeding, unless they be violently tempted by 
 interest or weakness, antecedent or consequent. He that 
 sees all men almost to be Christians, because they are bid to 
 be so, need not question the fittingness of godfathers pro- 
 mising in behalf of the children, for whom they answer. 
 
 29. And however the matter be for godfathers, yet the 
 tradition of baptizing infants passed through the hands of 
 Irenaeus : " Omnem aetatem sanctificans per illain quae ad 
 ipsam erat similitudinem. Omnes enim venit per semetipsum 
 salvare, omnes, inquam, qui per eum renascuntur in Deum, 
 infantes, et parvulos, et pueros, et juvenes, et seniores. Ideo 
 per omnem venit aetatem, et infantibus infans factus, sanctifi- 
 cans infantes ; in parvulis parvulus," z &c. " Christ did sanc- 
 tify every age by his own susception of it, and similitude 
 to it. For he came to save all men by himself; I say, all 
 who by him are born again unto God, infants, and children, 
 and boys, and young men, and old men. He was made an 
 infant to infants, sanctifying infants ; a little one to the little 
 ones, Sec" And Origen is express : " Ecclesia traditionem ab 
 apostolis suscepitetiam parvulis dare baptismum; The Church 
 hath received a tradition from the apostles, to give baptism 
 to children." And St. Cyprian, in his epistle to Fidus, gives 
 account of this article : for being questioned by some less 
 skilful persons, whether it were lawful to baptize children 
 before the eighth day, he gives account of the whole ques- 
 tion : and a whole council of sixty-six bishops, upon very 
 good reason, decreed, that their baptism should at no hand 
 be deferred ; though whether six, or eight, or ten days, was 
 no matter, so there be no danger or present necessity. The 
 whole epistle is worth the reading. 
 
 30. But besides these authorities of such who writ before 
 the starting of the Pelagian questions, it will not be useless 
 to bring the discourses of them and others, I mean the 
 reason upon which the Church did it both before and after. 
 
 31. Irenasus's argument was this : a Christ took upon him 
 our nature, to sanctify and to save it ; and passed through 
 the several periods of it, even unto death, which is the symbol 
 
 1 Lib. ii. c. 59. Vide etiam Constitut. dementis. "Batrri^frt Si !>/JM* xal 
 ix-To'itfiir! aura, li reti^iiti xcci tav&lffitf $iau. Lib. V. ad Rom. C. 6. Idem Horn. 14. 
 in Lucam, et lib. 8. Horn. 8. in Levitic. 
 
 * Irenaeus.
 
 292 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 and effect of old age ; and therefore it is certain he did 
 sanctify all the periods of it : and why should he be an 
 infant, but that infants should receive the crown of their 
 age, the purification of their stained nature, the sanctification 
 of their persons, and the. saving of their souls by their infant 
 Lord and elder Brother? 
 
 32. " Omnis enim anima eousque in Adam censetur, donee 
 in Christo recenseatur ; tamdiu imuiunda, quamdiu recensea- 
 tur:" b Every soul is accounted in Adam, till it be new ac- 
 counted in Christ ; and so long as it is accounted in Adam, 
 so long it is unclean ; and we know, " no unclean thing can 
 enter into heaven : " and therefore our Lord hath defined it, 
 " Unless ye be born of water and the Spirit, ye cannot enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven ;" that is, ye cannot be holy. It 
 was the argument of Tertullian ; c which the rather is to be 
 received, because he was one less favourable to the custom of 
 the Church in his time, of baptizing infants, which custom he 
 noted and acknowledged, and hath also, in the preceding 
 discourse, fairly proved. And indeed, (that St. Cyprian d may 
 superadd his symbol,) " God, who is no accepter of persons, 
 will also be no accepter of ages. For if to the greatest de- 
 linquents, sinning long before against God, remission of sins 
 be given, when afterwards they believe, and from baptism and 
 from grace no man is forbidden ; how much more ought not 
 an infant be forbidden, who, being new born, hath sinned 
 nothing, save only that being in the flesh, born of Adam, in 
 his first birth he hath contracted the contagion of an old 
 death ? who therefore comes the easier to obtain remission of 
 sins, because to him are forgiven not his own, but the sins of 
 another man. None ought to be driven from baptism and the 
 grace of God, who is merciful, and gentle, and pious unto all; 
 and therefore much less infants, who more deserve our aid, 
 and more need the Divine mercy, because, in the first begin- 
 ning of their birth, crying and weeping, they can do nothing 
 but call for mercy and relief." " For this reason it was," 
 saith Origen, 6 " that they to whom the secrets of the Divine 
 mysteries were committed, did baptize their infants, because 
 there was born with them the impurities of sin," which did 
 
 b Tertullian. c Lib. de Anima, c. 39 et 42. 
 
 d S. Cyprian, ep. ad Fidum. e Origen, lib. v. ad Rom. c. 6.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 293 
 
 need material ablution, as a sacrament of spiritual purification. 
 For that it may appear that our sins have a proper analogy 
 to this sacrament, the body itself is called " the body of sin ; " 
 and therefore the washing of the body is not ineffectual to- 
 wards the great work of pardon and abolition. Indeed, after 
 this ablution there remains concupiscence, or the material 
 part of our misery and sin : for Christ, by his death, only 
 took away that which, when he did die for us, he bare in his 
 own body upon the tree. Now Christ only bare the punish- 
 ment of our sin, and therefore we shall not die for it : but the 
 material part of the sin Christ bare not ; sin could not come 
 so near him ; it might make him sick and die, but not disor- 
 dered and stained. He was pure from original and actual 
 sins; and therefore that remains in the body, though the 
 guilt and punishment be taken off, and changed into advan- 
 tages and grace ; and the actual are relieved by the Spirit of 
 grace descending afterwards upon the Church, and sent by 
 our Lord to the same purpose. 
 
 33. But it is not rationally to be answered what St. Am- 
 brose says/ " Quia omnis peccato obnoxia, ideo omnis aetas 
 sacramento idonea : " for it were strange that sin and misery 
 should seize upon the innocent and most unconsenting per- 
 sons ; and that they only should be left without a sacrament 
 and an instrument of expiation. And although they cannot 
 consent to the present susception, yet neither do they refuse ; 
 and yet they consent as much to the grace of the sacrament 
 as to the prevarication of Adam ; and because they suffer 
 under this, it were but reason they should be relieved by that. 
 And " it were better," as Gregory Nazianzen affirms, 8 " that 
 they should be consigned and sanctified without their own 
 knowledge, than to die without their being sanctified ; " for 
 so it happened to the circumcised babes of Israel : and if the 
 conspersion and washing the door-posts with the blood of a 
 lamb did sacramentally preserve all the first-born of Goshen, 
 it cannot be thought impossible or unreasonable, that the 
 want of understanding in children should hinder them from 
 the blessing of a sacrament, and from being redeemed and 
 
 f S. Ambros. de Abraham. Patriar. lib. ii. c. 11. 
 
 8 Greg. Naz. Kgi7<rffoy ya,(> KtaiffiSriTUS KyiKfffavai, % KtflXdlTy a.ff^^a.yifTO. KKI 
 iffra. Oral. xl. in S. Bapt.
 
 294- OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 washed with the blood of the Holy Lamb, " who was slain 
 for all from the beginning of the world." 
 
 34. After all this, it is not inconsiderable that we say the 
 Church hath great power and authority about the sacraments ; 
 which is observable in many instances. She appointed what 
 persons she pleased, and in equal power made an unequal 
 dispensation and ministry. The apostles first dispensed all 
 things, and then they left off exterior ministries to attend to 
 " the word of God and prayer:" and St. Paul accounted it 
 no part of his office to baptize, when he had been separated 
 by imposition of hands at Antioch to the work of preaching 
 and greater ministries ; and accounted that act of the Church 
 the act of Christ, saying, " Christ sent me not to baptize, but 
 to preach the Gospel." They used various forms in the mi- 
 nistration of baptism : sometimes baptizing " in the name of 
 Christ," sometimes expressly invocating the holy and ever- 
 blessed Trinity ; one while, " I baptise thee,"as in the Latin 
 Church, but in the Greek, " Let the servant of Christ be 
 baptised." And in all ecclesiastical ministries, the Church 
 invented the forms, and in most things hath often changed 
 them, as in absolution, excommunication. And sometimes 
 they baptized people under their profession of repentance, 
 and then taught them ; as it happened to the gaoler and all 
 his family ; in whose case there was no explicit faith afore- 
 hand in the mysteries of religion, so far as appears ; and yet 
 he, and not only he, but all his house, were baptized at that 
 hour of the night when the earthquake was terrible, and the 
 fear was pregnant upon them ; and this upon their master's 
 account, as it is likely : but others were baptized in the con- 
 ditions of a previous faith, and a new-begun repentance.* 1 
 They baptized in rivers or in lavatories, by dipping or by 
 sprinkling : for so we find that St. Laurence did, as he went 
 to martyrdom; and so the Church did sometimes to clinics ; 
 and so it is highly convenient to be done in northern countries ; 
 according to the prophecy of Isaiah, 1 " So shall he sprinkle 
 many nations," according as the typical expiations among 
 the Jews were usually by sprinkling. And it is fairly relative 
 to the mystery, to the " sprinkling with the blood of Christ," k 
 
 k Non ut delinquere desinant, sed quia desierunt, as Tertul. phraseth it. 
 ' Isaiah, lii. 15. k 1 Peter, i. 2.
 
 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 295 
 
 and the watering of the furrows of our souls with the dew of 
 heaven, to make them to bring forth fruit unto the Spirit and 
 unto holiness. 1 The Church sometimes dipped the catechumen 
 three times, sometimes but once. m Some churches use fire 
 in their baptisms ; so do the Ethiopians ; and the custom was 
 ancient in some places. And so in the other sacrament : 
 sometimes they stood, and sometimes kneeled ; and some- 
 times received it in the mouth, and sometimes in the hand ; 
 one while in leavened, another while in unleavened bread ; 
 sometimes the wine and water were mingled, sometimes they 
 were pure ; and they admitted some persons to it sometimes, 
 which at other times they rejected : sometimes the consecra- 
 tion was made by one form, sometimes by another : and, to 
 conclude, sometimes it was given to infants, sometimes not. 
 And she had power so to do ; for in all things, where there 
 was not a commandment of Christ expressed or implied in 
 the nature and in the end of the institution, the Church had 
 power to alter the particulars as was most expedient, or con- 
 ducing to edification. And although the after-ages of the 
 Church, which refused to communicate infants, have found 
 some little things against the lawfulness, and those ages that 
 used it found out some pretences for its necessity ; yet both 
 the one and the other had liberty to follow their own neces- 
 sities, so in all things they followed Christ. Certainly there 
 is infinitely more reason why infants may be communicated, 
 than why they may not be baptized. And, that this discourse 
 may revert to its first intention, although there is no record 
 extant of any church in the world, which, from the apostles' 
 days inclusively to this very day, ever refused to baptise their 
 children ; yet if they had upon any present reason, they might 
 also change their practice, when the reason should be changed ; 
 and therefore, if there were nothing else in it, yet the universal 
 practice of all churches, in all ages, is abundantly sufficient to 
 determine us, and to legitimate the practice, since Christ hath 
 not forbidden it. It is a sufficient confutation to disagreeing 
 people to use the words of St. Paul, " We have no such 
 
 1 Aqua refectionis, et baptismi lavacrum, quo anima sterilis ariditate pec- 
 cati ad bonos fructus inferendos divinis muneribus irrigatur. Cassiodor. m. 
 xxiii. ps. 2. 
 
 m "Eviu TO. urtt rui ftyoa.'ytfctftiiuv xanirvf&rit/itvro, dixit Heracleon apud Clem. 
 Alex.
 
 296 OF BAPTIZING INFANTS. 
 
 custom, nor the churches of God," to suffer children to be 
 strangers from the covenant of promise, till they shall enter 
 into it as Jews or Turks may enter ; that is, by choice and 
 disputation. But although this alone, to modest and obe- 
 dient, that is, to Christian spirits, be sufficient ; yet this is 
 more than the question did need : it can stand upon its proper 
 foundation. 
 
 " Quicunque parvulos recentes ab uteris matrumbaptizan- 
 dos negat, anathema esto. n He that refuseth to baptize his 
 infants, shall be in danger of the council." 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O holy and eternal Jesus, who, in thine own person, wert 
 pleased to sanctify the waters of baptism, and, by thy 
 institution and commandment, didst make them effectual 
 to excellent purposes of grace and remedy ; be pleased to 
 verify the holy effects of baptism to me and all thy ser- 
 vants, whose names are dedicated to thee in an early and 
 timely presentation, and enable us with thy grace to verify 
 all our promises, by which we were bound then, when thou 
 didst first make us thy own portion and relatives in the 
 consummation of a holy covenant. O be pleased to pardon 
 all those indecencies and unhandsome interruptions of that 
 state of favour, in which thou didst plant us by thy grace, 
 and admit us by the gates of baptism : and let that Spirit, 
 which moved upon those holy waters, never be absent from 
 us, but call upon us, and invite us, by a perpetual argument 
 and daily solicitations and inducements to holiness ; that 
 we may never return to the filthiness of sin, but, by the 
 answer of a good conscience, may please thee, and glorify 
 thy name, and do honour to thy religion and institution in 
 this world, and may receive the blessings and the rewards 
 of it in the world to come, being presented to thee pure 
 and spotless in the day of thy power, when thou shalt lead 
 thy church to a kingdom and endless glories. Amen. 
 
 B Cone. Milevit. can. 2.
 
 CHRIST'S PRAYER AT HIS BAPTISM. 297 
 
 APPENDIX AD SECT. IX. No. 3. OF JESUS BEING 
 BAPTIZED, &c. 
 
 Christ's Prayer at his Baptism. 
 
 A- 001 .01. c^l fcj oj 
 
 JJ vc |jao ua- 
 
 Christ's Prayer at his Baptism. 
 
 O Father, according to the good pleasure of thy will, I am 
 made a man ; and from the time in which I was born of a 
 virgin, unto this day, I have finished those things which 
 are agreeing to the nature of man; and, with due ob- 
 
 Hanc orationem transcripsit et transmisit eruditissimus vir, et linguarum 
 Orientalium apprime gnarus, Dud. Loftus, J. U. D. et Juris Civilis Professor 
 publicus in Academia Dubliniensi apud Hibernos, professor linguarum Orienta- 
 lium apud eosdem,
 
 298 OF CHRIST'S PRAYER AT HIS BAPTISM. 
 
 servance, have performed all thy commandments, the 
 mysteries and types of the law : and now truly I am 
 baptized ; and so have I ordained baptism, that from 
 thence, as from the place of spiritual birth, the regene- 
 ration of men may be accomplished : and as John was the 
 last of the legal priests, so am I the first of the evangelical. 
 Thou therefore, O Father, by the mediation of my prayer, 
 open the heavens, and from thence send thy Holy Spirit 
 upon this womb of baptism ; that as he did untie the womb 
 of the virgin, and thence form me, so also he would loose 
 this baptismal womb, and so sanctify it unto men, that 
 from thence new men may be begotten, who may become 
 thy sons, and my brethren, and heirs of thy kingdom. 
 And what the priests under the law, until John, could not 
 do, grant unto the priests of the New Testament, (whose 
 chief I am in the oblation of this prayer,) that whensoever 
 they shall celebrate baptism, or pour forth prayers unto 
 thee, as the Holy Spirit is seen with me in open vision, so 
 also it may be made manifest, that the same Spirit will 
 adjoin himself in their society a more secret way, and will 
 by them perform the ministries of the New Testament, for 
 which I am made a man ; and as the high priest, I do 
 offer these prayers in thy sight. 
 
 This prayer was transcribed out of the Syriac Catena, 
 upon the third chapter of St. Luke's Gospel, and is, by the 
 author of that Catena, reported to have been made by our 
 blessed Saviour immediately before the opening of the 
 heavens at his baptism : and that the Holy Spirit did de- 
 scend upon him, while he was thus praying : and for it he 
 cites the authority of S. Philoxenus. I cannot but foresee, 
 that there is one clause in it which will be used as an ob- 
 jection against the authority of this prayer; viz. " as John 
 was the last of the legal priests : " for he was no priest at 
 all, nor ever officiated in the temple, or at the Mosaic rites. 
 But this is nothing : because, that the Baptist was of the 
 family of the priests, his father Zachary is a demonstration ; 
 that he did not officiate, his being employed in another 
 ministry is a sufficient answer ; that he was the last of the 
 priests is to be understood in this sense, that he was the 
 period of the law, the common term between the law and the
 
 OF CHRIST'S PRAYER AT HIS BAPTISM. 299 
 
 Gospel : by him the Gospel was first preached solemnly, and 
 therefore in him the law first ended. And as he was the 
 last of the prophets, so he was the last of the priests : not 
 but that, after him, many had the gift of prophecy, and some 
 did officiate in the Mosaical priesthood ; but that his office 
 put the first period to the solemnity of Moses's law, that is, 
 at him the dispensation evangelical did first enter. 
 
 That the ministers of the Gospel are here called priests, 
 ought not to be a prejudice against this prayer in the per- 
 suasions of any men : because it was usual with our blessed 
 Saviour to retain the words of the Jews, his countrymen, 
 before whom he spake, that they might by words, to which 
 they were used, be instructed in the notice of persons and 
 things, offices and ministries evangelical, which afterwards 
 were to be represented under other, that is, under their 
 proper names. 
 
 And now all that I shall say of it is this : 1 . That it is 
 not unlikely but our blessed Saviour prayed, when he was 
 baptized, and when the Holy Ghost descended upon him; 
 not only because it was an employment symbolical to the 
 grace he was to receive, but also to become to us a precedent 
 by what means we are to receive the Holy Spirit of God. 
 2. That it is very likely our blessed Lord would consecrate 
 the waters of baptism to those mysterious ends whither he 
 designed them, as well as the bread and chalice of the holy 
 supper. 3. That it is most likely the Easterlings did pre- 
 serve a record of many words and actions of the holy Jesus, 
 which are not transmitted to us. 4. It is certain that our 
 blessed Lord did do and say many more things, than are in 
 the holy Scriptures ; and that this was one of them, we have 
 the credit of this ancient author, and the authority of St. 
 Philoxenus. However, it it much better to make such good 
 use of it as the matter and piety of the prayer will minister, 
 than to quarrel at it by the imperfection of uncertain con- 
 jectures. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST PART.
 
 THE 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 OF THE 
 
 HOLY JESUS. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 BEGINNING AT THE TIME OF HIS FIRST MIRACLE, UNTIL THE SECOND 
 YEAR OF HIS PREACHING.
 
 TO THE 
 
 RIGHT HONOURABLE AND EXCELLENT LADY, 
 
 THE 
 
 LADY MARY, 
 
 COUNTESS DOWAGER OF NORTHAMPTON. 
 
 I AM now to present to your honour part of that 
 production, of which your great love to sanctity 
 was parent; and which was partly designed to 
 satisfy those great appetites to virtue, which have 
 made you hugely apprehensive and forward to 
 entertain any instrument, whereby you may grow 
 and increase in the service of God, and the com- 
 munion and charities of holy people. Your Honour 
 best knows in what soil the first design of these 
 papers grew ; and, but that the excellent personage 
 who was their first root, is transplanted for a time, 
 that he might not have his righteous soul vexed 
 with the impurer conversation of ill-minded men, 
 I am confident you would have received the fruits 
 of his abode to more excellent purposes. But be- 
 cause he was pleased to leave the managing of this
 
 304 DEDICATION. 
 
 to me, I hope your Honour will, for his sake, enter- 
 tain what that rare person " conceived," though I 
 was left to the pains and danger of " bringing 
 forth ; " and that it may dwell with you for its first 
 relation, rather than be rejected for its appendant 
 imperfections, which it contracted not in the foun- 
 tain, but in the channels of its progress and emana- 
 tion. Madam, I shall beg of God that your Honour 
 may receive as great increment of piety and ghostly 
 strength in the reading this book, as I receive honour 
 if you shall be pleased to accept and own this as a 
 confession of your great worthiness, and a testimony 
 of the service which ought to be paid to your 
 Honour, by, 
 
 MADAM, 
 Your Honour's most humble 
 
 And most obliged Servant, 
 
 JER. TAYLOR.
 
 THE 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE LIFE AND DEATH 
 
 HOLY JESUS. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 BEGINNING AT THE TIME OF HIS FIRST MIRACLE, UNTIL THE SECOND 
 YEAR OF HIS PREACHING. 
 
 SECTION X. 
 
 Of the first Manifestation of Jesus, by the Testimony of 
 John, and a Miracle. 
 
 1. AFTER that the Baptist, by a sign from heaven, was 
 confirmed in spirit and understanding, that Jesus was the 
 Messias, he immediately published to the Jews what God 
 had manifested to him ; and first to the priests and Levites, 
 sent in legation from the Sanhedrim, he professed indefi- 
 nitely, in answer to their question, that himself was " not 
 the Christ, nor Elias, nor that Prophet," whom they, by a 
 special tradition, did expect to be revealed, they knew not 
 when. And concerning himself definitely he said nothing, 
 but that he was " the voice of one crying in the wilderness, 
 Make straight the way of the Lord." He it was who was 
 then " amongst them," but " not known," a person of great 
 dignity, to whom the Baptist was " not worthy " to do the 
 office of the lowest ministry, " who, coming after John, was 
 preferred far before him," a who was to increase, 5 and the 
 
 a John, i. 15, '20, 21, 23, 26, 27, 30. b John, iii. 30. 
 
 VOL. II. BB
 
 306 OF THE FIRST MANIFESTATION OF JESUS. 
 
 Baptist was to decrease, who did "baptize with the Holy 
 Ghost and with fire." c 
 
 2. This was the character of his personal prerogatives; 
 but as yet no demonstration was made of his person, till 
 after the descent of the Holy Ghost upon Jesus, and then 
 whenever the Baptist saw Jesus, he points him out with his 
 finger, "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the 
 sins of the world; this is he:" d Then he shews him to 
 Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, with the same designation, 
 and to another disciple with him, "who both followed Jesus, 
 and abode with him all night:"' Andrew brings his brother 
 Simon with him, and then Christ changes his name from 
 Simon to Peter, or Cephas, which signifies a stone. Then 
 Jesus himself finds out Philip of Bethsaida, and bade him 
 follow him ; and Philip finds out Nathanael, and calls him to 
 see. Thus persons bred in a dark cell, upon their first ascent 
 to the chambers of light, all run staring upon the beauties of 
 the sun, and call the partners of their darkness to communi- 
 cate in their new and stranger revelation. 
 
 3. When Nathanael was come to Jesus, Christ saw his 
 heart, and gave him a testimony to be truly honest, and full 
 of holy simplicity, "a true Israelite, without guile." And 
 Nathanael, being overjoyed that he had found the Messias, 
 believing out of love, and loving by reason of his joy, and no 
 suspicion, took that for a proof and verification of his person, 
 which was very insufficient to confirm a doubt, or ratify a 
 probability : but so we believe a story which we love, taking 
 probabilities for demonstrations, and casual accidents for 
 probabilities, and any thing creates vehement presumptions ; 
 in which cases our guides are not our knowing faculties, but 
 our affections: and if they be holy, God guides them into the 
 right persuasions, as he does little birds to make rare nests, 
 though they understand not the mystery of operation, nor 
 the design and purpose of the action. 
 
 4. But Jesus took his will and forwardness of affections 
 in so good part, that he promised him greater things ; and 
 this gave occasion to the first prophecy which was made by 
 Jesus. For "Jesus said unto him, Because I said I saw 
 thee under the fig-tree, believest thou? Thou shalt see 
 
 e Matt. iii. 11. <> John, i. 29, 36. John, i. 37, 39.
 
 OF THE FIRST MANIFESTATION OF JESUS. 307 
 
 greater things than these : " and then he prophesied, that he 
 should see " heaven open, and the angels of God ascending 
 and descending upon the Son of Man." But, being a doctor 
 of the law, Christ chose him not at all to the college of 
 apostles/ 
 
 5. Much about the same time, there happened to be a 
 marriage in Cana of Galilee, in the vicinage of his dwelling, 
 where John the Evangelist is, by some, supposed to have 
 been the bridegroom : (but of this there is no certainty :) 
 and thither Jesus being, with his mother, invited, he went to 
 do civility to the persons espoused, and to do honour to the 
 holy rite of marriage. The persons then married were but 
 of indifferent fortunes, richer in love of neighbours than in 
 the fulness of rich possessions ; they had more company 
 than wine. For the master of the feast (whom, according to 
 the order and piety of the nation, they chose from the order 
 of priests, to be president of the feast, 8 by the reverence of 
 his person to restrain all inordination, by his discretion to 
 govern and order the circumstances, by his religious know- 
 ledge to direct the solemnities of marriage, and to retain all 
 the persons and actions in the bounds of prudence and 
 modesty) complained to the bridegroom that the guests 
 wanted wine. 
 
 6. As soon as the holy Virgin-mother had notice of the 
 want, out of charity, that uses to be employed in supplying 
 even the minutes and smallest articles of necessity, as well 
 as the clamorous importunity of extremities and great indi- 
 gences, she complained to her son by an indefinite address ; 
 not desiring him to make supply, for she knew not how he 
 should : but, either out of an habitual commiseration, she 
 complained without hoping for remedy, or else she looked 
 on him, who was a fountain of holiness and of plenty, as 
 expecting a derivation from him, either of discourses or 
 miracles. But " Jesus. answered her, Woman, what have 
 I to do with thee ? mine hour is not yet come." By this 
 
 f S. Aug. tra. xvit. c. 1. in Joan. 
 
 * Uujusmodi f'uerunt modesta ilia Sertorii couvivia quae descripsit Plu- 
 tarclius. Gaudent. Brawn, tra. 9. 
 
 A</vTv ?T0A.X!jv 'ifcavTa aiSa xa,} xcffiey' ov$\ OOKV TI <rv eti%av SUTI ocxaunv vfof^i- 
 vavTo; ' /Xa xai revs ffuvovras iurdnToii xa.} dvufipiffToi; jra.i^tiai; %(>ri<r6ou xai fytKetytietu- 
 va.i; WifyvTi! Plut. iii Sector.
 
 308 OF THE FIRST MANIFESTATION OF JESUS. 
 
 answer intending no denial to the purpose of his mother's 
 intimation, to whom he always bore a religious and pious 
 reverence ; but to signify, that he was not yet entered into 
 his period and years of miracles; and when he did, it must 
 be not for respect of kindred or civil relations, but as it is a 
 derivation of power from above, so it must be in pursuit of 
 that service and design which he had received in charge 
 together with his power. 
 
 7. And so his mother understood him, giving express 
 charge to the ministers to do whatsoever he commanded. 
 Jesus, therefore, bade them " fill the water-pots," which stood 
 there for the use of frequent washings, which the Jews did 
 use in all public meetings, for fear of touching pollutions, or 
 contracting illegal impurities : which they did with a curious- 
 ness next to superstition, washing the very beds and tables 
 used at their feasts. The ministers " filled them to the 
 brim;" and, as they were commanded, " drew out, and bare 
 unto the governor of the feast," who "knew not of it," till 
 the miracle grew public, and, like light, shewed itself; for 
 while they wondered at the economy of that feast, in " keep- 
 ing the best wine till the last," it grew apparent, that he who 
 was the Lord of the creatures, who, in their first seeds, have 
 an obediential capacity to receive the impresses of what 
 forms he pleases to imprint, could give new natures, and 
 produce new qualities in that subject, iii which he chooses 
 to glorify his Son. 
 
 8. " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of 
 Galilee." For all those miracles, which are reported to be 
 done by Christ in his infancy, and interval of his younger 
 years, are apocryphal and spurious, feigned by trifling under- 
 standings (who think to serve God with a well-meant lie), 
 and promoted by the credulity of such persons, in whose 
 hearts, easiness, folly, and credulity, are bound up, and tied 
 fast with silken thread, and easy softnesses of religious affec- 
 tions, not made severe by the rigours of wisdom and ex- 
 perience. This first miracle " manifested his glory, and his 
 disciples believed in him."
 
 CONSIDERATIONS OF THE VOCATION, &C. 309 
 
 Ad SECTION X. 
 
 Considerations touching the Vocation of Jive Disciples, and of 
 the Jirst Miracle of Jesus, done at Cana, in Galilee. 
 
 1. As soon as ever John the Baptist was taught, by the 
 descent of the Holy Spirit, that this was Jesus, he instantly 
 preaches him to all that came near him. For the Holy Ghost 
 was his commission and instruction ; and now he was a mi- 
 nister evangelical, and taue-ht all those that have the honour 
 
 o * o 
 
 to be servants in so sacred employment, that they must not 
 go till they be sent, nor speak till they be instructed, nor yet 
 hold their peace when their commission is signed by the con- 
 signation of the Spirit in ordinary ministry. For " all power 
 and all wisdom is from above," and in spiritual ministrations 
 is a direct emanation from the Holy Spirit : that as no man is 
 fit to speak the mysteries of godliness, be his person never so 
 holy, unless he derive wisdom in order to such ministries ; so 
 be he never so instructed by the assistance of art or infused 
 knowledge, yet, unless he also have derived power as well as 
 skill, authority as well as knowledge, from the same Spirit, 
 he is not enabled to minister in public in ordinary ministra- 
 tions. The Baptist was sent by a prime designation, " to 
 prepare the way to Jesus," and was instructed by the same 
 Spirit, which had sanctified or consecrated him in his mother's 
 womb to this holy purpose. 
 
 2. When the Baptist had shewed Jesus to Andrew and 
 another disciple, they immediately followed him, with the 
 distances and fears of the first approach, and the infirmities 
 of new converts ; but Jesus seeing them follow their first 
 light, invited them to see the Sun : for God loves to cherish 
 infants in grace ; and having sown the immortal seed in their 
 hearts, if it takes root downwards, and springs out into the 
 verdure of a leaf, he still waters it w y ith the gentle rain of the 
 Holy Spirit, in graces and new assistances, till it brings forth 
 the fruits of a holy conversation. And God, who knows that 
 infants have need of pleasant, and gentle, and frequent nutri- 
 ment, hath given to them this comfort, that himself will take 
 care of their first beginnings, and improve them to the strength
 
 310 CONSIDERATIONS OF THE VOCATION 
 
 of men, and give them the strengths of nature, and the wisdom 
 of the Spirit, which ennoble men to excellences and perfec- 
 tions. By the preaching of the Baptist they were brought to 
 seek for Christ : and when they did, Christ found them, and 
 brought them home, and made them "stay all night with him;" 
 which was more favour than they looked fur. For so God 
 usually dispenses his mercies, that they may run over our 
 thoughts and expectations, and they are given in no propor- 
 tion to us, but according to God's measures ; he considering 
 not what we are worthy of, but what is fit fur him to give ; 
 he only requiring of us capacities to receive his favour, and 
 fair reception and entertainment of his graces. 
 
 3. When Andrew had found Jesus, he calls his brother 
 Simon to be partaker of his joys, which (as it happens in 
 accidents of greatest pleasure) cannot be contained within 
 the limits of the possessor's thoughts. But this calling of 
 Peter was not to a beholding, but to a participation, of his 
 felicities ; for he is strangely covetous who would enjoy the 
 sun, or the air, or the sea, alone ; here was treasure for him 
 and all the world : and, by lighting his brother Simon's taper, 
 he made his own light the greater and more glorious. And 
 this is the nature of grace, to be diffusive of its own excel- 
 lences ; for here no envy can inhabit : the proper and per- 
 sonal ends of holy persons, in the contract and transmissions 
 of grace, are increased by the participation and communion 
 of others. For our prayers are more effectual, our aids in- 
 creased, our encouragement and examples more prevalent, 
 God more honoured, and the rewards of glory have acci- 
 dental advantages, by the superaddition of every new saint 
 and beatified person ; the members of the mystical body, 
 when they have received nutriment from God and his holy 
 Son, supplying to each other the same which themselves 
 received, and live on, in the communion of saints. Every 
 new star gilds the firmament, and increases its first glories : 
 ai;d those who are instruments of the conversion of others, 
 shall not only introduce new beauties, but when themselves 
 " shine like the stars in glory," they shall have some reflec- 
 tions from the light of others, to whose fixing in the orb of 
 heaven themselves have been instrumental. And this con- 
 sideration is not only of use in the exaltations of the dignity 
 apostolical and clerical, but for the enkindling even of private
 
 OF FIVE DISCIPLES. 311 
 
 charities ; who may do well to promote others' interests of 
 piety, in which themselves also have some concernment. 
 
 4. These disciples asked of Christ where he dwelt : Jesus 
 answered, " Come and see." It was an answer very expres- 
 sive of our duty in this instance. It is not enough for us to 
 understand where Christ inhabits, or where he is to be found ; 
 for our understandings may follow him afar off, and we receive 
 no satisfaction unless it be to curiosity ; but we must go where 
 he is, eat of his meat, wash in his lavatory, rest on his beds, 
 and dwell with him : for the holy Jesus hath no kind influence 
 upon those who stand at distance, save only the affections of 
 a loadstone, apt to draw them nigher, that he may transmit 
 his virtues by union and confederations ; but if they persist in 
 a sullen distance, they shall learn his glories, as Dives under- 
 stood the peace of Lazarus, of which he was never to partici- 
 pate. Although " the Son of Man hath not where to lay his 
 head," yet he hath many houses where to convey his graces ; 
 he hath nothing to cover his own, but he hath enough to 
 sanctify ours : and as he dwelt in such houses which the 
 charity of good people then afforded for his entertainment ; 
 so now he loves to abide in places, which the religion of his 
 servants hath vowed to his honour, and the advantages of 
 evangelical ministrations. Thither we must come to him, or 
 anywhere else where we may enjoy him : he is to be found in 
 a church, in his ordinances, in the communion of saints, in 
 every religious duty, in the heart of every holy person : and 
 if we go to him by the addresses of religion in holy places, 
 by the ministry of holy rites, by charity, by the adherences of 
 faith, and hope, and other combining graces, the graces of 
 union and society, or prepare a lodging for him within us, 
 that he may come to us, then shall we see such glories and 
 interior beauties, which none know but they that dwell with 
 him. The secrets of spiritual benediction are understood 
 only by them to whom they are conveyed, even by the 
 children of his house. a " Come and see." 
 
 5. St. Andrew was first called, and that by Christ imme- 
 diately ; his brother Simon next, and that by Andrew ; but 
 yet Jesus changed Simon's name, and not the other's ; and 
 by this change designed him to an eminency of office, at 
 
 b Secreta mea miliiet filiis domlis mesc. Clem. Alex. Strom.
 
 312 CONSIDERATIONS OF THE VOCATION 
 
 least in signification, principally above his brother, or else 
 separately and distinctly from him : to shew that these graces 
 and favours, which do not immediately co-operate to eternity, 
 but are gifts and offices, or impresses of authority, are given 
 to men irregularly, and without any order of predisponent 
 causes, or probabilities on our part, but are issues of absolute 
 predestination ; and as they have efficacy from those reasons, 
 which God conceals, so they have some purposes as concealed 
 as their causes ; only if God pleases to make us vessels of fair 
 employment and of great capacity, we shall bear a greater 
 burden, and are bound to glorify God with special offices. 
 But as these exterior and ineffective graces are given upon 
 the same good will of God, which made this matter to be a 
 human body, when, if God had so pleased, it was as capable 
 of being made a fungus or a sponge : so they are given to us 
 with the same intentions as are our souls, that we might 
 glorify God in the distinct capacity of grace, as before of a 
 reasonable nature. And, besides that it teaches us to magnify 
 God's free mercy, so it removes every such exalted person 
 from being an object of envy to others, or from pleasing 
 himself in vainer opinions : for God hath made him of such 
 an employment, as freely and voluntarily as he hath made 
 him a man, and he no more co-operated to this grace than to 
 his own creation, and may as well admire himself for being 
 born in Italy, or from rich parents, or for having two hands 
 or two feet, as for having received such a designation extra- 
 ordinary. But these things are never instruments of reputa- 
 tion among severe understandings, and never but in the 
 sottish and unmanly apprehensions of the vulgar. Only this, 
 when God hath imprinted an authority upon a person, al- 
 though the man hath nothing to please himself withal but 
 God's grace, yet others are to pay the duty which that 
 impression demands ; which duty, because it rapports to 
 God, and touches not the man, but as it passes through him 
 to the fountain of authority and grace, it extinguishes all 
 pretences of opinion and pride. 
 
 6. When Jesus espied Nathanael (who also had been 
 called by the first disciples) coming towards him, he gave 
 him an excellent character, calling him " a true Israelite, in 
 whom was no guile," and admitted him amongst the first 
 disciples of the institution ; by this character in one of the
 
 OF FIVE DISCIPLES. 313 
 
 first of his scholars hallowing simplicity of spirit, and re- 
 ceiving it into his discipline, that it might now become a 
 virtue and duty evangelical. For although it concerns us, as 
 a Christian duty, to be prudent, yet the prudence of Christ- 
 ianity is a duty of spiritual effect, and in instances of religion 
 with no other purposes than to avoid giving offence to those 
 that are without and within ; that we cause no disreputation 
 to Christianity ; that we do nothing that may encourage 
 enemies to the religion ; and that those that are within the 
 communion and obedience of the Church, may not suffer as 
 great inconveniences by the indiscreet conduct of religious 
 actions, as by direct temptations to a sin. These are the 
 purposes of private prudence, to which, in a greater measure, 
 and upon more variety of rules, the governors of churches are 
 obliged. But that which Christian simplicity prohibits, is the 
 mixing arts and unhandsome means for the purchase of our 
 ends ; witty counsels that are underminings of our neighbour, 
 destroying his just interest to serve our own ; stratagems to 
 deceive, indefinite and insignificant answers, with fraudulent 
 design ; unjust and unlawful concealment of our purposes ; 
 fallacious promises and false pretences ; flattery, and unjust, 
 and unreasonable praise ; saying one thing and meaning the 
 contrary ; pretending religion to secular designs ; breaking 
 faith ; taking false oaths ; and such other instruments of 
 human purposes framed by the devil, and sent into the world 
 to be perfected by man. Christian simplicity speaks nothing 
 but its thoughts; and when it concerns prudence that a 
 thought or purpose should be concealed, it concerns simpli- 
 city that silence be its cover, and not a false vizor ; it rather 
 suffers inconvenience than a lie ; it destroys no man's right 
 though it be inconsistent with my advantages ; it reproves 
 freely, palliates no man's wickedness ; it intends what it 
 ought, and does what is bidden ; and uses courses regular 
 and just, sneaks not in corners, and walks always in the eye 
 of God and the face of the world. 
 
 7. Jesus told Nathanael that he knew him, when he saw 
 him " under the fig-tree ;" and Nathanael took that to be 
 probation sufficient that he was the Messitis, and believed 
 rightly upon an insufficient motive : which, because Jesus 
 did accept, it gives testimony to us, that however faith be 
 produced, by means regular or by arguments incompetent,
 
 314 CONSIDERATIONS OF THE VOCATION, &C. 
 
 whether it be proved or not proved, whether by chance or 
 deliberation, whether wisely or by occasion, so that faith be 
 produced by the instrument, and love by faith, God's work is 
 done, and so is ours. For if St. Paul rejoiced that Christ 
 was preached, though by the envy of peevish persons ; cer- 
 tainly God will not reject an excellent product, because it 
 came from a weak and sickly parent ; and he that brings 
 good out of evil, and rejoices in that good, having first 
 triumphed upon the evil, will certainly take delight in the 
 faith of the most ignorant persons, which his own grace hath 
 produced out of innocent, though insufficient, beginnings. 
 It was folly in Naanian to refuse to be cured, because he was 
 to recover only by washing in Jordan. The more incompe- 
 tent the means is, the greater is the glory of God, who hath 
 produced waters from a rock, and fire from the collision of a 
 sponge and wool ; and it is certain, the end, unless it be in 
 products merely natural, does not take its estimate and de- 
 grees from the external means. Grace does miracles, and 
 the productions of the Spirit in respect of its instruments 
 are equivocal, extraordinary, and supernatural ; and ignorant 
 persons believe as strongly, though they know not why, and 
 love God as heartily, as greater spirits and more excellent 
 understandings : and when God pleases, or if he sees it 
 expedient, he will do to others as to Nathanael, give them 
 greater arguments and better instruments for the confirmation 
 and heightening of their faith, than they had for the first 
 production. 
 
 8. When Jesus had chosen these few disciples to be 
 witnesses of succeeding accidents, every one of which was to 
 be a probation of his mission and divinity, he entered into 
 the theatre of the world at a marriage feast, which he now 
 first hallowed to a sacramental signification, and made to 
 become mysterious : he now began to choose his spouse out 
 from the communities of the world, and did mean to endear 
 her by unions ineffable and glorious, and consign the sacra- 
 ment by his blood, which he first gave in a secret represent- 
 ment, and afterwards in letter and apparent effusion. And 
 although the holy Jesus did in his own person consecrate 
 celibate, and abstinence, and chastity in his mother's : yet, 
 by his presence, he also hallowed marriage, and made it 
 honourable, not only in civil account and the rites of heraldry,
 
 CONSIDERATIONS OF THE FIRST MIRACLE, &C. 315 
 
 but in a spiritual sense, he having new sublimed it by making 
 it a sacramental representment of the union of Christ and his 
 spouse, the Church. And all married persons should do well 
 to remember what the conjugal society does represent, and 
 not break the matrimonial bond, which is a mysterious liga- 
 ment of Christ and his Church ; for whoever dissolves the 
 sacredness of the mystery, and unhallows the vow by vio- 
 lence and impurity, he dissolves his relation to Christ. To 
 break faith with a wife or husband is a divorce from Jesus, 
 and that is a separation from all possibilities of felicity. In 
 the time of the Mosaical statutes, to violate marriage was to 
 do injustice and dishonour, and a breach to the sanctions of 
 nature, or the first constitutions : but two bands more are 
 added in the Gospel, to make marriage more sacred. For 
 now our bodies are made " temples of the Holy Ghost, "and 
 the rite of marriage is made significant and sacramental, and 
 every act of adultery is profanation and irreligion ; it dese- 
 crates a temple, and deflowers a mystery. 
 
 9. The married pair were holy, but poor, and they, 
 wanted wine ; and the blessed Virgin-mother, pitying the 
 affront of the young man, complained to Jesus of the want ; 
 arid Jesus gave her an answer, which promised no satisfaction 
 to her purposes. For now that Jesus had lived thirty years, 
 and done in person nothing answerable to his glorious birth, 
 and the miraculous accidents of his person, she longed till the 
 time came in which he was to manifest himself by actions as 
 miraculous as the star of his birth : she knew, by the reject- 
 ing of his trade, and his going abroad, and probably by his 
 own discourse to her, that the time was near ; and the 
 forwardness of her love and holy desires possibly might go 
 some minutes before his own precise limit. However, Jesus 
 answered to this purpose, to shew, that the work he was to 
 do was done not to satisfy her importunity, which is not 
 occasion enough for a miracle, but to prosecute the great 
 work of Divine designation. For, in works spiritual and 
 religious, all exterior relation ceases. The world's order, and 
 the manner of our nature, and the infirmities of our person, 
 have produced societies, and they have been the parents of 
 relation ; and God hath tied them fast by the knots of duty, 
 and made the duty the occasion and opportunities of reward : 
 but in actions spiritual, in which we relate to God, our
 
 316 CONSIDERATIONS OF THE FIRST MIRACLE, &C. 
 
 relations are founded upon the Spirit, and therefore we must 
 do our duties upon considerations separate and spiritual, but 
 never suffer temporal relations to impede our religious duties. 
 Christian charity is a higher thing than to be confined within 
 the terms of dependence and correlation, 5 and those endear- 
 ments, which leagues, or nature, or society, have made, pass 
 into spiritual, and, like stars in the presence of the sun, 
 appear not when the heights of the Spirit are in place. 
 Where duty hath prepared special instances, there we must, 
 for religion's sake, promote them ; but, even to our parents 
 or our children, the charities of religion ought to be greater 
 than the affections of society : and though we are bound, in 
 all offices exterior, to prefer our relatives before others, be- 
 cause that is made a duty ; yet to purposes spiritual, all 
 persons eminently holy put on the efficacy of the same rela- 
 tions, and pass a duty upon us of religious affections. 
 
 10. At the command of Jesus the water-pots were filled 
 with water, and the water was, by his Divine power, turned 
 into wine ; where the different economy of God and the 
 world is highly observable. " Every man sets forth good wine 
 at first, and then the worse : " but God not only turns the 
 water into wine, but into such wine, that the last draught is 
 most pleasant. The world presents us with fair language, 
 promising hopes, convenient fortunes, pompous honours, and 
 these are the outsides of the bole ; but when it is swallowed, 
 these dissolve in the instant, and there remains bitterness, 
 and the malignity of coloquintida. Every sin smiles in the 
 first address, and carries light in the face, and honey in the 
 lip ; but " when we have well drunk, then comes that which 
 is worse," a whip with six strings, fears and terrors of con- 
 science, and shame, and displeasure, and a caitive disposition, 
 and diffidence in the day of death. But when, after the 
 manner of the purifying of the Christians, we fill our water- 
 pots with water, watering our couch with our tears, and 
 moistening our cheeks with the perpetual distillations of 
 repentance ; then Christ turns our water into wine ; first 
 penitents, and then communicants ; first waters of sorrow, 
 and then the wine of the chalice; first the justifications of 
 
 Philo in Eoposif. General.
 
 CONSIDERATIONS OF THE FIRST MIRACLE, &C. 317 
 
 correction, and then the sanctifications of the sacrament, and 
 the effects of the Divine power, joy, and peace, and serenity, 
 hopes full of confidence, and confidence without shame, and 
 boldness without presumption: for " Jesus keeps the best 
 wine till the last;" not only because of the direct reservations 
 of the highest joys till the nearer approaches of glory, but 
 also because our relishes are higher after a long fruition than 
 at the first essays ; such being the nature of grace, that it 
 increases in relish as it does in fruition, every part of grace 
 being new duty and new reward. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O eternal and ever-blessed Jesu, who didst choose disciples 
 to be witnesses of thy life and miracles, so adopting man 
 into a participation of thy great employment of bringing 
 us to heaven by the means of a holy doctrine ; be pleased 
 to give me thy grace, that I may love and revere their 
 persons whom thou hast set over me, and follow their 
 faith, and imitate their lives, while they imitate thee ; and 
 that I also, in my capacity and proportion, may do some 
 of the meaner offices of spiritual building, by prayers, and 
 by holy discourses, and fraternal correption, and friendly 
 exhortations, doing advantages to such souls with whom 
 I shall converse. And since thou wert pleased to enter 
 upon the stage of the world w r ith the commencement of 
 mercy and a miracle, be pleased to visit my soul with thy 
 miraculous grace, turn my water into wine, my natural 
 desires into supernatural perfections, and let my sorrows 
 be turned into joys, my sins into virtuous habits, the weak- 
 nesses of humanity into communications of the Divine 
 nature ; that since thou " keepest the best unto the last," 
 I may, by thy assistance, grow from grace to grace, till 
 thy gifts be turned to reward, and thy graces to parti- 
 cipation of thy glory, O eternal and ever-blessed Jesu. 
 Amen.
 
 318 OF FAITH. 
 
 DISCOURSE VII. 
 Of Faith. 
 
 1. NATHANAEL'S faith was produced by an argument not 
 demonstrative, not certainly concluding ; Christ knew him 
 when he saw him first, and he believed him to be the Messias : 
 his faith was excellent, whatever the argument was. And I 
 believe a God, because the sun is a glorious body ; or be- 
 cause of the variety of plants, or the fabric and rare contex- 
 ture of a man's eye : I may as fully assent to the conclusion, 
 as if my belief dwelt upon the demonstrations made by the 
 prince of philosophers in the eighth of his physics and twelfth 
 of his metaphysics. This I premise as an inlet into the 
 consideration concerning the faith of ignorant persons. For 
 if we consider upon what easy terms most of us now are 
 Christians, we may possibly suspect, that either faith hath 
 but little excellence in it, or we but little faith, or that we are 
 mistaken generally in its definition. For we are born of 
 Christian parents, made Christians at ten days old, interro- 
 gated concerning the articles of our faith by way of antici- 
 pation, even then when we understand not the difference 
 between the sun and a tallow candle : from thence we are 
 taught to say our catechism, as we are taught to speak, 
 when we have no reason to judge, no discourse to discern, 
 no arguments to contest against a proposition, in case we be 
 catechized into false doctrine ; and all that is put to us we 
 believe infinitely, and without choice, as children use not to 
 choose their language. And as our children are made 
 Christians, just so are thousand others made Mahumetans, 
 with the same necessity, the same facility. So that, thus 
 far, there is little thanks due to us for believing the Christian 
 creed ; it was indifferent to us at first, and at last our edu- 
 cation had so possessed us, and our interest, and our no 
 temptation to the contrary, that as we were disposed into 
 this condition by Providence, so we remain in it without 
 praise or excellence. For as our beginnings are inevitable, 
 so our progress is imperfect and insufficient ; and what we 
 began by education, we retain only by custom : and if we be 
 instructed in some slighter arguments to maintain the sect
 
 OF FAITH. 319 
 
 or faction of our country religion, as it disturbs the unity of 
 Christendom ; yet, if we examine and consider the account, 
 upon what slight arguments we have taken up Christianity 
 itself, (as, that it is the religion of our country, or that our 
 fathers before us were of the same faith, or because the 
 priest bids us, and he is a good man, or for something else, 
 but we know not what,) we must needs conclude it the good 
 providence of God, not our choice, that made us Christians. 
 
 2. But if the question be, Whether such a faith be in 
 itself good and acceptable, that relies upon insufficient and 
 unconvincing grounds? I suppose this case of Nathanael 
 will determine us : and when we consider that faith is an 
 infused grace, if God pleases to behold his own glory in our 
 weakness of understanding, it is but the same thing he does 
 in the instances of his other graces. For as God enkindles 
 charity upon variety of means and instruments, by a thought, 
 by a chance, by a text of Scripture, by a natural tenderness, 
 by the sight of a dying or a tormented beast : so also he may 
 produce faith by arguments of a differing quality, and by 
 issues of his providence, he may engage us in such con- 
 ditions, in which, as our understanding is not great enough 
 to choose the best, so neither is it furnished with powers to 
 reject any proposition : and to believe well is an effect of a 
 singular predestination, and is a gift in order to a grace, 
 as that grace is in order to salvation. But the insufficiency 
 of an argument, or disability to prove our religion, is so far 
 from disabling the goodness of an ignorant man's faith, that 
 as it may be as strong as the faith of the greatest scholar, so 
 it hath full as much excellence, not of nature, but in order to 
 Divine acceptance. For as he who believes upon the only 
 stock of education, made no election of his faith ; so he who 
 believes what is demonstrably proved, is forced by the de- 
 monstration to his choice. Neither of them did choose, and 
 both of them may equally love the article. 
 
 3. So that, since a small argument in a weak understand- 
 ing does the same work that a strong argument in a more 
 sober and learned, that is, it convinces and makes faith, and 
 yet neither of them is matter of choice; if the thing believed 
 be good, and matter of duty or necessity, the faith is not 
 rejected by God upon the weakness of the first, nor accepted 
 upon the strength of the latter principles ; when we are
 
 320 OF FAITH. 
 
 once in, it will not be inquired by what entrance we passed 
 thither; whether God leads us or drives us in, whether we 
 come by discourse or by inspiration, by the guide of an 
 angel or the conduct of Moses, whether we be born or made 
 Christians, it is indifferent, so we be there, where we should 
 be ; for this is but the gate of duty, and the entrance to 
 felicity. For thus far faith is but an act of the understand- 
 ing, which is a natural faculty, serving indeed as an instru- 
 ment to godliness, but of itself no part of it; and it is just 
 like fire producing its act inevitably, and burning as long as 
 it can, without power to interrupt or suspend its action ; and 
 therefore we cannot be more pleasing to God for understand- 
 ing rightly, than the fire is for burning clearly : which puts 
 us evidently upon this consideration, that Christian faith, 
 that glorious duty, which gives to Christians a great degree 
 of approximation to God by Jesus Christ, must have a great 
 proportion of that ingredient which makes actions good or 
 bad, that is, of choice and effect. 
 
 4. For the faith of a Christian hath more in it of the will 
 than of the understanding. Faith is that great mark of dis- 
 tinction, which separates and gives formality to the cove- 
 nant of the Gospel, which is a " law of faith. " The faith of a 
 Christian is his religion, that is, it is that whole conformity 
 to the institution or discipline of Jesus Christ, which dis- 
 tinguishes him from the believers of false religions. And to 
 be one of the faithful signifies the same with being a disciple ; 
 and that contains obedience as well as believing. For to the 
 same sense are all those appellatives in Scripture, " the 
 faithful, brethren, believers, the saints, disciples," all repre- 
 senting the duty of a Christian. A believer and a saint, or a 
 holy person, is the same thing; brethren signifies charity ; 
 and believers, faith in the intellectual sense : the faithful and 
 disciples signify both ; for besides the consent to the pro- 
 position, the first of them is also used for perseverance and 
 sanctity, and the greatest of charity mixed with a confident 
 faith up to the height of martyrdom. " Be faithful unto the 
 death (said the Holy Spirit), and I will give thee the crown 
 of life." a And when the apostles, by way of abbreviation, 
 express all the body of Christian religion, they call it " faith 
 
 Rev. ii. 10.
 
 OF FAITH. 321 
 
 working by love ;" b which also St. Paul, in a parallel place, 
 calls a "new creature;" it is "a keeping of the command- 
 ments of God : " d that is the faith of a Christian, into whose 
 definition charity is ingredient, whose sense is the same with 
 keeping of God's commandments ; so that if we define faith, 
 we must first distinguish it. The faith of a natural person, 
 or the faith of devils, is a mere believing a certain number of 
 propositions upon conviction of the understanding : but the 
 faith of a Christian, the faith that justifies and saves him, is 
 " faith working by charity," or " faith keeping the command- 
 ments of God. " e They are distinct faiths, in order to dif- 
 ferent ends, and therefore of different constitution; and the 
 instrument of distinction is charity or obedience. 
 
 5. And this great truth is clear in the perpetual testimony 
 of holy Scripture. For Abraham is called the " father of tbe 
 faithful ; " and yet our blessed Saviour told the Jews, that if 
 they had been " the sons of Abraham, they would have done 
 the works of Abraham ;" f and therefore good works are, by 
 the apostle, called the "footsteps of the faith of our father 
 Abraham." 5 For faith, in every of its stages, at its first be- 
 ginning, at its increment, at its greatest perfection, is a duty 
 made up of the concurrence of the will and the understanding, 
 when it pretends to the Divine acceptance ; faith and repent- 
 ance begin the Christian course. "Repent and believe the 
 Gospel," was the sum of the apostle's sermons; and all the 
 way after it is, " faith working by love." Repentance puts the 
 first spirit and life into faith, and charity preserves it, and gives 
 it nourishment and increase ; itself also growing by a mutual 
 supply of spirits and nutriment from faith. Whoever does 
 heartily believe a resurrection and life eternal, upon certain 
 conditions, will certainly endeavour to acquire the promises, 
 by the purchase of obedience and observation of the con- 
 ditions. For it is not in the nature or power of man directly 
 to despise and reject so infinite a good : so that faith supplies 
 charity with argument and maintenance, and charity supplies 
 faith with life and motion ; faith makes charity reasonable, 
 and charity makes faith living and effectual. And, therefore, 
 the old Greeks called faith and charity a miraculous chariot 
 
 b Gal. v. 6. c Gal. vi. 15. d 1 Cor. vii. 19. 
 
 e Gal. v. 6. f John, viii. 39. * Rom. iv. 12. 
 
 VOL. II. C C
 
 322 OF FAITH. 
 
 or yoke, h they bear the burden of the Lord with an equal 
 confederation : these are like Hippocrates' twins, they live 
 and die together. Indeed faith is the first-born of the twins ; 
 but they must come both at a birth, or else they die, being 
 strangled at the gates of the womb. But if charity, like 
 Jacob, lays hold upon his elder brother's heel, it makes a 
 timely and a prosperous birth, and gives certain title to the 
 eternal promises. For let us give the right of primogeniture 
 to faith, yet the blessing, yea, and the inheritance too, will at 
 last fall to charity. Not that faith is disinherited, but that 
 charity only enters into the possession. The nature of faith 
 passes into the excellence of charity before they can be re- 
 warded ; and that both may have their estimate, that which 
 justifies and saves us, keeps the name of faith, but doth not 
 do the deed till it hath the nature of charity. For to think 
 well, or to have a good opinion, or an excellent or a fortunate 
 understanding, entitles us not to the love of God, and the 
 consequent inheritance ; ' but to choose the ways of the 
 Spirit, and to relinquish the paths of darkness, this is the way 
 of the kingdom, and the purpose of the Gospel, and the 
 proper work of faith. 
 
 6. And if we consider upon what stock faith itself is 
 instrumental and operative of salvation, we shall find it is, 
 in itself, acceptable, because it is a duty, and commanded ; 
 and therefore it is an act of obedience, a work of the Gospel, 
 a submitting the understanding, a denying the affections, 
 a laying aside all interests, and a bringing our thoughts 
 under the obedience of Christ. This the apostle calls " the 
 obedience of faith. " k And it is of the same condition and 
 constitution with other graces, all which equally relate to 
 Christ, and are as firm instruments of union, and are washed 
 by the blood of Christ, and are sanctified by his death, and 
 apprehend him in their capacity and degrees, some higher, 
 and some not so high : but hope and charity apprehend 
 Christ in a measure and proportion greater than faith, when 
 
 1 T a.ya.Sovs vil* {110.1 hftiis * xttxav;, o Bios eux, in rji ytutrii $xt ynu9x.tft.iiui, 
 A>.a \i <ry aioini TUI aigauft.ituv.Just. M. Resp. ad Orthod, 
 
 OuSti xifia; vyious -riffnus, rns iro'yiTtia.s $ii$fag/u,iytis- Chrys, lib. iv. de 
 Sacerd. 
 
 k Rom. xvi. 26.
 
 OF FAITH. 323 
 
 it distinguishes from them. So that if faith does the work 
 of justification, as it is a mere relation to Christ, then so also 
 does hope and charity; or if these are duties and good 
 works, so also is faith : and they all being alike commanded 
 in order to the same end, and encouraged by the same re- 
 ward, are also accepted upon the same stock, which is, that 
 they are acts of obedience and relation too ; they obey 
 Christ, and lay hold upon Christ's merits, and are but several 
 instances of the great duty of a Christian, but the actions of 
 several faculties of the new creature. But because faith is 
 the beginning of grace, and hath influence and causality in 
 the production of the other, therefore all the other, as they 
 are united in duty, are also united in their title and appel- 
 lative ; they are all called by the name of faith, because they 
 are parts of faith, as faith is taken in the larger sense : and 
 when it is taken in the strictest and distinguishing sense, 
 they are effects and proper products by way of natural 
 emanation. 
 
 7. That a good life is the genuine and true-born issue of 
 faith, no man questions that knows himself the disciple of 
 the holy Jesus ; but that obedience is the same thing with 
 faith, 1 and that all Christian graces are parts of its bulk and 
 constitution, is also the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, and the 
 grammar of Scripture, making faith and obedience to be 
 terms coincident and expressive of each other. For faith is 
 not a single star, but a constellation, a chain of graces, called 
 by St. Paul "the power of God unto salvation to every be- 
 liever ; " m that is, faith is all that great instrument, by which 
 God intends to bring us to heaven : and he gives this reason, 
 " In the Gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from 
 faith to faith;" for "it is written, The just shall live by 
 faith." Which discourse makes faith to be a course of 
 sanctity and holy habits, a continuation of a Christian's duty, 
 such a duty as not only gives the first breath, but by which a 
 man lives the life of grace. *' The just shall live by faith ; " 
 that is, such a faith as grows from step to step, till the whole 
 righteousness of God be fulfilled in it. ' From faith to faith," 
 
 1 Fides (auctore Cicerone) est firma opinio, et est fida niandiitorum executio. 
 Dicta est autem fides (ut ait idem Cicero de Officiis) ajio, quod id Jierl debeat, 
 quod dictum et promissum est, 
 
 m Horn. i. 16, 17.
 
 324- OF FAITH. 
 
 (saith the apostle ;) which St. Austin expounds, from faith 
 believing, to faith obeying;" from imperfect faith, to faith 
 made perfect by the animation of charity; that "he who is 
 justified, may be justified still." For as there are several 
 degrees and parts of justification, so there are several degrees 
 of faith answerable to it ; that in all senses it may be true, 
 that " by faith we are justified, and by faith we live, and by 
 faith we are saved." For if we proceed " from faith to faith," 
 from believing to obeying, from faith in the understanding to 
 faith in the will, from faith barely assenting to the revelations 
 of God to faith obeying the commandments of God, from the 
 body of faith to the soul of faith, that is, to faith formed and 
 made alive by charity ; then we shall proceed from justifi- 
 cation to justification, that is, from remission of sins to be- 
 come the sons of God, and at last to an actual possession of 
 those glories to which we were here consigned by the fruits 
 of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 8. And in this sense the holy Jesus is called by the 
 apostle "the author and finisher of our faith:" he is the 
 principle, and he is the promoter ; he begins our faith in 
 revelations, and perfects it in commandments ; he leads us by 
 the assent of our understanding, and finishes the work of his 
 grace by a holy life : which St. Paul there expresses by its 
 several constituent parts; as "laying aside every weight, and 
 the sin that so easily besets us, and running with patience 
 the race that is set before us, resisting unto blood, striving 
 against sin;"P for in these things Jesus is therefore made our 
 example, because he is " the author and finisher of our faith ; " 
 without these faith is imperfect. But the thing is something 
 plainer yet, for St. James says, that faith lives not but by 
 charity ; q and the life or essence of a thing is certainly the 
 better part of its constitution, as the soul is to a man. And 
 if we mark the manner of his probation, it will come home to 
 the main point. For he proves, that " Abraham's faith was 
 therefore imputed to him for righteousness, because he was 
 justified by works ; was not Abraham our father justified by 
 works, when he offered up his son ? And the Scripture was 
 
 Ex fide annunciantium Evangelium in fidem obedientium Evangelic. - 
 5. Aug. 
 
 Heb. xii. 2. P Heb. v. 1, 4. 1 Jam. ii. 20-23, 26.
 
 OF FAITH. 325 
 
 fulfilled, saying, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed 
 to him for righteousness. For faith wrought with his works, 
 and made his faith perfect." It was a dead and an imperfect 
 faith, unless obedience gave it being, and all its integral or 
 essential parts. So that faith and chanty in the sense of a 
 Christian, are but one duty, as the understanding and the 
 will are but one reasonable soul ; only they produce several 
 actions in order to one another, which are but " divers 
 operations and the same spirit." 
 
 9. Thus St. Paul, describing the faith of the Thessalo- 
 nians, calls it that whereby they " turned from idols," and 
 whereby they "served the living God;" r and the faith of 
 the patriarchs "believed the world's creation, received the 
 promises, did miracles, wrought righteousness," 5 and did and 
 suffered so many things as make up the integrity of a holy 
 life. And therefore disobedience and unrighteousness is 
 called "want of faith;"* and heresy which is opposed to 
 faith, is " a work of the flesh,"" because faith itself is a work 
 of righteousness. And, that I may enumerate no more par- 
 ticulars, the thing is so known that the word amidsia,,* 
 which, in propriety of language signifies mispersuasion or 
 infidelity, is rendered disobedience; and the " not providing 
 for our families" is an act of infidelity, by the same reason 
 and analogy that obedience, or charity, and a holy life are 
 the duties of a Christian, of a justifying faith. And although 
 in the natural or philosophical sense, faith and charity are 
 distinct habits ; yet in the sense of a Christian and the sig- 
 nification of duty they are the same; for we cannot believe 
 aright, as believing is in the commandment, unless we live 
 aright ; for our faith is put upon the account just as it is 
 made precious by charity; according to that rare saying 
 of St. Bartholomew, recorded by the supposed St. Denis, 
 " Charity is the greatest and the least theology :" y all our 
 faith, that is, all our religion, is completed in the duties of 
 universal charity ; as our charity or our manner of living is, 
 so is our faith. If our life be unholy, it may be the faith 
 
 r 1 Thess. i. 8, 9. ' Heb. xi. per totum. 
 
 * Col. iii. 6. 2 Thess. iii. 2. u Gal. v. 20. 
 
 * Eph. ii. 2, et v. 6. 1 Tim. v. 8. 
 
 y 'H a.ya.'Ttn B-iokoyia oreXXi, XK] l^a^iyrn. c. 1. de Myst, Thecl,
 
 326 OF FAITH. 
 
 of devils, but not the faith of Christians. For this is the 
 difference. 
 
 10. The faith of the devils hath more of the understand- 
 ing in it, the faith of Christians more of the will : the devils 
 in their faith have better discourse, the Christians better affec- 
 tions : they in their faith have better arguments, we more 
 charity. So that charity or a good life is so necessary an in- 
 gredient into the definition of a Christian's faith, that we have 
 nothing else to distinguish it from the faith of devils ; and 
 we need no trial of our faith, but the examination of our 
 lives. If you " keep the commandments of God," then have 
 you the faith of Jesus ; they are immediate, in St. John's 
 expression : z but if you be importune and ungodly, you are 
 in St. Paul's list, 3 amongst them that have no faith. Every 
 vice that rules amongst us and sullies the fair beauty of our 
 soul, is a conviction of infidelity. 
 
 11 . For it was the faith of Moses that made him despise 
 the riches of Egypt ; the faith of Joshua, that made him 
 valiant; the faith of Joseph, that made him chaste; Abra- 
 ham's faith made him obedient ; St. Mary Magdalen's faith 
 made her penitent ; and the faith of St. Paul made him travel 
 so far and suffer so much, till he became a prodigy both of 
 zeal and patience. Faith is a catholicon, and cures all the 
 distemperatures of the soul ; it " overcomes the world," 6 saith 
 St. John; it "works righteousness," saith St. Paul ; it 
 *' purifies the heart," d saith St. Peter ; " it works miracles," 
 saith our blessed Saviour ; miracles in grace always, as it did 
 miracles in nature at its first publication : and whatsoever is 
 good, if it be a grace, it is an act of faith ; if it be a reward, 
 it is the fruit of faith. So that as all the actions of man are 
 but the productions of the soul, so are all the actions of the 
 new man the effects of faith. For faith is the life of Chris- 
 tianity, and a good life is the life of faith. 
 
 12. Upon the grounds of this discourse we may under- 
 stand the sense of that question of our blessed Saviour : 
 When the Son of Man comes, shall he find faith on 
 earth?" 6 Truly, just so much as he finds charity and holy 
 living, and no more. For then only we can be confident, that 
 
 1 Apoc. x.iv. 12. a 2 Thess. iii. 2. b 1 John, v. 4. 
 
 c Heb. xi. 33. d Acts, xv. 9. e Luke, xviii. 8.
 
 OF FAITH. 327 
 
 faith is not " failed from among the children of men," when we 
 feel the heats of the primitive charity return, and the calen- 
 tures of the first old devotion are renewed ; when it shall be 
 accounted honourable to be a servant of Christ, and a shame 
 to commit a sin. Then, and then only, our churches shall be 
 assemblies of the faithful, and the kingdoms of the world 
 Christian countries. But so long as it is notorious that we 
 have made the Christian religion another thing than what 
 the holy Jesus designed it to be ; when it does not make us 
 live good lives, but itself is made a pretence to all manner of 
 impiety, a stratagem to serve ends, the ends of covetousness, 
 of ambition, and revenge ; when the Christian charity ends 
 in killing one another for conscience sake, so that faith is 
 made to cut the throat of charity, and our faith kills more 
 than our charity preserves; when the humility of a Christian 
 hath indeed a name amongst us, but it is like a mute person, 
 talked of only ; while ambition and rebellion, pride and scorn, 
 self-seeking and proud undertakings, transact most of the 
 great aifairs of Christendom ; when the custody of our senses 
 is to no other purposes, but that no opportunity of pleasing 
 them pass away ; when our oaths are like the fringes of our 
 discourses, going round about them, as if they were orna- 
 ments and trimmings ; when our blasphemies, profanation, 
 sacrilege, and irreligion, are become scandalous to the very 
 Turks and Jews ; while our lusts are always habitual, some- 
 times unnatural; will any wise man think that we believe 
 those doctrines f of humility and obedience, of chastity and 
 charity, of temperance and justice, which the Saviour of the 
 world made sacred by his sermon and example ; or, indeed, 
 any thing he either said or did, promised or threatened? For 
 is it possible a man with his wits about him, and believing 
 that he should certainly be damned, (that is, be eternally tor- 
 mented in body and soul, with torments greater than can be 
 in this world;) if he be a swearer, or liar, or drunkard, or 
 cheats his neighbour : that this man should dare to do these 
 things, to which the temptations are so small, in which the 
 delight is so inconsiderable, and the satisfaction so none 
 at all ? 
 
 To uvrifTtTv <ra,~s tvTsXa/V 
 ai. >S. Chrys. ad Demetr.
 
 328 OF FAITH. 
 
 13. We see by the experience of the whole world, that 
 the belief of an honest man in a matter of temporal advan- 
 tage, makes us do actions of such danger and difficulty, that 
 half so much industry and sufferance would ascertain us into 
 a possession of all the promises evangelical. Now, let any 
 man be asked, whether he had rather be rich or be saved ? he 
 will tell you, without all doubt, heaven is the better option by 
 infinite degrees : for it cannot be that riches, or revenge, or 
 lust, should be directly preferred ; that is, be thought more 
 eligible than the glories of immortality. That, therefore, men 
 neglect so great salvation, and so greedily run after the 
 satisfaction of their baser appetites, can be attributed to 
 nothing but want of faith ; they do not heartily believe that 
 heaven is worth so much ; there is upon them a stupidity of 
 spirit, and their faith is dull, and its actions suspended most 
 commonly, and often interrupted, and it never enters into the 
 will : so that the propositions are considered nakedly and 
 precisely in themselves, but not as referring to us or our inte- 
 rests ; there is nothing of faith in it, but so much as is the 
 first and direct act of understanding ; there is no considera- 
 tion or reflection upon the act, or upon the person, or upon 
 the subject. So that even as it is seated in the under- 
 standing our faith is commonly lame, mutilous, and imper- 
 fect ; and therefore much more is it culpable, because it is 
 destitute of all co-operation of the rational appetite. 
 
 14. But let us consider the power and efficacy of worldly 
 belief. If a man believes that there is gold to be had in 
 Peru for fetching, or pearls and rich jewels in India for the 
 exchange of trifles, he instantly, if he be in capacity, leaves 
 the wife of his bosom, and the pretty delights of children, 
 and his own security, and ventures into the clangers of waters 
 and unknown seas, and freezings and calentures, thirst and 
 hunger, pirates and shipwrecks ; and hath within him a prin- 
 ciple strong enough to answer all objections, because he be- 
 lieves that riches are desirable, and by such means likely to 
 be had. Our blessed Saviour, comparing the Gospel to " a 
 merchantman that found a pearl of great price," and "sold 
 all to buy it," hath brought this instance home to the present 
 discourse. For if we did as verily believe that in heaven 
 those great felicities which transcend all our apprehensions 
 are certainly to be obtained by leaving our vices and lower
 
 OF FAITH. 329 
 
 desires, what can hinder us but we should at least do as 
 much for obtaining those great felicities as for the lesser, if 
 the belief were equal ? For if any man thinks he may have 
 them without holiness, and justice, and charity, then he wants 
 faith ; for he believes not the saying of St. Paul : " Follow 
 peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall 
 ever see God." g If a man believes learning to be the only 
 or chiefest ornament and beauty of souls, that which will 
 ennoble him to a fair employment in his own time, and an 
 honourable memory to succeeding ages ; this if he believes 
 heartily, it hath power to make him endure catarrhs, gouts, 
 hypochondriacal passions, to read till his eyes almost fix in 
 their orbs, to despise the pleasures of idleness, or tedious 
 sports, and to undervalue whatsoever does not co-operate to 
 the end of his faith, the desire of learning. Why is the 
 Italian so abstemious in his drinkings, or the Helvetian so 
 valiant in his fight, or so true to the prince that employs him, 
 but that they believe it to be noble so to be ? If they be- 
 lieved the same, and had the same honourable thoughts of 
 other virtues, they also would be as national as these. For 
 faith will do its proper work. And when the understanding 
 is peremptorily and fully determined upon the persuasion of 
 a proposition, if the will should then dissent, and choose the 
 contrary, it were unnatural and monstrous, and possibly no 
 man ever does so : for that men do things without reason, 
 and against their conscience, is, because they have put out 
 their light, and discourse their wills into the election of a 
 sensible good, and want faith to believe truly all circumstances, 
 which are necessary by way of predisposition, for choice of 
 the intellectual. 
 
 15. But when men's faith is confident, their resolution 
 and actions are in proportion : for thus the faith of Mahomet- 
 ans makes them to abstain from wine for ever ; and there- 
 fore, if we had the Christian faith, we should much rather 
 abstain from drunkenness for ever ; it being an express rule 
 apostolical, " Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess." h 
 The faith of the Circumcellians made them to run greedily to 
 violent and horrid deaths, as willingly as to a crown ; for 
 they thought it was the king's highway to martyrdom. And 
 
 Heb. xii. 14. b Epbes. v. 18.
 
 330 OF FAITH. 
 
 there was never any man zealous for his religion, and of an 
 imperious bold faith, but he was also willing to die for it : 
 and therefore, also, by as much reason to live in it, and to be 
 a strict observer of its prescriptions. And the stories of the 
 strict sanctity, and prodigious sufferings, and severe disci- 
 plines, and expensive religion, and compliant and laborious 
 charity, of the primitive Christians, is abundant argument to 
 convince us, that the faith of Christians is infinitely more 
 fruitful and productive of its univocal and proper issues, than 
 the faith of heretics, or the false religions of misbelievers, or 
 the persuasions of secular persons, or the spirit of antichrist. 
 And therefore, when we see men serving their prince with 
 such difficult and ambitious services, because they believe 
 him able to reward them, though of his will they are not so 
 certain, and yet so supinely negligent and incurious of their 
 services to God, of whose power and will to reward us in- 
 finitely, their is certainty absolute and irrespective ; it is cer- 
 tain probation that we believe it not : for if we believe there 
 is such a thing as heaven, and that every single man's portion 
 of heaven is far better than all the wealth in the world, it is 
 morally impossible we should prefer so little before so great 
 profit. 
 
 16. I instance but once more. The faith of Abraham 
 was instanced in the matter of confidence or trust in the 
 Divine promises ; and, he being " the father of the faithful," 
 we must imitate his faith by a clear dereliction of ourselves 
 and our own interests, and an entire confident relying upon 
 the Divine goodness, in all cases of our needs or danger. 
 Now, this also is a trial of the verity of our faith, the excel- 
 lence of our condition, and what title we have to the glorious 
 names of Christians, and faithful, and believers. If our 
 fathers, when we were in pupilage and minority, or a true 
 and an able friend, when we were in need, had made promises 
 to supply our necessities ; our confidence was so great, that 
 our care determined. It were also well that we were as con- 
 fident of God, and as secure of the event, when we had dis- 
 posed ourselves to reception of the blessing, as we were of 
 our friend or parents. We all profess that God is almighty, 
 that all his promises are certain, and yet, when it comes to a 
 pinch, we find that man to be more confident that hath ten 
 thousand pounds in his purse, than he that reads God's pro-
 
 OF FAITH. 331 
 
 mises over ten thousand times.' " Men of a common spirit," 
 saith St. Chrysostom, " of an ordinary sanctity, will not steal, 
 or kill, or lie, or commit adultery ; but it requires a rare faith, 
 and a sublimity of pious affections, to believe that God will 
 work a deliverance, which to me seems impossible." And 
 indeed St. Chrysostom hit upon the right. He had need be 
 a good man, and love God well, that puts his trust in him. 
 For those we love, we are most apt to trust ; k and although 
 trust and confidence is sometimes founded upon experience, 
 yet it is also begotten and increased by love, as often as by 
 reason and discourse. And to this purpose it was excellently 
 said by St. Basil, " That the knowledge which one man 
 learneth of another, is made perfect by continual use and 
 exercise ; but that which, through the grace of God, is 
 engrafted in the mind of man, is made absolute by justice, 
 gentleness, and charity." So that if you are willing, even in 
 death, to confess not only the articles, but in affliction and 
 death to trust the promises ; if, in the lowest nakedness of 
 poverty, you can cherish yourselves with the expectation of 
 God's promises and dispensation, being as confident of food 
 and raiment, and deliverance or support, when all is in God's 
 hand, as you are when it is in your own ; if you can be cheer- 
 ful in a storm, smile when the world frowns, be content in the 
 midst of spiritual desertions and anguish of spirit, expecting 
 all should work together for the best, according to the pro- 
 mise ; if you can strengthen yourselves in God when you are 
 weakest, believe when you see no hope, and entertain no 
 jealousies or suspicions of God, though you see nothing to 
 make you confident; then, and then only, you have faith, 
 which, in conjunction with its other parts, is able to save 
 your souls. For in this precise duty of trusting God there 
 are the rays of hope, and great proportions of charity and 
 resignation. 
 
 17. The sum is that pious and most Christian sentence of 
 
 1 Clare cognosceres non adeo esse facile Deo soli, re alia non assumptS, 
 credere, propter earn, quac in nobis est, cum mortali compage cognationem. 
 
 Ab his autem purgari omnibus uni autem Deo confidere, magni et calestis 
 
 animi est opus, et ejus qui nullis amplius capiatur earum quas videmus rerum 
 illecebris. Phil. Jud<eus, libr. Quis Rerum Div. Hares. 
 
 k "Eviffn yf 5T&/f reiuro Tri rugavv/S/ Noirjj^a, 701; <fi\aifi ftn xiKoiSivxi, ytsc/tj/u 
 Prometh.
 
 332 OF FAITH. 
 
 the author of the Ordinary Gloss. " To believe in God through 
 Jesus Christ, is, by believing to love him, to adhere to him, to 
 be united to him by charity and obedience, and to be incor- 
 porated into Christ's mystical body in the communion of 
 saints." 1 I conclude this with a collation of certain excellent 
 words of St. Paul, highly to the present purpose : " Examine 
 yourselves, brethren, whether ye be in the faith ; prove your 
 own selves." Well, but how? " Know ye not your own 
 selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be repro- 
 bates?" There is the touchstone of faith. If Jesus Christ 
 dwells in us, then we are true believers ; if he does not, we 
 are reprobates, we have no faith. But how shall we know, 
 whether Christ be in us or no ? St. Paul tells us that, too ; 
 " If Christ be in you, the body is dead, by reason of sin ; but 
 the spirit is life, because of righteousness." That is the 
 Christian's mark, and the characteristic of a true believer ; 
 a death unto sin, and a living unto righteousness : a morti- 
 fied body, and a quickened spirit. This is plain enough ; 
 and by this we see what we must trust to. A man of a 
 wicked life does in vain hope to be saved by his faith ; for 
 indeed his faith is but equivocal and dead, which, as to his 
 purpose, is just none at all; and therefore let him no more 
 deceive himself. For, that I may still use the words of St. 
 Paul, " This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that 
 thou affirm constantly, that they which have believed in 
 God might be careful to maintain good works." For such, 
 and such only, in the great scrutiny for faith in the day of 
 doom, shall have their portion in the bosom of faithful 
 Abraham. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 I. 
 
 O eternal God, fountain of all truth and holiness, in whom to 
 believe is life eternal ; let thy grace descend with a mighty 
 power into my soul, beating down every strong hold and 
 vainer imagination, and bringing every proud thought, and 
 
 1 Credere in Deura est credendo amare, credendo diligere, credendo in eum 
 ire, et membris ejus incorporari. Gloss. Ord. in Rom. 4. 
 
 m 2 Cor. xiii. 5. " Rom. viii. 10. Titus, iii. 8.
 
 OF FAITH. 333 
 
 my confident and ignorant understanding, into the obedi- 
 ence of Jesus. Take from me all disobedience and refracto- 
 riness of spirit, all ambition, and private and baser interests; 
 remove from me all prejudice and weakness of persuasion, 
 that I may wholly resign my understanding to the persua- 
 sions of Christianity, acknowledging thee to be the prin- 
 ciple of truth, and thy word the measure of knowledge, and 
 thy laws the rule of iny life, and thy promises the satisfac- 
 tion of my hopes, and an union with thee to be the con- 
 summation of charity, in the fruition of glory. Amen. 
 
 II. 
 
 Holy Jesus, make me to acknowledge thee to be my Lord 
 and Master, and myself a servant and disciple of thy holy 
 discipline and institution ; let me love to sit at thy feet, 
 and suck in with my ears and heart the sweetness of thy 
 holy sermons. Let my soul be shod with the preparation 
 of the Gospel of peace, with a peaceable and docile dispo- 
 sition. Give me great boldness in the public confession of 
 thy name and the truth of thy Gospel in despite of all 
 hostilities and temptations. And grant I may always re- 
 member, that thy name is called upon me, and I may so 
 behave myself that I neither give scandal to others, nor 
 cause disreputation to the honour of religion; but that 
 thou mayest be glorified in me, and I by thy mercies, after 
 a strict observance of all the holy laws of Christianity. 
 Amen. 
 
 III. 
 
 O holy and ever-blessed Spirit, let thy gracious influences be 
 the perpetual guide of my rational faculties ; inspire me 
 with wisdom and knowledge, spiritual understanding, and 
 a holy faith ; and sanctify my faith, that it may arise up to 
 the confidence of hope and the adherences of charity, and 
 be fruitful in a holy conversation. Mortify in me all 
 peevishness and pride of spirit, all heretical dispositions, 
 and whatsoever is contrary to sound doctrine ; that when 
 the eternal Son of God, the " author and finisher of our 
 faith," shall come to make scrutiny, and an inquest for 
 faith, I may receive the promises laid up for them that
 
 334? HISTORY OF CHRIST'S FIRST GOING 
 
 believe in the Lord Jesus, and wait for his coming in holi- 
 ness and purity : to whom, with the Father and thee, O 
 blessed Spirit, be all honour and eternal adoration paid, 
 with all sanctity, and joy, and eucharist, now and for ever. 
 Amen. 
 
 SECTION XI. 
 
 Of Christ's going to Jerusalem to the Passover, the first time 
 after his Manifestation, and what followed, till the Expira- 
 tion of the Office of John the Baptist. 
 
 1. IMMEDIATELY after this miracle Jesus abode a few days 
 in Capernaum, but because of the approach of the great 
 feast of passover, he ascended to Jerusalem ; and the first 
 public act of record that he did was an act of holy zeal and 
 religion in behalf of the honour of the temple. For divers 
 merchants and exchangers of money made the temple to be 
 the market and the bank, and brought beasts thither to be 
 sold for sacrifice against the great paschal solemnity. At 
 the sight of which, Jesus, being moved with zeal and indig- 
 nation, " made a whip of cords, and drave the beasts out of 
 the temple, overthrew the accounting tables, and commanded 
 them that sold the doves to take them from thence." For 
 his anger was holy, and he would mingle no injury with it ; 
 and therefore the doves, which, if let loose, would be detri- 
 mental to the owners, he caused to be fairly removed ; and 
 published the religion of holy places, establishing their sa- 
 credness for ever, by his first Gospel-sermon that he made at 
 Jerusalem. " Take these things hence : make not my Father's 
 house a house of merchandise ; for it shall be called a house 
 of prayer to all nations." And being required to give a sign 
 of his vocation (for this being an action like the religion of 
 the zealots among the Jews, if it was not attested by some- 
 thing extraordinary, might be abused into an excess of 
 liberty), he only foretold the resurrection of his body after 
 three days' death, but he expressed it in the metaphor of the 
 temple : " Destroy this temple, and I will build it again in 
 three days. He spake of the temple of his body ;" and they
 
 TO THE PASSOVER. 335 
 
 understood him of the temple at Jerusalem ; and it was never 
 rightly construed till it was accomplished. 
 
 2. At this public convention of the Jewish nation, Jesus 
 did many miracles, published himself to be the Messias, and 
 persuaded many disciples, amongst whom was Nicodemus, a 
 doctor of the law, and a ruler of the nation : " he came by 
 night to Jesus," and affirmed himself to be convinced by the 
 miracles which he had seen; for " no man could do those 
 miracles, except God be* with him." When Jesus perceived 
 his understanding to be so far disposed, he began to instruct 
 him in the great secret and mysteriousness of regeneration, 
 telling him " that every production is of the same nature and 
 condition with its parent ; from flesh comes flesh and cor- 
 ruption, from the Spirit comes spirit, and life, and immor- 
 tality ; and nothing from a principle of nature could arrive 
 to a supernatural end ; and therefore the only door to enter 
 into the kingdom of God, was water, by the manuduction of 
 the Spirit ; and by this regeneration we are put into a new 
 capacity of living a spiritual life in order to a spiritual and 
 supernatural end." 
 
 3. This was strange philosophy to Nicodemus ; but Jesus 
 bade him not to wonder : for this is not a work of humanity 
 but a fruit of God's Spirit, and an issue of predestination. 
 For ' the Spirit bloweth where it listeth,' and is, as the wind, 
 certain and notorious in the effects, but secret in the prin- 
 ciple and in the manner of production. And therefore this 
 doctrine was not to be estimated by any proportions to natural 
 principles or experiments of sense, but to the secrets of a new 
 metaphysic, and abstracted separate speculations. Then 
 Christ proceeds in his sermon, telling him there are yet higher 
 things for him to apprehend and believe ; for this, in respect 
 of some other mysteriousness of his Gospel, was but as earth 
 in comparison of heaven. Then he tells of his own descent 
 from heaven, fortells his death and ascension, and the bless- 
 ing of redemption, which he came to work for mankind ; he 
 preaches of the love of the Father, the mission of the Son, 
 the rewards of faith, and the glories of eternity ; he upbraids 
 the unbelieving and impenitent, and declares the differences 
 of a holy and corrupt conscience, the shame and fears of 
 the one, the confidence and serenity of the other." And this 
 is the sum of his sermon to Nicodemus, which was the fullest
 
 336 HISTORY OF CHRIST'S FIRST GOING 
 
 of mystery and speculation, and abstracted senses, of any that 
 he ever made, except that which he made immediately before 
 his passion ; all his other sermons being more practical. 
 
 4. From Jerusalem, Jesus goeth into the country of Judea, 
 attended by divers disciples, whose understandings were 
 brought into subjection and obedience to Christ, upon confi- 
 dence of the divinity of his miracles. There his disciples did 
 receive all comers, and baptized them, as John at the same 
 time did ; and by that ceremony admitted them to the disci- 
 pline and institution, according to the custom of the doctors 
 and great prophets among the Jews, whose baptizing their 
 scholars was the ceremony of their admission. As soon as 
 John heard it he acquitted himself in public, by renewing his 
 former testimony concerning Jesus ; affirming him " to be the 
 Messias, and now the time was come that Christ must in- 
 crease, and the Baptist suffer diminution ; for Christ came 
 from above, was above all, and the sum of his doctrine was 
 that which he had heard and seen from the Father, whom God 
 sent to that purpose, to whom God had set his seal, that he 
 was true who spake the words of God, whom the Father 
 loved, to whom he gave the Spirit without measure, and into 
 whose hands God had delivered all things ; this was he 
 whose testimony the world received not." And that they 
 might know not only what person they slighted, but how 
 great salvation also they neglected, he sums up all his ser- 
 mons, and finishes his mission with this saying; " He that 
 believeth on the Son, hath everlasting life ; and he that be- 
 lieveth not on the Son, shall not see life, but the wrath of 
 God abideth on him." a 
 
 5. For now that the Baptist had fulfilled his office of 
 bearing witness unto Jesus, God was pleased to give him his 
 writ of ease, and bring him to his reward upon this occasion. 
 John, who had so learned to despise the world and all its 
 exterior vanities and impertinent relations, did his duty justly, 
 and so without respect of persons, that as he reproved the 
 people for their prevarications, so he spared not Herod for 
 his ; but abstaining from all expresses of the spirit of scorn 
 and asperity, mingling no discontents, interests, nor mutinous 
 intimations with his sermons, he told Herod, " it was not 
 
 John, iii. 36.
 
 TO THE PASSOVER. 337 
 
 lawful for him to have his brother's wife." b For which sermon 
 he felt the furies and malice of a woman's spleen, was cast 
 into prison, and about a year after was sacrificed to the 
 scorn and pride of a lustful woman, and her immodest daugh- 
 ter ; being, at the end of the second year of Christ's preach- 
 ing, beheaded by Herod's command, who would not retract 
 his promise, because of his honour, and a rash vow he made 
 in the gaiety of his lust and complacences of his riotous 
 dancings. His head was brought up in a dish, and made a 
 festival-present to the young girl, who gave it to her mother: 
 a cruelty that was not known among the barbarisms of the 
 worst of people, to mingle banquetings with blood and sights 
 of death ; an insolence and inhumanity, for which the Roman 
 orators accused Q. Flaminius of treason, because, to satisfy 
 the wanton cruelty of Placentia, he caused a condemned 
 slave to be killed at supper ; and which had no precedent but 
 in the furies of Marius, who caused the head of the consul 
 Antonius to be brought up to him in his feasts, which he 
 handled with much pleasure and insolence. 
 
 6. But God's judgments, which sleep not long, d found 
 out Herod, and marked him for a curse. For the wife of 
 Herod, who was the daughter of Aretas, a king of Arabia 
 Petrsea, being repudiated by paction with Herodias, provoked 
 her father to commence a war with Herod ; who prevailed 
 against Herod in a great battle, defeating his whole army, 
 and forcing him to an inglorious flight : which the Jews gene- 
 rally expounded to be a judgment on him for the unworthy 
 
 b Montanistae, et cum bis Tertul. adv. Marcion. lib. iv. c. 34. aiunt Philippum 
 defunctum fuisse, et inde probare satagunt secundas nuptias illicitas esse. Sed 
 hoc tarn aperta fraude, ut agens adv. Catholicos Tertulliarius abstineat abs 
 tarn iniqua recitatione. Marcioni autem Evangelium neganti hoc obtrudere 
 in facili erat. 
 
 c Senec. cont. lib. v. Livius, lib. xxxix. Plut. in Mario. 
 d "Orris S S-cjjTsJv fj.i^ira.1 ra SeT, OTI 
 Oux, ivQus, >.?. ry X,v<? fttTta^(rxi 
 Touf ft-n Sixaiov;, vgolficta'ii/ t^Kxaufiiru. 
 E< yj vragawriK nfccv cti nftuglcci, 
 IIoXXu) S;a ^/3ov, xov S/' luffl^m r/>o*o>, 
 0Eov ffiftoivr civ' yy at Trts Tiftualas 
 " AvtuSiv ovffns, ry ipuffii ^uira.1 figoroi. 
 "Orav oi iftu/tttQiufiy, oipSsvrss xaxoi 
 Tivaufi vroivus vfri^aiffiv tv %govois. 
 
 Theodect. Grot. Stob. p. 123. 
 
 VOL. II. D D
 
 338 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 and barbarous execution and murder of John the Baptist ; 
 God, in his wisdom and severity, making one sin to be the 
 punishment of another, and neither of them both to pass 
 without the signature of a curse. And Nicephorus reports, 
 that the dancing daughter of Herodias passing over a frozen 
 lake the ice brake, and she fell up to the neck in water, and 
 her head was parted from her body by the violence of the 
 fragments shaken by the water and its own fall, and so 
 perished ; God having fitted a judgment to the analogy and 
 representment of her sin. Herodias herself, with her adul- 
 terous paramour, Herod, were banished to Lyons, in France, 
 by decree of the Roman senate, 6 where they lived inglo- 
 riously and died miserably ; so paying dearly for her triumphal 
 scorn, superadded to her crime of murder : for when she saw 
 the head of the Baptist, which her daughter, Salome, had 
 presented to her in a charger, she thrust the tongue through 
 with a needle, as Fulvia had formerly done to Cicero. But 
 herself paid the charges of her triumph. 
 
 SECTION XL 
 
 Considerations upon the first Journey of the Holy Jesus to 
 Jerusalem, when he whipped the Merchants out of the 
 Temple. 
 
 1. WHEN the feast came, and Jesus was ascended up to 
 Jerusalem, the first place we find him in is the temple ; where 
 not only was the area and court of religion, but, by occasion 
 of public conventions, the most opportune scene for trans- 
 action of his commission and his Father's business. And 
 those Christians who have been religious and affectionate, 
 even in the circumstances of piety, have taken this for prece- 
 dent, and accounted it a good express of the regularity of 
 their devotion and order of piety, at their first arrival to a 
 city to pay their first visits to God, the next to his servant, 
 the president of religious rites. First, they went into the 
 church, and worshipped ; then to the angel of the church, to 
 
 e Jos. Ant. lib. xviii. c.7. lib. i. Hist. c. 20..
 
 PURGING OF THE TEMPLE. 339 
 
 the bishop, and begged his blessing : and having thus com- 
 menced with the auspiciousness of religion, they had better 
 hopes their just affairs would succeed prosperously, which, 
 after the rites of Christian countries, had thus been begun 
 
 * O 
 
 with devotion and religious order. 
 
 2. When the holy Jesus entered the temple, and espied 
 a mart kept in the holy sept, a fair upon holy ground, he, 
 who suffered no transportations of anger in matters and acci- 
 dents temporal, was borne high with an ecstasy of zeal, and, 
 according to the custom of the zealots of the nation, took 
 upon him the office of a private infliction of punishment in 
 the cause of God, which ought to be dearer to every single 
 person than their own interest and reputation. What the 
 exterminating angel did to Heliodorus, who came into the 
 temple upon design of sacrilege, that the meekest Jesus did 
 to them who came with acts of profanation ; he whipped them 
 forth. And as usually good laws spring from ill manners, 
 and excellent sermons are occasioned by men's iniquities ; 
 now also our great Master, upon this accident, asserted the 
 sacredness of holy places in the words of a prophet, which 
 now he made a lesson evangelical : " My house shall be 
 called a house of prayer to all nations." 
 
 3. The beasts and birds there sold were brought for sacri- 
 fice ; and the banks of money were for the advantage of the 
 people that came from far, that their returns might be safe 
 and easy when they came to Jerusalem upon the employ- 
 ments of religion. But they were not yet fit for the temple ; 
 they who brought them thither purposed their own gain, and 
 meant to pass them through an unholy usage before they 
 could be made " anathemata," vows to God : and when re- 
 ligion is but the purpose at the second hand, it cannot hallow 
 a lay design, and make it fit to become a religious ministry, 
 much less sanctify an unlawful action. When Rachel stole 
 her father's gods, though possibly she might do it in zeal 
 against her father's superstition, yet it was occasion of a sad 
 accident to herself. For the Jews say, that Rachel died in 
 child-birth of her second son because of that imprecation of 
 Jacob, " With whomsoever thou findest thy gods let him 
 not live." 3 Saul pretended sacrifice when he spared the fat 
 
 Gen. xxxi. 32.
 
 310 CONSIDERATIONS UPON THE 
 
 cattle of Amalek ; and Micah was zealous when he made 
 him an ephod and a teraphim, and meant to make himself an 
 image for religion when he stole his mother's money : but 
 these are colours of religion, in which not only the world 
 but ourselves also are deceived by a latent purpose, which 
 we are willing to cover with a remote design of religion, lest 
 it should appear unhandsome in its own dressing. Thus 
 some believe a covetousness allowable, if they greedily heap 
 treasure with a purpose to build hospitals or colleges ; and 
 sinister acts of acquiring church-livings are not so soon con- 
 demned, if the design be to prefer an able person ; and actions 
 of revenge come near to piety, if it be to the ruin of an 
 ungodly man ; and indirect proceedings are made sacred, if 
 they be for the good of the holy cause. This is profaning 
 the temple with beasts brought for sacrifices, and dishonours 
 God by making himself accessary to his own dishonour, as 
 far as lies in them ; for it disserves him with a pretence of 
 religion : and, but that our hearts are deceitful, we should 
 easily perceive that the greatest business of the letter is 
 written in postscript ; the great pretence is the least purpose ; 
 and the latent covetousness or revenge, or the secular appen- 
 dix, is the main engine to which the end of religion is made 
 but instrumental and pretended. But men, when they sell a 
 muie, use to speak of the horse that begat him, not of the ass 
 that bore him. 
 
 4. The holy Jesus " made a whip of cords," to represent 
 and to chastise the implications and enfoldings of sin and 
 the cords of vanity. 1. There are some sins that of them- 
 selves are a whip of cords : those are the crying sins, that, 
 by their degree and malignity, speak loud for vengeance ; or 
 such as have great disreputation, and are accounted the 
 basest issues of a caitive disposition ; or such which are 
 unnatural and unusual; or which, by public observation, are 
 marked with the signature of Divine judgments. Such are 
 murder, oppression of widows and orphans, detaining the 
 labourer's hire, lusts against nature, parricide, treason, be- 
 traying a just trust in great instances and base manners, 
 lying to a king, perjury in a priest : these carry Cain's mark 
 upon them, or Judas' sting, or Manasses' sorrow, unless 
 they be made impudent by the spirit of obduration. 2. But 
 there are some sins that bear shame upon them, and are used
 
 PURGING OF THE TEMPLE. 341 
 
 as correctives of pride and vanity ; and if they do their cure, 
 they are converted into instruments of good by the great 
 power of the Divine grace : but if the spirit of the man 
 grows impudent and hardened against the shame, that which 
 commonly follows is the worst string of the whip, a direct 
 consignation to a reprobate spirit. 3. Other sins there are, 
 for the chastising of which Christ takes the whip into his 
 own hand ; and there is much need ; when sins are the 
 customs of a nation, and marked with no exterior disadvan- 
 tage, or have such circumstances of encouragement that they 
 are unapt to disquiet a conscience, or make our beds uneasy, 
 till the pillows be softened with penitential showers. In both 
 these cases, the condition of a sinner is sad and miserable. 
 For " it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living 
 God ;" his hand is heavy, and his sword is sharp, and 
 " pierces to the dividing the marrow and the bones :" and 
 he that considers the infinite distance between God and us, 
 must tremble when he remembers that he is to feel the 
 issues of that anger, which he is not certain whether or no it 
 will destroy him infinitely and eternally. 4. But if the whip 
 be given into our hands, that we become executioners of the 
 Divine wrath, it is sometimes worse ; for we seldom strike 
 ourselves for emendation, but add sin to sin, till we perish 
 miserably and inevitably. God scourges us often into repent- 
 ance ; but when a sin is the whip of another sin, the rod is 
 put into our hands, who, like blind men, strike with a rude 
 and undiscerning hand, and, because we love the punishment, 
 do it without intermission or choice, and have no end but 
 ruin. 
 
 5. When the holy Jesus had whipped the merchants in 
 the temple, they took away all the instruments of their sin. 
 For a judgment is usually the commencement of repentance : 
 love is the last of graces, and seldom at the beginning of a 
 new life, but is reserved to the perfections and ripeness of a 
 Christian. We begin in fear: "The fear of the Lord is the 
 beginning of wisdom : when he smote them, then they turned, 
 and inquired early after God." b And afterwards the im- 
 presses of fear continue like a hedge of thorns about us, to 
 restrain our dissolutions within the awfulness of the Divine 
 
 b Psalm Ixxviii. 34.
 
 342 CONSIDERATIONS, &C. 
 
 majesty, that it may preserve what was from the same prin- 
 ciple begun. This principle of their emendation was from 
 God, and therefore innocent and holy ; and the very purpose 
 of Divine threatenings is, that upon them, as upon one of the 
 great hinges, the piety of the greatest part of men should 
 turn : and the effect was answerable ; but so are not the 
 actions of all those who follow this precedent in the tract of 
 the letter. For indeed there have been some reformations, 
 which have been so like this, that the greatest alteration 
 which hath been made, was, that they carried all things out 
 of the temple, the money, and the tables, and the sacrifice ; 
 and the temple itself went at last. But these men's scourge 
 is to follow after ; and Christ, the Prince of the Catholic 
 Church, will provide one of his own contexture, more severe 
 than the stripes which Heliodorus felt from the infliction of 
 the exterminating angel. But the Holy Spirit of God, by 
 making provision against such a reformation, hath prophetic- 
 ally declared the aptnesses which are in pretences of religious 
 alterations to degenerate into sacrilegious desires : " Thou 
 that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?" In this 
 case there is no amendment ; only one sin resigns to another, 
 and the person still remains under its power and the same 
 dominion. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O eternal Jesu, thou bright image of thy Father's glories, 
 whose light did shine to all the world, when thy heart was 
 inflamed with zeal and love of God and of religion, let a 
 coal from thine altar, fanned with the wings of the holy 
 Dove, kindle in my soul such holy flames, that I may be 
 zealous of thy honour and glory, forward in religious 
 duties, earnest in their pursuit, prudent in their managing, 
 ingenuous in my purposes, making my religion to serve no 
 end but of thy glories, and the obtaining of thy promises : 
 and so sanctify my soul and my body, that I may be a 
 holy temple, fit and prepared for the inhabitation of thy 
 ever-blessed Spirit, whom grant that I may never grieve 
 by admitting any impure thing to desecrate the place, and 
 
 Rom. ii. 22.
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 313 
 
 unhallow the courts of his abode ; but give me a pure soul 
 in a chaste and healthful body, a spirit full of holy simpli- 
 city, and designs of great ingenuity, and perfect religion, 
 that I may intend what thou commandest, and may with 
 proper instruments prosecute what I so intend, and by thy 
 aids may obtain the end of my labours, the rewards of 
 obedience and holy living, even the society and inheritance 
 of Jesus, in the participation of the joys of thy temple, 
 where thou dwellest and reignest with the Father and the 
 Holy Ghost, O eternal Jesus. Amen. 
 
 DISCOURSE VIII. 
 
 Of the Religion of Holy Places. 
 
 1 . THE holy Jesus brought a Divine warrant for his zeal. 
 The selling sacrifices, and the exchange of money, and every 
 lay employment, did violence and dishonour to the temple, 
 which was hallowed to ecclesiastical ministries, and set apart 
 for offices of religion, for the use of holy things ; for it was 
 God's house : and so is every house by public designation 
 separate for prayer or other uses of religion ; it is God's 
 house. " My house." God had a propriety in it, and had 
 set his mark on it, even his own name. And therefore it 
 was, in the Jews' idiom of speech, called " the mountain of 
 the Lord's house," and " the house of the Lord," by David 
 frequently : God hath put his name into all places appointed 
 for solemn worship : " In all places where I record my name, 
 I will come unto thee, and bless thee." a For God, who was 
 never visible to mortal eye, was pleased to make himself 
 presential by substitution of his name ; that is, in certain 
 places he hath appointed that his name shall be called upon, 
 and, by promising and imparting such blessings, which he 
 hath made consequent to the invocation of his name, hath 
 made such places to be a certain determination of some 
 special manner of his presence. For God's name is not a 
 distinct thing from himself, not an idea, and it cannot be put 
 
 * Eiod. ix. 24.
 
 344 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 into a place in literal signification : the expression is to be 
 resolved into some other sense : God's name is that whereby 
 he is known, by which he is invocated, that which is the 
 most immediate publication of his essence, nearer than which 
 we cannot go unto him : and because God is essentially 
 present in all places, when he makes himself present in one 
 place more than another, it cannot be understood to any 
 other purpose, but that in such places he gives special bless- 
 ings and graces, or that in those places he appoints his name, 
 that is, himself, specially to be invocated. 
 
 2. So that, when God " puts his name" in any place by 
 a special manner, it signifies that there himself is in that 
 manner : but, in separate and hallowed places, God hath 
 expressed that he puts his name with a purpose it should be 
 called upon ; therefore, in plain signification, it is thus : In 
 consecrated places God himself is present to be invoked ; 
 that is, there he is most delighted to hear the prayers we 
 make unto him. For all the expressions of Scripture, of 
 " God's house, the tabernacle of God, God's dwellings, put- 
 ting his name there, his sanctuary," are resolved into that 
 saying of God to Solomon, who prayed that he would hear 
 the prayers of necessitous people in that place : God granting 
 the request, expressed it thus, " I have sanctified the house 
 which thou hast built :" b that is, the house which thou hast 
 designed for my worship, I have designed for your blessing ; 
 what you have dedicated, I have accepted ; what you have 
 consecrated, I have hallowed ; I have taken it to the same 
 purpose to which your desires and designation pretended it, 
 in your first purposes and expense. So that, since the pur- 
 pose of man in separating places of worship is, that thither, 
 by order and with convenience, and in communities of men, 
 God may be worshipped and prayed unto, God having de- 
 clared that he accepts of such separate places to the same 
 purposes, says, that there he will be called upon, that such 
 places shall be places of advantage to our devotions in 
 respect of human order, and Divine acceptance and bene- 
 diction. 
 
 3. Now these are therefore God's houses, because they 
 were given by men, and accepted by God, for the service of 
 
 b 1 Kings, ix. 3.
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 345 
 
 God and the offices of religion. And this is not the effect or 
 result of any distinct covenant God hath made with man, in 
 any period of the world; but it is merely a favour of God, 
 either hearing the prayer of dedication, or complying with 
 human order or necessities. For there is nothing in the 
 covenant of Moses' law, that, by virtue of special stipula- 
 tion, makes the assignment of a house for the service of God 
 to be proper to Moses' rite. Not only because God had 
 memorials and determinations of this manner of his presence 
 before Moses' law, as at Bethel, where Jacob laid the first 
 stone of the Church (nothing but a stone c was God's memo- 
 rial), and the beginning and first rudiments of a temple ; but 
 also because after Moses 1 law was given, as long as the nation 
 was ambulatory, so were their places and instruments of 
 religion : and although the ark was not confined to a place 
 till Solomon's time, yet God was pleased in this manner to 
 confine himself to the ark ; and in all places, wherever his 
 name was put, even in synagogues, and oratories, and thresh- 
 ing-floors, when they were hallowed with an altar and religion, 
 thither God came, that is, there he heard them pray, and 
 answered and blessed accordingly, still in proportion to that 
 degree of religion which was put upon them. And those 
 places, when they had once entertained religion, grew sepa- 
 rate and sacred for ever. For, therefore, David bought the 
 threshing-floor of Araunah, that it might never return to 
 common use any more : for it had been no trouble or incon- 
 venience to Araunah to have used his floor for one solemnity; 
 but he offered to give it, and David resolved to buy it, be- 
 cause it must, of necessity, be aliened from common uses, to 
 which it could never return any more when once it had been 
 the instrument of a religious solemnity : and yet this was no 
 part of Moses' law, that every place of a temporary sacrifice 
 should be " holy for ever." David had no guide in this but 
 right reason, and the religion of all the world. For such 
 things, which were great instruments of public ends, and 
 things of highest use, were also, in all societies of men, of 
 greatest honour, and immured by reverence and the security 
 
 c Nee fortuitum spernere cespitem 
 Leges sinebant, oppida publico 
 Sumplu jubentes, et deorum 
 Tenipla novo decorare saxo Hor. lib. ii. od. 15.
 
 346 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 of laws. For honour and reputation is not a thing inherent 
 in any creature, but depends upon the estimate of God or 
 men, who, either in diffusion or representation, become foun- 
 tains of a derivative honour. Thus some men are honourable; 
 that is, those who are fountains of honour in civil account 
 have commanded that they shall be honoured. And so places 
 and things are made honourable, that as honourable persons 
 are to be distinguished from others by honourable usages and 
 circumstances proper to them, so also should places and 
 things (upon special reason separate) have an usage proper 
 to them, when, by a public instrument or minister, they are 
 so separated. No common usage then ; something proper to 
 tell what they are, and to what purposes they are designed, 
 and to signify their separation and extraordinariness. Such 
 are the person of the prince, the archives and records of a 
 kingdom, the walls and great defences of the imperial city, 
 the eagles and ensigns of war amongst the Romans ; and, 
 above all things, though not above all persons, the temples 
 and altars, and all the instruments of religion. And there is 
 much reason in it. For thus a servant of a king, though his 
 employment be naturally mean, yet is more honourable, be- 
 cause he relates to the most excellent person : and therefore 
 much more those things which relate to God. And though 
 this be the reason why it should be so ; yet, for this and 
 other reasons, they that have power, that is, they who are 
 acknowledged to be the fountains and the channels of honour, 
 I mean the supreme power and public fame, have made it 
 actually to be so. For whatsoever all wise men, and all good 
 men, and all public societies, and all supreme authority, hath 
 commanded to be honoured or revered, that is, honourable 
 and reverend ; and this honour and reverence is to be ex- 
 pressed according to the customs of the nation, and instru- 
 ments of honour proper to the nature of the thing or person 
 respectively. Whatsoever is esteemed so, is so ; because 
 honour and noble separations are relative actions and terms, 
 creatures and productions of fame, and the voice of princes, 
 and the sense of people : and they who will not honour those 
 things or those persons, which are thus decreed to be honour- 
 able, have no communications with the civilities of humanity, 
 or the guises of wise nations; they do not " give honour to 
 whom honour belongs." Now, that which in civil account
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 347 
 
 we call " honourable," the same in religious account we call 
 " sacred :" for by both these words we mean things or per- 
 sons made separate and retired from common opinion and 
 vulgar usages, by reason of some excellence really inherent in 
 them (such as are excellent men) ; or for their relation to 
 excellent persons, or great ends, public or religious,* 1 (and so 
 servants of princes, and ministers of religion, and its instru- 
 ments and utensils, are made honourable or sacred :) and the 
 expressions of their honour are all those actions and usages 
 which are contrary to despite, and above the usage of vulgar 
 things or places.* Whatsoever is sacred, that is honourable 
 for its religious relation ; and whatsoever is honourable, that 
 also is sacred (that is, separate from the vulgar usages and 
 account) for its civil excellence or relation. The result is 
 this : that when public authority, or the consent of a nation/ 
 hath made any place sacred for the uses of religion, we must 
 esteem it sacred, just as we esteem persons honourable who 
 are so honoured. And thus are judges, and the very places 
 of judicature, the king's presence-chamber, the chair of state, 
 the senate-house, the royal ensigns of a prince, whose gold 
 and purple, in its natural capacity, hath in it no more dignity 
 than the money of the bank, or the cloth of the mart ; but it 
 hath much more for its signification and relative use. And 
 it is certain, these things, whose excellence depends upon 
 their relation, must receive the degree of their honour in that 
 proportion they have to their term and foundation : and 
 therefore what belongs to God (as holy places of religion) 
 must rise highest in this account ; I mean higher than any 
 other places. And this is besides the honour which God 
 hath put upon them by his presence and his title to them, 
 which, in all religions, he hath signified to us. 
 
 4. Indeed, among the Jews, as God had confined his 
 Church, and the rites of religion, to be used only in com- 
 munion and participation with the nation, so also he had 
 limited his presence, and was more sparing of it than in the 
 
 d Religiosum est quod propter sanctitatem aliquam remotum ac sepositum. 
 a nobis est ; verbum a reiinquendo dictum, tanquam certmonia a carcndo. 
 Gel. lib. iv. c. 9. 
 
 e Ceremoniae deorum, sanctitas regum. Jul. Ccesar npud Sueton. 
 
 1 Ex lege cujusque civitatis jubentur dii coli. Dictum 5 Sapient, apud 
 Xenophon. 2srivS{Jv Ji XKI Si/sjy *ar r<x crarj/a ixafroi; Tgafftxti, Epict. C. 38.
 
 348 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 time of the Gospel his Son declared he would be. " It was 
 said of old, that at Jerusalem men ought to worship," that is, 
 by a solemn, public, and great address in the capital expresses 
 of religion, in the distinguishing rites of liturgy ; for else it 
 had been no new thing. For, in ordinary prayers, God was 
 then, and long before, pleased to hear Jeremiah in thedungeon, 
 Manasses in prison, Daniel in the lion's den, Jonas in the 
 belly of the deep, and in the offices yet. more solemn in the 
 proseuchae, in the houses of prayer which the Jews had, not 
 only in their dispersion, but even in Palestine, for their 
 diurnal and nocturnal offices. But when the holy Jesus had 
 " broken down the partition-wall," then the most solemn 
 offices of religion were as unlimited as their private devotions 
 were before; for wherever a temple should be built, thither 
 God would come, if he were " worshipped spiritually and in 
 truth;" that is, according to the rites of Christ, (who is 
 " grace and truth,") and the dictate of the Spirit, and analogy 
 of the Gospel. All places were now alike to build churches 
 in, or memorials for God, God's houses. And that our blessed 
 Saviour discourses of places of public worship to the woman 
 of Samaria, is notorious, because the whole question was 
 concerning the great addresses of Moses' rites, whether at 
 Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim, which were the places of the 
 right and the schismatical temple, the confinements of the 
 whole religion: and in antithesis Jesus said, " Nor here nor 
 there shall be the solemnities of address to God, but in all 
 places you may build a temple, and God will dwell in it." 
 
 5. And this hath descended from the first beginnings of 
 religion down to the consummation of it in the perfections of 
 the Gospel. For the apostles of our Lord carried the offices 
 of the Gospel into the temple of Jerusalem ; there they 
 preached, and prayed, and paid vows, but never, that we read 
 of, offered sacrifice : which shews, that the offices purely 
 evangelical were proper to be done in any of God's proper 
 places, and that thither they went not in compliance with 
 Moses' rites, but merely for Gospel duties, or for such 
 offices which were common to Moses and Christ, such as 
 were prayers and vows. While the temple was yet standing, 
 they had peculiar places for the assemblies of the faithful, 
 where either by accident, or observation, or religion, or 
 choice, they met regularly. And I instance, in the house
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 349 
 
 of John, surnamed Mark, which, as Alexander reports in the 
 life of St. Barnabas, was consecrated by many actions of 
 religion, by our blessed Saviour's eating the passover, his 
 institution of the holy eucharist, his farewell sermon ; and 
 the apostles met there in the octaves of Easter, whither 
 Christ came again, and hallowed it with his presence ; and 
 there, to make up the relative sanctification complete, the 
 Holy Ghost descended upon their heads in " the feast of 
 Pentecost :" and this was erected into a fair fabric, and is 
 mentioned as a famous church by St. Jerome 5 and V. Bede ; 
 in which, as Adrichomius adds, St. Peter preached that 
 sermon which was miraculously prosperous in the conversion 
 of three thousand ; there St. James, brother of our Lord, 
 was consecrated first bishop of Jerusalem ; St. Stephen, and 
 the other six, were there ordained deacons ; there the apostles 
 kept their first council, and compiled their creed ; by these 
 actions, and their frequent conventions, shewing the same 
 reason, order, and prudence of religion, in assignation of 
 special places of Divine service, which were ever observed by 
 all the nations, and religions, and wise men of the world. 
 And it were a strange imagination to fancy, that, in Christian 
 religion, there is any principle contrary to that wisdom of 
 God and all the world, 11 which, for order, for necessity, for 
 convenience, for the solemnity of worship, hath set apart 
 places for God and for religion. Private prayer had always 
 an unlimited residence and relation, even under Moses* 
 law ; but the public solemn prayer of sacrifice in the law 
 of Moses was restrained to one temple ; in the law of nature 
 it was not confined to one, but yet determined to public and 
 solemn places ; and when the holy Jesus disparked the en- 
 closures of Moses, we all returned to the permissions and 
 liberty of the natural law, in which, although the public and 
 solemn prayers were confined to a temple, yet the temple was 
 not confined to a place ; but they might be any where, so 
 they were at all ; instruments of order, conveniences of as- 
 sembling, residences of religion : and God, who always loved 
 order, and was apt to hear all holy and prudent prayers, 
 (and therefore, also, the prayers of consecration,) hath often 
 
 K Epist. 27. De Locis Sanct. c. 3. In Descript. Hieros. n. 6.
 
 350 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 declared that he loves such places, that he will dwell in them ; 
 not that they are advantages to him, but that he is pleased 
 to make them so to us. And therefore all nations of the 
 world built public houses for religion ; and, since all ages of 
 the church did so too, 1 it had need be a strong and a con- 
 vincing argument that must shew they were deceived. And 
 " if any man list to be contentious," he must be answered 
 with St. Paul's reproof, " We have no such custom, nor the 
 churches of God." 
 
 6. Thus St. Paul reproved the Corinthians for " despising 
 the church of God" k by such uses, which were therefore unfit 
 for God's, because they were proper for their own, that is, for 
 common houses. And although they were at first, and in the 
 descending ages, so afflicted by the tyranny of enemies, that 
 they could not build many churches ; yet some they did, and 
 the churches themselves suffered part of the persecution. 
 For so Eusebius reports, that when, under Severus and Gor- 
 dianus, Philip and Galienus, the Christian affairs were in a 
 tolerable condition, they built churches in great number and 
 expense. But when the persecution waxed hot under Dio- 
 cletian, down went the churches, upon a design to extinguish 
 or disadvantage the religion. Maximinus gave leave to re- 
 build them. Upon which rescript (saith the story) the Christ- 
 ians were overjoyed, and raised them up to an incredible 
 height and incomparable beauty. 1 This was Christian religion 
 then, and so it hath continued ever since ; and, unless we 
 should have new reason and new revelation, it must continue 
 so till our churches are exchanged for thrones, and our cha- 
 pels for seats placed before the Lamb in the eternal temple of 
 celestial Jerusalem. 
 
 7. And to this purpose it is observed, that the holy Jesus 
 first ejected the beasts of sacrifice out of the temple, and then 
 proclaimed the place holy, and the scene of representing 
 
 ' Omnes ad orandum in idem loci convenite : sit una communis precatio, 
 una mens, una spes in cbaritate et fide inculpata in Christum Jesum; quo 
 nihil est praestantius. Omnes velut unus quispiam ad templum Dei concur- 
 rite, velut ad unum altare, ad unum Jesum Christum, &c. S. Ignat. ad 
 Magnes. 
 
 k 1 Cor. xi. 22. 
 
 > ffibr^'.a.; rt -rv\a.t */ %et).x.ieuf ev^auf. 'Axz/SaSaa; Si irXl<W; 
 
 Ti^x.vx.Xuffa./j.tvoi, If %ufe0$oi eix.av av 
 Lucia n. Philopat. de Templo Christiana.
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 351 
 
 prayers, which in type intimates the same thing which is 
 involved in the expression of the next words, " My house 
 shall be called the house of prayer to all nations ; " now and 
 for ever, to the Jews and to the Gentiles, in all circumstances 
 and variety of time and nation, God's houses are holy in order 
 to holy uses ; the time as unlimited as the nations were inde- 
 finite and universal." 1 Which is the more observable because 
 it was of the outward courts, not whither Moses' rites alone 
 were admitted, but the natural devotion of Jews and Gentile 
 proselytes, that Christ affirmed it to be holy, to be the house 
 of God, and the place of prayer. So that the religion of 
 public places of prayer is not a rite of Levi, but a natural and 
 prudent circumstance and advantage of religion, in which all 
 wise men agree, who therefore must have some common 
 principle, with influence upon all the world, which must be 
 the univocal cause of the consent of all men : which common 
 principle must either be a dictate of natural or prime reason, 
 or else some tradition from the first parents of mankind ; 
 which, because it had order in it, beauty, religion, and con- 
 firmation from Heaven, and no reason to contest against it, 
 it hath surprised the understanding and practices of all na- 
 tions. And, indeed, we find that, even in Paradise, God had 
 that which is analogical to a church, a distinct place where 
 he manifested himself present in proper manner : for Adam 
 and Eve, when they had sinned, " hid themselves from the 
 presence of the Lord ; " and this was the word in all descent 
 of the Church, for the being of God in holy places, " the 
 presence of the Lord was there." And, probably, when Adam, 
 from this intimation, or a greater direction, had taught Cain 
 and Abel to offer sacrifice to God in a certain place, where 
 they were observed of each in their several offerings, it 
 became one of the rules of religion which was derived to 
 their posterity by tradition, the only way they had to com- 
 municate the dictates of Divine commandment. 
 
 8. There is no more necessary to be added in behalf of 
 holy places, and to assert them into the family and relatives 
 
 m Quod ab omnibus gentibus observatum est, id non nisi a Deo sancitum est. 
 Socrates. 
 
 Xjovai xgaTjjStv 'i&ef yivavf xoii Sgvir x.iia.s /V^ujaTSjov. IV/cet. 
 
 TaJv KvSufa* af$a*.iff<ra.ra. ravrou; olxtiv, o'i av roll nt^ouffiv UStffi xai fif&off, Hi 
 xat %ttgu w, Hxirrx ^tatfo^a; irofa<rtvuiri. Alcibiad. aptid Tltucijd. lib. vi.
 
 352 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 of religion ; our estimate and deportment towards them is 
 matter of practice, and therefore of proper consideration. 
 To which purpose I consider, that holy places being the 
 residence of God's name upon earth, there where he hath 
 put it, that, hy fiction of law, it may be the sanctuary n and 
 the last resort in all calamities and need, God hath sent his 
 agents to possess them in person for him. Churches and 
 oratories are regions and courts of angels, and they are there 
 not only to minister to the saints, but also they possess them 
 in the right of God. There they are : so the greatest and 
 Prince of Spirits tells us, the Holy Ghost; " I saw the Lord 
 sitting upon his throne, and his train filled the temple ; above 
 it stood the seraphim ; " that was God's train, and therefore 
 holy David knew that his addresses to God were in the 
 presence of angels : " I will praise thee with my whole heart, 
 before the gods will I sing praise unto thee:" 1 " before the 
 angels, q so it is in the Septuagint. And that we might know 
 where or how the kingly worshipper would pay this adora- 
 tion, he adds, " I will worship towards thy holy temple.'' 
 And this was so known by him, that it became expressive of 
 God's manner of presence in heaven : " The chariots of God 
 are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels, and the Lord 
 is among them as in Sinai, in the holy place ;" r God in the 
 midst of angels, and the angels in the midst of " the holy 
 place ; " and God in heaven in the midst of that holy circle, 
 as sure as he is amongst angels in the recesses of his sanc- 
 tuary. Were the rudiments of the law worthy of an attendance 
 of angels? and are the memorials of the Gospel destitute of 
 so brave a retinue ? Did the beatified spirits wait upon the 
 types ? and do they decline the office at the ministration of 
 the substance? Is the nature of man made worse since the 
 incarnation of the Son of God ? and have the angels pur- 
 chased an exemption from their ministry since Christ became 
 our brother ? We have little reason to think so : and there- 
 fore St. Paul still makes use of the argument to press women 
 to modesty and humility in churches, " because of the angels." 
 
 n Psalm xxvii. 4-6. Isaiah, vi. 1. P Psalm cxxxviii. 1, 2. 
 
 1 'Etatrie a<yyi>.uv, LXX. ttagrvgtfi.ai $i lyea ftit L/J.UV ra ayia., x.ait <raus I'.a 
 y'i\u( rav Siev Orat. Agrip. apud Joseph, lib. ii. c. 16. de Bella Judaic. 
 ' Psalm Izviii. 17.
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 353 
 
 And upon the same stock St. Chrysostome" chides the people 
 of his diocese for walking, and laughing, and prating in 
 churches: "The church is not a shop of manufactures or 
 merchandise ; but the place of angels and of archangels, the 
 court of God, and the image or representment of heaven 
 itself." 
 
 9. For if we consider that Christianity is something more 
 than ordinary, that there are mysteries in our religion and in 
 none else, that God's " angels are ministering spirits for our 
 good," and especially about the conveyances of our prayers; 
 either we must think very low of Christianity, or that greater 
 things are in it than the presence of angels in our churches : 
 and yet if there were no more, we should do well to behave 
 ourselves there with the thoughts and apprehensions of 
 heaven about us ; always remembering that our business 
 there is an errand of religion, and God is the object of our 
 worshippings ; and therefore, although by our weakness we 
 are fixed in the lowness of men, yet because God's infinity 
 is our object, it were very happy if our actions did bear 
 some few degrees of a proportionable and commensurate 
 address. 
 
 10. Now that the angels are there in the right of God, 
 and are a manner and an exhibition of the Divine presence, 
 is therefore certain, because, whenever it is said in the Old 
 Testament that God appeared, it was by an angel ; and the 
 law itself, in the midst of all the glorious terrors of its mani- 
 festation, "was ordained by angels," and "a word spoken 
 by angels ;" and yet God is said to have descended upon the 
 mount : and in the greatest glory that ever shall be revealed 
 till the consummation of all things, the instrument of the 
 Divine splendour is the apparition of angels ; for when the 
 holy Jesus " shall come in the glory of his Father," it is 
 added by way of explication, that is, " with an host of 
 angels." 
 
 11. The result is those words of God to his people, " Re- 
 
 TTI Ktti a.yyi\at <xa.^ts7rix.tt.<n TM !ii7, &c. Homil. 16. in 1 Cor. et de 
 Sacerd. 
 
 Non dubites assistere angelum quando Christus assistit, Christus immola- 
 tur S. Ambros. in cap. i. Luae. 
 
 Angeli siquidem circumfusi sacra custodiuut, et diviuu freti potentia sacerdoti 
 subserviunt. . R. Canutus in Leg. Ecc. c. 4. 
 
 VOL. II. E E
 
 354 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 verence my sanctuary."' For what God loves in an especial 
 manner, it is most fit we should esteem accordingly. " God 
 loves the gates of Sion more than all the dwellings of Jacob."" 
 The least turf of hallowed glebe is, with God himself, of more 
 value than all the champaign of common possession ; it is 
 better in all senses: "The temple is better than gold," said 
 our blessed Saviour;" and therefore it were well we should 
 do that which is expressed in the command, of giving reve- 
 rence to it, for we are too apt to pay undue devotions to gold. 
 Which precept the holiest of that nation expressed by wor- 
 shipping towards the sanctuary, by pulling off their shoes 
 when they went into it, y by making it the determination of 
 their religious addresses, by falling down low upon the earth 
 in their accesses, by opening their windows towards it in their 
 private devotions, by calling it the glory of their nation ; as 
 is certain in the instances of David, Daniel, and the wife of 
 Phinehas. I shall not need to say that the devouter Christ- 
 ians in the first ages did worship God with solemnities of 
 address whenever they entered into their oratories. It was 
 a civility Jesus commanded his disciples to use to common 
 houses, " When ye enter into a house salute it :" I suppose 
 he means the dwellers in it. And it is certain whatever 
 those devouter people did in their religious approaches, they 
 designed it to God, who was the major-domo, the master of 
 those assemblies : and thus did the convinced Christian, in 
 St. Paul's discourse, when he came into the church where 
 they were prophesying in a known language ; " The secrets 
 of his heart are made manifest, and so, falling down on his 
 face, he will worship God." z 
 
 12. It was no unhandsome expression of reverencing 
 God's sanctuary, that pious people ever used in bestowing 
 costly and fair ornaments upon it : for so all the Christians 
 
 Lev. xix. 30. " Psalm Ixxxvii. 2. x Matt, xxiii. 17. 
 
 T 'A*u#alt>reuf Sum xeu it^/xtxuvM, dixit Pythagoras. Maimonides ait nefas 
 fuisse Judaeis calceatis ingredi sanctuarium, aut vestitis vestibus opificum. 
 Justin. Martyr, ait gentes in sacris a.*o\ovt.a6a.i. 
 
 Intramus templa compositi, ad sacrificium accessuri vultum submittimus, 
 togam adducimus, in omne argumentum modtstias fingimur. Sen. 
 
 Extemplo illo te ducam ubi uon despuas. Ncevius in TriphaLto. 
 
 Quo ore Thurarius Christianas, si per templa transibit, fumantes aras despuel? 
 m-Tert. de Idol. c. 1. Con. Gang. c. 5. 
 
 * 1 Cor. ziv. 25.
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 355 
 
 did ; as soon as themselves came from contempt and scorn, 
 they raised Christian oratories to an equal portion of their 
 honour ; and by this way they thought they did honour to 
 God, who was the Numen of the place. Not that a rich 
 house or costly offertory is better in respect of God ; a for to 
 him all is alike, save that in equal abilities our devotion is 
 distinguished by them ; and be the offering never so con- 
 temptible it is a rich devotion that gives the best we have : 
 because, although if all the wealth of the Levant were united 
 into a present it were short of God's infinity ; yet such an 
 offertory, or any best we have, makes demonstration that if 
 we had an offering infinitely better, we should give it to 
 express our love and our belief of God's infinite merit and 
 perfection. And, therefore, let not " the widow's two mites" 
 become a precedent to the instance and value of our dona- 
 tion ; and because she who gave no more was accepted, 
 think that two farthings is as fit to be cast into the corban as 
 two thousand pounds. For the reason why our blessed Saviour 
 commended the widow's oblation was for the grealness of it, 
 not the srnallness ; " she gave all she had, even all her living;" 
 therefore she was accepted. And indeed, since God gives to 
 us more than enough, beyond our necessities, much for our 
 convenience, much for ease, much for repute, much for public 
 compliances, for variety, for content, for pleasure, for orna- 
 ment ; we should deal unworthily with God Almighty, if we 
 limit and restrain our returns to him by confining them within 
 the narrow bounds of mere necessity. Certainly beggarly ser- 
 vices and cheapness is not more pleasing to God than a rich 
 and magnificent address. b To the best of essences, the best 
 
 * Hgof yag ra> ixaraftfio.; B-uffavra p.n f&ir tiiftfiovi yvufty;, xcu Jtinia.v'ofuioi <ru} 
 i7 f^aff&iityfi.'na; TO, vag' aiirou oeagtt, avraxgivcrai [rii/S^sfJ, *AXX /MI tvuSt ^aibpo; 
 iya*Xtwi/ 'Ef/tt/owjsf. T UTsX<rraT Tgaxgitay rr,f rafaurti; (roXt/TsXelaf, Sri 3j 
 &s<xr/3s/'a; y-yuftri xtxafffttira' ft,ir u.v<rrt; yo./> 'Xo.ird S{iXj, KOI Hutu raurris i3t 
 6'aT 0j'X ii x-ert yiteira. Hieroc, in Pyth. 
 
 Plebs devota veni, perque hjec commercia disce 
 Terreno censu regna superna peti. 
 
 Simplicius P. in Eipositione Ecclesies S. Andrearue in Roma. 
 b Delicta majorum immeritus lues, 
 Romane, donee templa refeceris, 
 ^Edescjue labentes deorum, et 
 
 Foeda nigro simulachra fumo. Hor. lib. iii. od. 6. 
 
 Impietatis notatur Zeno, quod dixerit li^a. Star fin eixa$afe.t7v. Et barbararum 
 gentium mos erat aras diis ponere iu lucis, nemoribus, et moutium jugis, eo 
 quod deos templis includendos non esse dixerant.
 
 356 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 of presents is most proportionable : and although the service 
 of the soul and spirit is most delectable and esteemed by 
 God ; yet, because our souls are served by things perishing 
 and material, and we are of that constitution, that by the 
 body we serve the spirit, and by both we serve God, as the 
 spirit is chiefly to be offered to God because it is better than 
 the body, so the richest oblation is the best in an equal power 
 and the same person, because it is the best of things material : 
 and although it hath not the excellence of the spirit, it hath 
 an excellence that a cheap oblation hath not ; and besides 
 the advantage of the natural value, it can no otherwise be 
 spoiled than a meaner offering may ; it is always capable of 
 the same commendation from the piety of the presenter's 
 spirit, and may be as much purified and made holy as the 
 cheaper or the more contemptible. God hath nowhere ex- 
 pressed that he accepts of a cheaper offering, but when we 
 are not able to give him better. When the people brought 
 offerings more than enough for the tabernacle, Moses re- 
 strained their forwardness by saying " it was enough," but 
 yet commended the disposition highly, and wished it might 
 be perpetual : but God chid the people when they let his 
 house lie waste, without reparation of its decaying beauty ; 
 and therefore sent famines upon the land, and a curse into 
 their estate, because they would not, by giving a portion to 
 religion, sanctify and secure all the rest. For the way for a 
 man to be a saver by his religion, is to deposit one part of 
 his estate in the temple and one in the hands of the poor ; 
 for these are God's treasury and stewards respectively : and 
 this is "laying up treasures in heaven;" and besides that it 
 will procure blessing to other parts, it will help to save our 
 souls ; and that is good husbandry that is worth the saving. 
 13. For I consider that those riches and beauties in 
 churches and religious solemnities, which add nothing to 
 God, add much devotion to us, and much honour and efficacy 
 to devotion. For since impression is made upon the soul 
 by the intervening of corporal things, our religion and devo- 
 tion of the soul receives the addition of many degrees by 
 such instruments. Insomuch that we see persons of the 
 greatest fancy, and such who are most pleased with outward 
 
 c T* aifSjfu xaXa., xai town xa,'/.ui sixevs;Phil<>.
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 357 
 
 fairnesses, are most religious. Great understandings make 
 religion lasting and reasonable ; but great fancies make it 
 more scrupulous, strict, operative, and effectual. And there- 
 fore it is strange, that we shall bestow such great expenses 
 to make our own houses convenient and delectable, that we 
 may entertain ourselves with complacency and appetite ; and 
 yet think that religion is not worth the ornament, nor our 
 fancies fit to be carried into the choice and prosecution of 
 religious actions, with sweetness, entertainments, and fair 
 propositions. If we say, that God is not the better for a rich 
 house, or a costly service ; we may also remember, that 
 neither are we the better for rich clothes ; and the sheep will 
 keep us as modest, as wann, and as clean, as the silk- worm ; 
 and a gold chain, or a carkenet of pearl, does no more con- 
 tribute to our happiness, than it does to the service of 
 religion. For if we reply, that they help to the esteem and 
 reputation of our persons, and the distinction of them from 
 the vulgar, from the servants of the lot of Issachar, and add 
 reverence and veneration to us ; how great a shame is it, if 
 we study by great expenses to get reputation and accidental 
 advantages to ourselves, and not by the same means to pur- 
 chase reverence and esteem to religion ; since we see that 
 religion, amongst persons of ordinary understandings, receives 
 as much external and accidental advantages, by the accession 
 of exterior ornaments and accommodation, as we ourselves 
 can by rich clothes and garments of wealth, ceremony, and 
 distinction ! And as, in princes' courts, the reverence to 
 princes is quickened and increased by an outward state and 
 glory ; so also it is in the service of God. Although the un- 
 derstandings of men are no more satisfied by a pompous 
 magnificence, than by a cheap plainness; yet the eye is, and 
 the fancy, and the affections, and the senses ; that is, many 
 of our faculties are more pleased with religion, when religion, 
 by such instruments and conveyances, pleases them. And it 
 was noted by Sozomen, concerning Valens, the Arian em- 
 peror, that when he came to Caesarea, in Cappadocia, he 
 praised St. Basil, their bishop, and upon more easy terms 
 revoked his banishment/ because he was a grave person, and 
 
 d Quod cum tanto ornatu tamque decenter sacerdotio fungeretur, conventusque 
 asreret.
 
 358 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 did his holy offices with reverence and decent addresses, and 
 kept his church-assemblies with much ornament and solemnity. 
 
 14. But when I consider that saying of St. Gregory, that 
 the Church is heaven within the tabernacle, heaven dwelling 
 among the sons of men, e and remember, that God hath 
 studded all the firmament, and paved it with stars, because 
 he loves to have his house beauteous, and highly represent- 
 ative of his glory ; I see no reason we should not do as Apol- 
 linaris says God does: " In earth do the works of heaven." 
 For he is the God of beauties and perfections ; f and every 
 excellence in the creature is a portion of influence from the 
 Divinity, and, therefore, is the best instrument of conveying 
 honour to him who made them for no other end but for his 
 own honour, as the last resort of all other ends for which 
 they were created. 
 
 15. But the best manner to reverence the sanctuary, is by 
 the continuation of such actions which gave it the first title 
 of holiness. " Holiness becometh thine house for ever," saith 
 David : " Sancta sanctis," holy persons and holy rites, in 
 holy places; 8 that, as it had the first relation of sanctity by 
 the consecration of a holy and reverend minister and presi- 
 dent of religion, so it may be perpetuated in holy offices, and 
 receive the daily consecration, by the assistance of sanctified 
 and religious persons. " Foris canes," dogs and criminal 
 persons are unfit for churches ; the best ornament and beauty 
 of a church, is a holy priest and a sanctified people. 11 For, 
 
 Exx^.wo'ta tffTty avpayos iwtyttay. 
 
 > 
 
 ' "Egyay ra f&iya, xai xaXav Ti/jLiay' rau yag niaurov &iu/>!a tiavfixe-rri. Arist. 
 
 f Gravitas honesta, diligentia attonita, cura solicita, apparitio devota, et pro- 
 cessio modesta. Tert. de Prescript. 
 
 Confluunt ad ecclesiam casta celebritate, honesta, utriusque sexiis discretione. 
 S. Aug. lib. ii. c. 28. de Civit. Dei. 
 
 elvogiias, xai ffu0vvi<vr,; xau iixaiarvtrtf , iuttfiiias <rt xai afieTnTas, xai ffu/Afafris 
 agtTr,; ; Pliilo Legal, ad Caium. 
 
 &tv 7V]y \av7av ^VYtjVf xai yaay tl; vtfaoayriv Tau Qttau $UTO$ <rav lauTott faoaffxiua'^uv yavv. 
 
 Hier. in Pyth. 
 
 "fv^rts xa9-a/ias re-ray aixtiangay l-rt yri( 8sf aux t%u' ei; xai a Tlt/9-tas ffo^i^trai, 
 
 ^.iy&iy, Euflftifiy 01 (agaraTs yayuftai Toffay affray t>\vf*.vref. Idem, 
 
 Quin demus id superis 
 
 Compositum jus fasque animis, sanctosque recessus 
 
 Mentis, et incoctum generoso pectus honesto : 
 
 Haec cedo ut admoveam teniplis, et farre litabo. Pecs. Sat. ii.
 
 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 359 
 
 since angels dwell in churches, and God hath made his name 
 to dwell there too ; if there also be a holy people, that there 
 be saints as well as angels, it is a holy fellowship, and a 
 blessed communion ; but to see a devil there would scare 
 the most confident and bold fancy, and disturb the good 
 meeting ; and such is every wicked and graceless person : 
 " Have I not chosen twelve of you, and one of you is a 
 devil ? " An evil soul is an evil spirit, and such are no good 
 ornaments for temples : and it is a shame that a goodly 
 Christian church should be like an Egyptian temple ; without, 
 goodly buildings; within, a dog or a cat, for the deity they 
 adore. It is worse, if in our addresses to holy places and 
 offices, we bear our lusts under our garments. For dogs and 
 cats are of God's making, but our lusts are not, but are God's 
 enemies ; and therefore, besides the unholiness, it is an affront 
 to God to bring them along, and it defiles the place in a great 
 degree. 
 
 16. For there is a defiling of a temple by insinuation 
 of impurities, and another by direct and positive profanation, 
 and a third by express sacrilege. This " defiles a temple" to 
 the ground. Every small sin is an unwelcome guest, and is 
 a spot in those " feasts of charity" which entertain us often 
 in God's houses : but there are some (and all great crimes 
 are such) which desecrate the place, unhallow the ground as 
 to our particulars, stop the ascent of our prayers, obstruct the 
 current of God's blessing, turn religion into bitterness, and 
 devotion into gall ; such as are marked in Scripture with a 
 distinguishing character, as enemies to the peculiar dispo- 
 sitions of religion : and such are, unchastity, which defiles 
 the temples of our bodies ; covetousness, which sets up an 
 idol instead of God ; and unmercifulness, which is a direct 
 enemy to the mercies of God ; and the fair return of our 
 prayers. He that shews not the mercies of alms, of forgive- 
 ness, and comfort, is forbidden to hope for comfort, relief, or 
 forgiveness, from the hands of God. A pure mind is the 
 best manner of worship,' and the impurity of a crime is the 
 
 1 Animadverto gratiorem existimari qui delubris deorum puram castamque 
 mentem, quam qui meditatum carmen intulerit. Pim. Sec. Pan. Trajan. 
 
 'A<y*ov w vaiaTe Suea^ios tvSsv Yo-irtt. 'Ef&ifafAit' ayniiri, S" ifri, tygaitit ovioi. Porphyr, 
 de Non Esu Animal, lib. ii. 
 
 Optimus animus pulcherrimus cultus. M>j xa3ajy x.a.(a.^ou lifiiirrnrfai au p.n 
 Siftir'oi, Hierocl.
 
 360 OF THE RELIGION OF HOLY PLACES. 
 
 greatest contradiction to the honour and religion of holy 
 places. And, therefore, let us imitate the precedent of the 
 most religious of kings ; " I will wash my hands in innocence, 
 O Lord, and so will I go to thine altar ;" k always remem- 
 bering those decretory and final words of St. Paul, " He 
 that defiles a temple, him will God destroy." 1 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O eternal God, who " dwellest not in temples made with 
 hands ; the heaven of heavens is not able to contain thee," 
 and yet thou art pleased to manifest thy presence amongst 
 the sons of men, by special issues of thy favour and bene- 
 diction ; make my body and soul to be a temple pure and 
 holy, apt for the entertainments of the holy Jesus, and for 
 the habitation of the Holy Spirit. Lord, be pleased, with 
 thy rod of paternal discipline, to cast out all impure lusts, 
 all worldly affections, all covetous desires, from this thy 
 temple; that it may be a place of prayer, and meditation, 
 of holy appetites and chaste thoughts, of pure intentions 
 and zealous desires of pleasing thee ; that I may become 
 also a sacrifice, as well as a temple ; eaten up with the zeal 
 of thy glory, and consumed with the fire of love ; that not 
 one thought may be entertained by me, but such as may 
 be like perfume, breathing from the altar of incense ; and 
 not a word may pass from me, but may have the accent of 
 heaven upon it, and sound pleasantly in thy ears. O 
 dearest God, fill every faculty of my soul with impresses, 
 dispositions, capacities, and aptnesses of religion ; and do 
 thou hallow my soul, that I may be possessed with zeal 
 and religious affections ; loving thee above all things in the 
 world, worshipping thee with the humblest adorations and 
 frequent addresses, continually feeding upon the appre- 
 hensions of thy divine sweetness, and consideration of thy 
 infinite excellences, and observations of thy righteous com- 
 mandments, and the feast of a holy conscience, as an ante- 
 past of eternity, and consignation to the joys of heaven, 
 through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 
 
 k Ps. xxvi. 6. ' 1 Cor. iii. 17.
 
 OF THE SECOND PASSOVER, &C. 361 
 
 SECTION XI [. 
 
 Of Jesus s Departure into Galilee ; his Manner of Life, 
 Miracles, and Preaching; his calling of Disciples ; and 
 what happened until the Second Passover. 
 
 1. "WHEN Jesus understood that John was cast into 
 prison,"" and that the Pharisees were envious at him for the 
 great multitudes of people that resorted to his baptism, 
 which he ministered, not in his own person, but by the depu- 
 tation of his disciples, they finishing the ministration which 
 himself began, (who, as Euodius/ bishop of Antioch, reports, 
 baptized the blessed Virgin, his mother, and Peter only ; and 
 Peter baptized Andrew, James, and John, and they others); 
 he left Judaea, and came into Galilee ; and in his passage he 
 must touch Sychar, a city of Samaria, where, in the heat of 
 the day and the weariness of his journey, he sat himself 
 down upon the margin of Jacob's well ; whither, when " his 
 disciples were gone to buy meat, a Samaritan woman cometh 
 to draw water," of whom Jesus asked some, to cool his thirst, 
 and refresh his weariness. 
 
 2. Little knew the woman the excellence of the person 
 that asked so small a charity : neither had she been taught, 
 that " a cup of cold water given to a disciple should be 
 rewarded," and much rather such a present to the Lord him- 
 self. But she prosecuted the spite of her nation, and the 
 interest and quarrel of the schism; and, instead of washing 
 Jesus's feet, and giving him drink, demanded why he, 
 " being a Jew, should ask water of a Samaritan ? for the Jews 
 have no intercourse with the Samaritans." 
 
 3. The ground of the quarrel was this. In the sixth year 
 of Hezekiah, Salmanasar, king of Assyria, sacked Samaria, 
 transported the Israelites to Assyria, and planted an Assyrian 
 colony in the town and country ; who, by Divine vengeance, 
 were destroyed by lions, which no power of man could 
 restrain or lessen. The king thought the cause was, their 
 
 Matt. iv. 12. 
 
 b Euthym. c. 3. in Joan. Apud Nicep. lib. ii. c. 3. Hist. 
 c Non monstrare vias eadem nisi sacra colenti ; 
 Quaesitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos. Juv. Sat. xiv.
 
 362 HISTORY OF WHAT HAPPENED 
 
 not serving the God of Israel according to the rites of Moses; 
 and therefore sent a Jewish captive priest, to instruct the 
 remanent inhabitants in the Jewish religion ; who so learned 
 and practised it, that they still retained the superstition of 
 the Gentile rites ; till Manasses, the brother of Jaddi, the 
 high-priest at Jerusalem, married the daughter of Sanballat, 
 who was the governor under king Darius. Manasses being 
 reproved for marrying a stranger, the daughter of an un- 
 circumcised Gentile, and admonished to dismiss her, flies to 
 Samaria, persuades his father-in-law to build a temple in 
 Mount Gerizim, introduces the rites of daily sacrifice, and 
 makes himself high-priest, and began to pretend to be the 
 true successor of Aaron, and commences a schism, in the 
 time of Alexander the Great. From whence the question of 
 religion grew so high, that it begat disaffections, anger, ani- 
 mosities, quarrels, bloodshed, and murders ; not only in 
 Palestine, but wherever a Jew and Samaritan had the ill 
 fortune to meet. Such being the nature of men, that they 
 think it the greatest injury in the world, when other men are 
 not of their minds ; and that they please God most, when 
 they are most furiously zealous ; and no zeal better to be 
 expressed, than by hating all those whom they are pleased to 
 think God hates. This schism was prosecuted with the 
 greatest spite that ever any was, because both the people 
 were much given to superstition ; and this was helped forward 
 by the constitution of their religion, consisting much in ex- 
 ternals and ceremonials, and which they cared not much to 
 hallow and make moral, by the intertexture of spiritual 
 senses and charity. And, therefore, the Jews called the 
 Samaritans "accursed;" the Samaritans, at the paschal so- 
 lemnity, would at midnight, when the Jews' temple was open, 
 scatter dead men's bones, d to profane and desecrate the 
 place ; and both would fight, and eternally dispute the ques- 
 tion ; sometimes referring it to arbitrators, and then the 
 conquered party would decline the arbitration after sentence; 
 which they did at Alexandria, before Ptolemaeus Philometor, 
 when Andronicus had, by a rare and exquisite oration, pro- 
 cured sentence against Theodosius and Sabbaeus, the Sama- 
 ritan advocates : the sentence was given for Jerusalem, and 
 
 d Atitffi\]siv atfywrituv o/rruv it rai; ffToaTs irowfai. Joseph. Ant. lib. xviii. C. 3.
 
 UNTIL THE SECOND PASSOVER. 363 
 
 the schism increased, and lasted till the time of our Saviour's 
 conference with this woman. 
 
 4. And it was so implanted and woven in with every 
 understanding, that when the woman " perceived Jesus to be 
 a prophet," she undertook this question with him : " Our 
 fathers worshipped in this mountain ; and ye say, that Jeru- 
 salem is the place where men ought to worship." Jesus 
 knew the schism was great enough already, and was not 
 \villing to make the rent wider: and though he gave testi- 
 mony to the truth, by saying, " Salvation is of the Jews;" 
 and " we know what we worship, ye do not;" yet, because 
 the subject of this question was shortly to be taken away, 
 Jesus takes occasion to preach the Gospel, to hasten an ex- 
 pedient, and, by way of anticipation, to reconcile the dis- 
 agreeing interests, and settle a revelation, to be verified for 
 ever. Neither here nor there, by way of confinement; not in 
 one country more than another ; but wherever any man shall 
 call upon God " in spirit and truth," there he shall be heard. 
 
 5. But all this while the holy Jesus was athirst, and there- 
 fore hastens at least to discourse of water, though as yet he 
 got none. He tells her of " living water," of eternal satis- 
 factions, of " never thirsting again," of her own personal 
 condition of matrimonial relation, and professes himself to be 
 the Messias ; and then was interrupted by the coming of his 
 disciples, who wondered to see him alone, " talking with a 
 woman," besides his custom and usual reservation. But the 
 woman, full of joy and wonder, left her water-pot, and ran to 
 the city, to publish the Messias : and immediately " all the 
 city came out to see ; and many believed on him upon the 
 testimony of the woman, and more when they heard his own 
 discourses." They invited him to the town, and received 
 him with hospitable civilities for two days, after which he 
 departed to his own Galilee. 
 
 6. Jesus, therefore, came into the country, where he was 
 received with respect and fair entertainment, because of the 
 miracles which the Galileans saw done by him at the feast ; 
 and being at Cana, where he wrought the first miracle, a 
 noble personage ; a little king, say some ; a palatine, says 
 St. Jerome ; a kingly person, certainly, came to Jesus with 
 much reverence, and desire that he would be pleased to 
 conie to his house, and cure his son, now ready to die;
 
 364? HISTORY OF WHAT HAPPENED 
 
 which he seconds with much importunity, fearing lest his son 
 be dead before he get thither. Jesus, who did not do his 
 miracles by natural operations, cured the child at distance, 
 and dismissed the prince, telling him his son lived ; which, by 
 narration of his servants, he found to be true, and that he 
 recovered at the same time when Jesus spake these salutary 
 and healing words. Upon which accident he and all his 
 house became disciples. 
 
 7. And now Jesus left Nazareth, and came to Capernaum, 
 a maritime town, and of great resort, choosing that for his 
 scene of preaching, and his place of dwelling. For now the 
 time was fulfilled, the office of the Baptist was expired, and 
 the kingdom of God was at hand. He therefore preached 
 the sum of the Gospel, faith and repentance: "Repent ye, 
 and believe the Gospel." And what that Gospel was, the 
 sum and series of all his sermons afterwards did declare. 
 
 8. The work was now grown high and pregnant, and 
 Jesus saw it convenient to choose disciples to his ministry and 
 service in the work of preaching, and to be u witnesses of all 
 that he should say, do, or teach," for ends which were after- 
 wards made public and excellent. Jesus, therefore, " as he 
 walked by the sea of Galilee," called Simon and Andrew, 
 who knew him before, by the preaching of John ; and now 
 " left all," their ship and their net, "and followed him. And 
 when he was gone a little further, he calls the two sons of 
 Zebedee, James, and John ; and they went after him." And 
 with this family he goes up and down the whole Galilee, 
 preaching the Gospel of the kingdom, healing all manner of 
 diseases, curing demoniacs, cleansing lepers, and giving 
 strength to paralytics and lame people. 
 
 9. But when " the people pressed on him to hear the 
 word of God, he stood by the lake of Genesareth," and pre- 
 sently " entering into Simon's ship," commanded him " to 
 launch into the deep," and " from thence he taught the 
 people," and there wrought a miracle; for, being Lord of the 
 creatures, he commanded the fishes of the sea, and they 
 obeyed. For when Simon, who had "fished all night in 
 vain, let down his net at the command of Jesus, he enclosed 
 so great a multitude of fishes, that the net brake ;" and the 
 fishermen were amazed and fearful at so prodigious a draught. 
 But beyond the miracle, it was intended, that a representation
 
 UNTIL THE SECOND PASSOVER. 365 
 
 should be made of the plenitude of the Catholic Church, and 
 multitudes of believers, who should be taken by Simon and 
 the rest of the disciples, whom by that miracle he consigned 
 to become " fishers of men ;" who, by their artifices of pru- 
 dence and holy doctrine, might gain souls to God ; that when 
 the net should be drawn to shore, and separation made by 
 the angels, they and their disciples might be differenced from 
 the reprobate portion. 
 
 10. But the light of the sun uses not to be confined to a 
 province or a kingdom. So great a prophet and so divine 
 a physician, and so great miracles, created a fame loud as 
 thunder, but not so full of sadness and presage. Immediately 
 the " fame of Jesus went into all Syria, and there came to him 
 multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, and Judea." 
 And all that had any " sick with divers diseases, brought 
 them to him ;" and he laid his hands on every one of them, 
 " and healed them." And when he cured the " lunatics and 
 persons possessed with evil spirits," the devils cried out and 
 confessed him to be " Christ, the Son of God ;" but he 
 " suffered them not," choosing rather to work faith in the 
 persuasions of his disciples by moral arguments and the 
 placid demonstrations of the Spirit; that there might in faith 
 be an excellence in proportion to the choice, and that it 
 might not be made violent by the conviction and forced tes- 
 timonies of accursed and unwilling spirits. 
 
 11. But when Jesus saw his assembly was grown full 
 and his audience numerous, he " went up into a mountain," 
 and when his disciples came unto him, he made that admir- 
 able sermon, called " the sermon upon the mount :" which 
 is a Divine repository of such excellent truths and mysterious 
 dictates of secret theology, that contains a breviary of all 
 those precepts which integrate the morality of Christian 
 religion ; pressing the moral precepts given by Moses, and 
 enlarging their obligation by a stricter sense and more severe 
 exposition, that their righteousness might " exceed the 
 righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ;" " preaches per- 
 fection, and the doctrines of meekness, poverty of spirit, 
 Christian mourning, desire of holy things, mercy and purity, 
 peace and toleration of injuries; affixing a special promise of 
 blessing to be the guerdon and inheritance of those graces 
 and spiritual excellences. He explicates some parts of the
 
 366 HISTORY OF WHAT HAPPENED 
 
 decalogue, and adds appendices and precepts of his own. 
 He teaches his disciples to pray, how to fast, how to give 
 alms, contempt of the world, not to judge others, forgiving 
 injuries, an indifference and incuriousness of temporal pro- 
 visions, and a seeking of the kingdom of God and its ap- 
 pendant righteousness." 
 
 12. When Jesus had finished his sermon and descended 
 from the mountain, a poor leprous person came and wor- 
 shipped, and begged to be cleansed ; which Jesus soon 
 granted, engaging him not to publish it where he should go 
 abroad, but sending him to the priest to offer an oblation, 
 according to the rites of Moses' law ; and then came directly 
 to Capernaum, and " taught in their synagogues upon the 
 Sabbath-days;" where in his sermons he expressed the dig- 
 nity of a prophet, and the authority of a person sent from 
 God ; not inviting the people by the soft arguments and 
 insinuations of Scribes and Pharisees, but by demonstrations 
 and issues of Divinity. There he cures a demoniac in one 
 of their synagogues ; and by and by, after going abroad, he 
 heals Peter's wife's mother of a fever ; insomuch that he 
 grew the talk of all men, and their wonder, till they flocked 
 so to him, to see him, to hear him, to satisfy their curiosity 
 and their needs, that, after he had healed those multitudes 
 which beset the house of Simon, where he cured his mother 
 of the fever, he retired himself into a desert place very early 
 in the morning, that he might have an opportunity to pray, 
 free from the oppressions and noises of the multitude. 
 
 13. But neither so could he be hid, but, like a light 
 shining by the fringes of a curtain, he was soon discovered in 
 his solitude ; for the multitude found him out, imprisoning 
 him in their circuits and undeniable attendances. But Jesus 
 told them plainly he must preach the Gospel " to other cities 
 also," and therefore resolved to pass to the other side of the 
 lake of Genesareth, so to quit the throng. Whither as he 
 was going a Scribe offered himself a disciple to his institu- 
 tion ; till Jesus told him his condition to be worse than foxes 
 and birds, for whom an habitation is provided, but none for 
 him ; no, " not a place where to bow his head," and find rest. 
 And what became of this forward professor afterwards, we 
 find not. Others, that were probationers of this fellowship, 
 Jesus bound to a speedy profession ; not suffering one to go
 
 UNTIL THE SECOND PASSOVER. 367 
 
 home to bid his friends farewell, nor another so much as to 
 " bury his dead." 
 
 14. By the time Jesus got to the ship it was late : and he, 
 heavy to sleep, rested on a pillow, and slept soundly as 
 weariness, meekness, and innocence, could make him ; inso- 
 much that " a violent storm," the chiding of the winds and 
 waters, which then happened, could not awake him ; till the 
 ship, being almost covered with broken billows and the im- 
 petuous dashings of the waters, the men. already sunk in 
 their spirits, and the ship like enough to sink too, the dis- 
 ciples awaked him, and called for help : " Master, carest 
 thou not that we perish ?" Jesus arising, reproved their in- 
 fidelity, commanded the wind to be still and the seas peace- 
 able, and immediately " there was a great calm ;" and they pre- 
 sently arrived in the land of the Gergesenes, or Gerasenes. 
 
 15. In the land of Gergesites, or Gergesenes, which was 
 the remaining name of an extinct people, being one of the 
 nations whom the sons of Jacob drave from their inheritance, 
 there were two cities : Gadara, from the tribe of Gad, to 
 whom it fell by lot in the division of the land (which, having 
 been destroyed by the Jews, was rebuilt by Pompey at the 
 request of Demetrius Gadarensis, Pompey 's freed-man), arid 
 near to it was Gerasa, as Josephus reports : e which diversity 
 of towns and names is the cause of the various recitation of 
 this story by the Evangelists. Near the city of Gadara there 
 were many sepulchres in the hollownesses of rocks, where 
 the dead were buried, and where many superstitious persons 
 used Memphitic and Thessalic rites, invocating evil spirits ; 
 insomuch that, at the instant of our Saviour's arrival in the 
 country, " there met him two possessed with devils from 
 these tombs, exceeding fierce," and so had been long, " inso- 
 much that no man durst pass that way." 
 
 16. Jesus commanded the devils out of the possessed 
 persons : but there were certain men feeding swine, which, 
 though extremely abominated by the Jewish religion, yet for 
 the use of the Roman armies and quarterings of soldiers, 
 they were permitted, and divers privileges granted to the 
 masters of such herds : f and because Gadara was a Greek 
 
 e Joseph, cle Bel. Jud. lib. i. c. 5, et lib. iii. c. 2, et lib. v. c. 3. Epipb. contr. 
 Eb. Ha;res. 30. 
 
 f Cod. Theod. de Suariis. Joseph, lib. ii. de Bel. Jud. c. 33.
 
 368 HISTORY OF WHAT HAPPENED 
 
 city, and the company mingled of Greeks, Syrians, and Jews, 
 these last, in all likelihood, not making the greatest number; 
 the devils, therefore, besought Jesus he would not send 
 them into the abyss, but " permit them to enter into the 
 swine." He gave them leave ; " and the swine ran violently 
 down a steep place into the" hot baths which were at the 
 foot of the hill on which Gadara was built, (which smaller 
 congregation of waters the Jews used to call sea ; g ) or else, as 
 others think, into the lake of Genesareth, "and perished in 
 the waters." But this accident so troubled the inhabitants 
 that they came and " entreated Jesus to depart out of theic 
 coasts." And he did so ; leaving " Galilee of the Gentiles," 
 he came to the lesser Galilee, and so again to the city of 
 Capernaum. 
 
 1 7. But when he was come thither he was met by divers 
 " Scribes and Pharisees," who came from Jerusalem, and 
 "doctors of the law from Galilee;" and while they were 
 sitting in a house which was encompassed with multitudes, 
 that no business or necessity could be admitted to the door, 
 a poor paralytic was brought to be cured ; and they were 
 fain to " uncover the tiles of the house, and let him down in 
 his bed with cords in the midst before Jesus," sitting in con- 
 ference with the doctors. " When Jesus saw their faith he 
 said, Man, thy sins be forgiven thee." At which saying, the 
 Pharisees being troubled, thinking it to be blasphemy, and 
 that " none but God could forgive sins ;" Jesus was put to 
 verify his absolution, which he did in a just satisfaction and 
 proportion to their understandings. For the Jews did believe 
 that all afflictions were punishments for sin ; (" Who sinned, 
 this man or his father, that he was born blind ?") and that 
 'removing of the punishment was forgiving of the sin. And, 
 therefore, Jesus, to prove that his sins were forgiven, removed 
 that which they supposed to be the effect of his sin ; and by 
 curing the palsy prevented their further murmur about the 
 pardon : " That ye might know the Son of Man hath power 
 on earth to forgive sins (he saith to the sick of the palsy), 
 Arise, take up thy bed and walk. And the man arose, was 
 healed, and glorified God." 
 
 18. A while after, Jesus went again toward the sea, and 
 
 f Ut mare aeneum, vas templi ad aquarum receptionera.
 
 UNTIL THE SECOND PASSOVER. 369 
 
 on his way, " seeing Matthew," the puhlican, " sitting at the 
 receipt of custom," he bade him " follow him." Matthew 
 first feasted Jesus, and then became his disciple. But the 
 Pharisees that were with him began to be troubled that he 
 " ate with publicans and sinners." For the office of publican, 
 though amongst the Romans it was honest and of great 
 account; and " the flower of the Roman knights, the orna- 
 ment of the city, the security of the commonwealth, was ac- 
 counted to consist in the society of publicans ;" h yet amongst 
 both the Jews and Greeks the name was odious, 1 and the 
 persons were accursed ; not only because they were strangers 
 that were the chief of them, who took into them some of the 
 nation where they were employed ; but because the Jews 
 especially stood upon the charter of their nation and the pri- 
 vilege of their religion, that none of them should pay tribute ; 
 and also because they exercised great injustices and oppres- 
 sions, 1 " having a power unlimited, and a covetousness wide as 
 hell, and greedy as the fire or the grave. But Jesus gave so 
 fair an account concerning his converse with these persons, 
 that the objection turned to be his apology : for therefore he 
 conversed with them, because they were sinners ; and it was 
 as if a physician should be reproved for having so much to 
 do with sick persons ; for therefore was he " sent, not to call 
 the righteous, but sinners, to repentance ; " to advance the 
 reputation of mercy above the rites of sacrifice. 
 
 19. But as the little bubbling and gentle murmurs of the 
 water are presages of a storm, and are more troublesome in 
 their prediction than their violence ; so were the arguings of 
 the Pharisees, symptoms of a secret displeasure and an en- 
 suing war ; though at first represented in the civilities of 
 question and scholastical discourses, yet they did but forerun 
 vigorous objections and bold calumnies, which were the fruits 
 of the next summer. But as yet they discoursed fairly, 
 asking him " why John's disciples faeted often, but the dis- 
 
 h Cicero Ep. Famil. lib. xiii. et in Orat. pro Plancio. 
 
 1 Idem ad Quint. Fratrem de Regimine Prefecture Asian. 
 
 k \ ita Publicanorum aperta est violentia, impuuita rapina, negotiatio nulla 
 ratione constans, inverecuuda mercatura. 
 
 Tldtns Ti).utxt, Tciirif ilriv aia-rayn. Suidas, V. Publicanus. 
 
 Apud Hebra-um textum D. Matthaei publicani dicti Parisim, nomine proprio 
 latronibus qui sepes et macerinm diritnunt, licet proprie dicti Gabuim ; undo 
 fortasse Gabelta. 
 
 VOL. II. F F
 
 370 HISTORY OF WHAT HAPPENED 
 
 ciples of Jesus did not fast ?" Jesus told them, it was because 
 these were the days in which the Bridegroom was come in 
 person to espouse the Church unto himself; and, therefore, 
 for " the children of the bride-chamber to fast" then, was like 
 the bringing of a dead corpse to the joys of a bride, or the 
 pomps of coronation : " the days should come, that the bride- 
 groom should retire" into his chamber, and draw the curtains, 
 '* and then they should fast in those days." 
 
 20. While Jesus was discoursing with the Pharisees, 
 " Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, came to him," desiring he 
 would help his daughter, who lay in the confines of death, 
 ready to depart. Whither as he was going, " a woman met 
 him, who had been diseased with an issue of blood twelve 
 years," without hope of remedy from art or nature ; and 
 therefore she runs to Jesus, thinking, without precedent, upon 
 the confident persuasions of a holy faith, " that if she did but 
 touch the hem of his garment, she should be whole." She 
 came trembling, and full of hope and reverence, and " touched 
 his garment, and immediately the fountain of her unnatural 
 emanation was stopped," and reverted to its natural course 
 and offices. St. Ambrose says, that this woman was Martha. 
 But it is not likely that she was a Jewess, but a Gentile ; 
 because of that return which she made, in memory of her 
 cure and honour of Jesus, according to the Gentile rites. 
 For Eusebius reports, 1 that himself saw, at Caesarea Philippi, 
 a statue of brass, representing a woman kneeling at the feet 
 of a goodly personage, who held his hand out to her in a 
 posture of granting her request, and doing favour to her ; 
 and the inhabitants said, it was erected by the care and cost 
 of this woman; adding, (whether out of truth or easiness is 
 not certain,) that at the pedestal of this statue an usual plant 
 did grow, which, when it was come up to that maturity and 
 height as to arrive at the fringes of the brass monument, it 
 was medicinal in many dangerous diseases : so far Eusebius. 
 Concerning which story I shall make no censure but this, 
 
 1 Lib. viii. Hist. c. 14. 
 
 ''Eriffnfi.av Xgiffrov ayaXfto., et rev X^a-rau avj;avr. Apud Sozomen. lib. V. 
 c. 20. 
 
 Joban. Danias. de Imagin. Oral. iii. ex Chronico Johan. Melalse Antiocb. 
 Episc. ait, supplicem libellum oblatum Philippe Tetrarcbae Trachonitidis regionis, 
 ut liceret statuas erigere in memoriam accepti beneficii.
 
 r.NTIL THE SECOND PASSOVER. 371 
 
 that since St. Mark and St. Luke affirm, that this woman, 
 before her cure, " had spent all her substance upon phy- 
 sicians,"" 1 it is not easily imaginable how she should become 
 able to dispend so great a sum of money, as would purchase 
 two so great statues of brass : and if she could, yet it is still 
 more unlikely that the Gentile princes and proconsuls, who 
 searched all places, public and private, and were curiously 
 diligent to destroy all honorary monuments of Christianity, 
 should let this alone ; and that this should escape, not only 
 the diligence of the persecutors, but the fury of such wars 
 and changes as happened in Palestine, and that for three 
 hundred years together it should stand up in defiance of all 
 violences and changeable fate of all things. However it be, 
 it is certain, that the book against images, published by the 
 command of Charles the Great, eight hundred and fifty years 
 ago, gave no credit to the story ; and if it had been true, it 
 is more than probable that Justin Martyr," who was born 
 and bred in Palestine, and Origen, who lived many years in 
 Tyre, in the neighbourhood of the place where the statue is 
 said to stand, and were highly diligent to heap together all 
 things of advantage and reputation to the Christian cause, 
 would not have omitted so notable an instance. It is there- 
 fore likely that the statues which Eusebius saw, and concern- 
 ing which he heard such stones, were first placed there upon 
 the stock of a heathen story or ceremony ; and in process of 
 time, for the likeness of the figures, and its capacity to be 
 translated to the Christian story, was, by the Christians in 
 after ages, attributed, by a fiction of fancy, and afterwards by 
 credulity, confidently applied to the present narrative. 
 
 21. " When Jesus was come to the ruler's house," he 
 found the minstrels making their funeral noises for the death 
 of Jairus's daughter, and his servants had met him, and 
 acquainted him of" the death of the child ;" yet Jesus turned 
 out the minstrels, and " entered with the parents of the child 
 into her chamber, and taking her by the hand, called her," 
 and awakened her from her sleep of death, and " commanded 
 them to give her to eat," and enjoined them not to publish 
 the miracle. But as flames, suppressed by violent detentions, 
 break out and rage with a more impetuous and rapid motion ; 
 
 m Mark, v. 26. Luke, viii. 43. n Lib. iv. de Imagin. cap. 15.
 
 372 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUS's CONFERENCE 
 
 so it happened to Jesus ; who, endeavouring to make the 
 noises and reports of him less popular, made them to be 
 oecumenical ; for not only we do that most greedily from 
 which we are most restrained, but a great merit, enamelled 
 with humility, and restrained with modesty, grows more 
 beauteous and florid, up to the heights of wonder and 
 glories. 
 
 22. As he came from Jairus's house, he cured two blind 
 men upon their petition, and confession that they did believe 
 in him ; and cast out a dumb devil, so much to the wonder 
 and amazement of the people, that the Pharisees could hold 
 no longer, being ready to burst with envy, but said, " he 
 cast out devils by help of the devils : " their malice being, as 
 usually it is, contradictory to its own design, by its being 
 unreasonable ; nothing being more sottish than for the devil 
 to divide his kingdom upon a plot ; to ruin his certainties 
 upon hopes future and contingent. But this was but the 
 first eruption of their malice ; all the year last past, which 
 was the first year of Jesus's preaching, all was quiet ; neither 
 the Jews, nor the Samaritans, nor the Galileans, did malign 
 his doctrine or person, but he preached with much peace on 
 all hands ; for this was the year which the prophet Isaiah 
 called in his prediction " the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 Ad SECTION XII. 
 
 Considerations upon the Intercourse happening between the 
 Holy Jesus and the Woman of Samaria. 
 
 1. WHEN the holy Jesus, perceiving it unsafe to be at Jeru- 
 salem, returned to Galilee, where the largest scene of his 
 prophetical office was to be represented, he journeyed on 
 foot through Samaria ; and being weary and faint, hungry 
 and thirsty, he sat down by a well, and begged water of a 
 Samaritan woman that was a sinner; who at first refused 
 him, with some incivility of language. But he, instead of 
 returning anger and passion to her rudeness, which was com- 
 
 Epiphan. in Panar. lib. ii. Tom. I. haeres. 51.
 
 WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 373 
 
 menced upon the interest of a mistaken religion, 8 preached 
 the coining of the Messias to her, unlocked the secrets of her 
 heart, and let in his grace, and made " a fountain of living 
 water to spring up" in her soul, to extinguish the impure 
 flames of lust which had set her on fire, hurning like hell ever 
 since the death of her fifth husband, b she then becoming a 
 concubine to the sixth. Thus Jesus transplanted nature into 
 grace, his hunger and thirst into religious appetites, the 
 darkness of the Samaritan into a clear revelation, her sin into 
 repentance and charity, and so quenched his own thirst by 
 relieving her needs; and as " it was meat to him to do his 
 Father's will," so it was drink to him to bring us to drink of 
 " the fountain of living water." For thus God declared it to 
 be a delight to him to see us live, as if he were refreshed by 
 those felicities which he gives to us as communications of his 
 grace, and instances of mercy, and consignations to heaven. 
 Upon which we can look with no eye but such as sees and 
 admires the excellence of the Divine charity, which, being 
 an emanation from the mercies and essential compassion of 
 eternity, God cannot choose but rejoice in it, and love the 
 works of his mercy, who was so well pleased in the works of 
 his power. He that was delighted in the creation, was highly 
 pleased in the nearer conveyances of himself, when he sent 
 the holy Jesus to bear his image, and his mercies, and his 
 glories, and offer them to the use and benefit of man. For 
 this was the chief of the works of God, and therefore the 
 blessed Master could not but be highliest pleased with it, in 
 imitation of his heavenly Father. 
 
 2. The woman, observing our Saviour to have come with 
 his face from Jerusalem, was angry at him upon the quarrel 
 of the old schism. The Jews and the Samaritans had differing 
 rites, and the zealous persons upon each side did commonly 
 dispute themselves into uncharitableness: and so have Christ- 
 ians upon the same confidence, and zeal, and mistake. For 
 although "righteousness hath no fellowship with unrighteous- 
 ness, nor Christ with Belial ; " yet the consideration of the 
 crime of heresy, which is a spiritual wickedness, is to be 
 
 * A pud ipsos fides obstinata, misericordia in promptu, adversus omnes alios 
 hostile odium Tacit. 
 
 b Qua; nubit toties non nubit, adultera lege est. Offender moecha simpliciore 
 minus. Martial. Ep.
 
 374 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUS's CONFERENCE 
 
 separate from the person, who is material. That is, no spi- 
 ritual communion is to be endured with heretical persons, 
 when it is certain they are such, when they are convinced by 
 competent authority and sufficient argument. But the per- 
 sons of the men are to be pitied, to be reproved, to be redar- 
 gued and convinced, to be wrought upon by fair compliances 
 and the offices of civility, and invited to the family of faith 
 by the best arguments of charity, and the instances of a holy 
 life ; " having your conversation honest among them, that 
 they may, beholding your good works, glorify God in the day 
 when he shall visit them." c Indeed, if there be danger, that 
 is, a weak understanding may not safely converse in civil 
 society with a subtle heretic; in such cases they are to be 
 avoided, d not saluted : but as this is only when the danger is 
 by reason of the unequal capacities and strengths of the 
 person ; so it must be only when the article is certainly 
 heresy, and the person criminal, and interest is the ingredient 
 in the persuasion, and a certain and a necessary truth de- 
 stroyed by the opinion. We read that St. John, spying 
 Gerinthus in a bath, refused to wash there where the enemy 
 of God and his holy Son had been. 6 This is a good prece- 
 dent for us when the case is equal. St. John could discern 
 the spirit of Cerinthus ; and his heresy was notorious, funda- 
 mental, and highly criminal, and the apostle a person assisted 
 up to infallibility. And possibly it was done by the whisper 
 of a prophetic spirit, and upon a miraculous design ; for, 
 immediately upon his retreat, the bath fell down, and crushed 
 Cerinthus in the ruins. But such acts of aversation as these, 
 are not easily, by us, to be drawn into example, unless in the 
 same, or the parallel concourse, of equally concluding acci- 
 dents. We must not quickly, nor upon slight grounds, nor 
 unworthy instances, call heretic ; there had need be a long 
 process, and a high conviction, and a competent judge, and 
 a necessary article, that must be ingredients into so sad and 
 decretory definitions, and condemnation of a person or opin- 
 ion. But if such instances occur, come not near the danger 
 nor the scandal. And this advice St. Cyprian f gave to the 
 lay people of his diocess : " Let them decline their discourses, 
 
 1 Pet. ii. 12. d Tit. iii. 10. 2 Epist. John, x. 
 
 e Irenae. lib. iii. cap. 3. Euseb. lib. iii. cap. 13. 
 ' Lib. i. ep. 3.
 
 WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 375 
 
 whose sermons creep and corrode like a cancer ; let there be 
 no colloquies, no banquets, no commerce with such who are 
 excommunicate, and justly driven from the communion of the 
 Church." " For such persons (as St. Leo g descants upon the 
 apostle's expression of heretical discourses) creep in humbly, 
 and with small and modest beginnings ; they catch with flat- 
 tery, they bind gently, and kill privily." Let, therefore, all 
 persons who are in danger, secure their persons and per- 
 suasions, by removing far from the infection. And for the 
 scandal, St. Herminigilda gave an heroic example, which, in 
 her persuasion, and the circumstances of the age and action, 
 deserved the highest testimony of zeal, religious passion, and 
 confident persuasion. For she rather chose to die by the 
 mandate of her tyrant father, Leonigildus the Goth, than she 
 would, at the paschal solemnity, receive the blessed sacra- 
 ment at the hand of an Arian bishop. 1 * 
 
 3. But excepting these cases, which are not to be judged 
 with forwardness, nor rashly taken measure of, we find, that 
 conversing charitably with persons of differing persuasions, 
 hath been instrumental to their conversion, and God's glory. 
 "The believing wife" may "sanctify the unbelieving hus- 
 band ; " and we find it verified in church-story. St. Cecily 
 converted her husband, Valerianus ; St. Theodora converted 
 Sisinius ; St. Monica converted Patricius, and Theodelinda 
 Agilulphus ; St. Clotilda persuaded King Clodoveus to be a 
 Christian ; and St. Natolia persuaded Adrianus to be a martyr. 
 For they, having their conversation honest and holy amongst 
 the unbelievers, sinned like virgin-tapers in the midst of an 
 impure prison, and amused the eyes of the sons of darkness 
 with the brightness of the flame. For the excellence of a 
 holy life is the best argument of the inhabitation of God 
 within the soul : and who will not offer up his understanding 
 upon that altar, where a Deity is placed as the president and 
 author of religion ? And this very intercourse of the holy 
 Jesus with the woman is abundant argument, that it were 
 well we were not so forward to refuse communion with dis- 
 senting persons, upon the easy and confident mistakes of a 
 too forward zeal. They that call heretic may themselves be 
 the mistaken persons, and, by refusing to communicate the 
 
 Serin. 5. de Jejun. Decimi Mensis. h Gregor. lib. iii. dial. iii. 13.
 
 376 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUS's CONFERENCE 
 
 civilities of hospitable entertainment, may shut their doors 
 upon truth, and their windows against light, and refuse to let 
 salvation in. For sometimes ignorance is the only parent of 
 our persuasions, and many times interest hath made an impure 
 commixture with it, and so produced the issue. 
 
 4. The holy Jesus gently insinuates his discourses. " If 
 thou hadst known who it is that asks thee water, thou wouldest 
 have asked water of him." Oftentimes we know not the 
 person that speaks, and we usually choose our doctrine by 
 our affections to the man : but then, if we are uncivil upon 
 the stock of prejudice, we do not know that it is Christ that 
 calls our understandings to. obedience, and our affections to 
 duty and compliances. The woman little thought of the 
 glories which stood right against her. He that sat upon 
 the well, had a throne placed above the heads of cherubim. 
 In his arms, who there rested himself, was the sanctuary of 
 rest and peace, where wearied souls were to lay their heads, 
 and dispose their cares, and there to turn them into joys, and 
 to gild their thorns with glory. That holy tongue, which was 
 parched with heat, streamed forth rivulets of holy doctrine, 
 which were to water all the world, to turn our deserts into 
 paradise. And though he begged water at Jacob's well, yet 
 Jacob drank at his : for at his charge all Jacob's flocks and 
 family were sustained, and by him Jacob's posterity were 
 made honourable and redeemed. But because this well was 
 deep, and the woman " had nothing to draw water with," 
 and of herself could not fathom so great a depth, therefore 
 she refused him ; just as we do, when we refuse to give drink 
 to a thirsty disciple. Christ comes in that humble manner of 
 address, under the veil of poverty or contempt, and we cannot 
 see Christ from under that robe, and we send him away with- 
 out an alms ; little considering, that when he begs an alms of 
 us in the instance of any of his poor relatives, he asks of us 
 but to give him occasion to give a blessing for an alms. 
 Thus do the ministers of religion ask support ; but when the 
 laws are not more just than many of the people are charitable, 
 they shall fare as their Master did ; they shall preach, but, 
 unless they can draw water themselves, they shall not drink ; 
 but, si scirent, if men did but know who it is that asks them, 
 that it is Christ, either in his ministers, or Christ in his poor 
 servants, certainly they could not be so obstructed in the
 
 WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 377 
 
 issues of their justice and charity, but would remember that 
 no honour could be greater, no love more fortunate, than to 
 meet Avith an opportunity to be expressed in so noble a 
 manner, that God himself is pleased to call his own relief. 
 
 5. When the disciples had returned from the town, whither 
 they went to buy provision, they " wondered to see " the 
 Master "talking" alone "with a woman." They knew he 
 never did so before ; they had observed him to be of a re- 
 served deportment, and not only innocent, but secure from 
 the dangers of malice and suspicion in the matter of incon- 
 tinence. The Jews were a jealous and froward people : and 
 as nothing will more blast the reputation of a prophet than 
 effeminacy and wanton affections ; so he knew no crime was 
 sooner objected, or harder cleared, than that. Of which, 
 because commonly it is acted in privacy, men look for no 
 probation, but pregnant circumstances and arguments of 
 suspect : so nothing can wash it off, until a man can prove 
 a negative ; and if he could, yet he is guilty enough in the 
 estimate of the vulgar for having been accused. But then, 
 because nothing is so destructive of the reputation of a 
 governor, so contradictory to the authority and dignity of 
 his person, as the low and baser appetites of uncleanness, 
 and the consequent shame and scorn, (insomuch that David, 
 having fallen into it, prayed God to confirm or establish him 
 spiritu principally with the spirit of a prince, the spirit of lust 
 being uningenuous and slavish,) the holy Jesus, who was to 
 establish a new law in the authority of his person, was highly 
 curious so to demean himself, that he might be a person 
 incapable of any such suspicions, and of a temper apt not 
 only to answer the calumny, but also to prevent the jealousy. 
 But yet, now he had a great design in hand, he meant to 
 reveal to the Samaritans the coming of the Messias ; and to 
 this his discourse with the woman was instrumental. And, 
 in imitation of our great Master, spiritual persons, and the 
 guides of others, have been very prudent and reserved in 
 their societies and intercourse with women. Heretics have 
 served their ends upon the impotency of the sex ; and having 
 " led captive silly women," led them about as triumphs of 
 lust, and knew no scandal greater than the scandal of heresy, 
 and therefore sought not to decline any, but were infamous 
 in their unwary and lustful mixtures. Simon Magus had
 
 378 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUS's CONFERENCE 
 
 his Helena partner of his lust and heresy ; the author of the 
 sect of the Nicolaitans (if St. Jerome was not misinformed) 
 had whole troops of women; Marcion sent a woman as his 
 emissary to Rome ; Apelles had his Philomene ; Montanus, 
 Prisca and Maximilla ; Donatus was served by Lucilla, Hel- 
 pidius by Agape, Priscillian by Galla, and Arrius spreads his 
 nets, by opportunity of his conversation with the prince's 
 sister, and first he corrupted her, then he seduced the world. 
 6. But holy persons, preachers of true religion and holy 
 doctrines, although they were careful, by public homilies, to 
 instruct the female disciples, that they who are heirs together 
 with us of the same hope, may be servants in the same dis- 
 cipline and institution ; yet they remitted them to " their 
 husbands" and guardians to be " taught at home." 1 And 
 when any personal transactions concerning the needs of their 
 spirit were, of necessity, to intervene between the priest and 
 a woman, the action was done most commonly under public 
 test ; or if in private, yet with much caution and observation 
 of circumstance, which might as well prevent suspicion as 
 preserve their innocence. Conversation, and frequent and 
 familiar address, does too much rifle the ligaments and reve- 
 rence of spiritual authority, and, amongst the best persons, is 
 matter of danger. When the cedars of Libanus have been 
 observed to fall, when David and Solomon have been dis- 
 honoured, he is a bold man that will venture further than he 
 is sent in errand by necessity, or invited by charity, or war- 
 ranted by prudence. I deny not but some persons have 
 made holy friendships with women ; St. Athanasius with a 
 devout and religious virgin, St. Chrysostome with Olympia, 
 St. Jerome with Paula Romana, St. John with the elect 
 Lady, St. Peter and St. Paul with Petronilla k and Tecla. 
 And, therefore, it were a jealousy beyond the suspicion of 
 monks and eunuchs, to think it impossible to have a chaste 
 conversation with a distinct sex. 1. A pure and right inten- 
 tion, 2. an intercourse not extended beyond necessity or holy 
 ends, 3. a short stay, 4. great modesty, 5. and the business of 
 religion, will, by God's grace, hallow the visit, and preserve 
 the friendship in its being spiritual, that it may not degenerate 
 
 1 1 Cor. xiv. 35. 
 
 k Quam B. Petri filiam naturalem non fuisse recte probat Baronius.
 
 WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 379 
 
 into carnal affection. And yet, these are only advices useful 
 when there is danger in either of the persons, or some scandal 
 incident to the profession, that to some persons, and in the 
 conjunction of many circumstances, are oftentimes not con- 
 siderable. 
 
 7. When Jesus had resolved to reveal himself to the 
 woman, he first gives her occasion to reveal herself to him, 
 fairly insinuating an opportunity to confess her sins, that, 
 having purged herself from her impurity, she might be apt to 
 entertain the article of the revelation of the Messias. And 
 indeed a crime in our manners is the greatest indisposition of 
 our understanding to entertain the truth and doctrine of the 
 Gospel : especially when the revelation contests against the 
 sin, and professes open hostility to the lust. For faith being 
 the gift of God, and an illumination, the Spirit of God will 
 not give this light to them that prefer their darkness before 
 it ; either the will must open the windows, or the light of 
 faith will not shine into the chamber of the soul. " How can 
 ye believe," said our blessed Saviour, " that receive honour 
 one of another?" 1 Ambition and faith, believing God, and 
 seeking of ourselves, are incompetent, and totally incompos- 
 sible. And therefore Serapion, bishop of Thmuis, spake like 
 an angel (saith Socrates" 1 ), saying, " that the mind, which 
 feedeth upon spiritual knowledge, must thoroughly be cleansed . 
 The irascible faculty must first be cured with brotherly love 
 and charity, and the concupiscible must be suppressed with 
 continency and mortification." Then may the understanding 
 apprehend the mysteriousness of Christianity. For, since 
 Christianity is a holy doctrine, if there be any remanent 
 affections to a sin, there is in the soul a party disaffected 
 to the entertainment of the institution, and we usually believe 
 what we have a mind to : our understandings, if a crime be 
 lodged in the will, being like icterical eyes, transmitting the 
 species to the soul with prejudice, disaffection, and colours 
 of their own framing." If a preacher should discourse, that 
 there ought to be a parity amongst Christians, and that their 
 
 1 John, v. 44. m Lib. iv. Hist. cap. 23. 
 
 n Lurida preeterea fiunt qujecunque tuentur 
 
 Arquati 
 
 Multaque sunt oculis in eorum denique mista, 
 
 Quse contage sua palloribus omnia piugunt. Lucret. lib. iv.
 
 380 CONSIDERATIONS UPON JESUS's CONFERENCE 
 
 goods ought to be in common, all men will apprehend, that 
 not princes and rich persons, but the poor and the servants, 
 would soonest become disciples, and believe the doctrines, 
 because they are the only persons likely to get by them ; and 
 it concerns the other not to believe him, the doctrine being 
 destructive of their interests. Just such a persuasion is 
 every persevering love to a vicious habit ; it having pos- 
 sessed the understanding with fair opinions of it, and sur- 
 prised the will with passion and desires, whatsoever doctrine 
 is its enemy, will with infinite difficulty be entertained. 
 And we know a great experience of it, in the article of the 
 Messias dying on the cross, which, though infinitely true, 
 yet, because " to the Jews it was a scandal, and to the Greeks 
 foolishness," it could not be believed, they remaining in that 
 indisposition ; that is, unless the will were first set right, and 
 they willing to believe any truth, though for it they must 
 disclaim their interest : their understanding was blind, be- 
 cause the heart was hardened, and could not receive the 
 impression of the greatest moral demonstration in the world. 
 8. The holy Jesus asked water of the woman, unsatisfying 
 water; but promised that himself, to them that ask him, 
 would give waters of life, and satisfaction infinite ; so distin- 
 guishing the pleasures and appetites of this world from the 
 desires and complacencies spiritual. Here we labour, but 
 receive no benefit; we sow many times, and reap not; or 
 reap, and do not gather in ; or gather in, and do not possess; 
 or possess, but do not enjoy ; or if we enjoy, we are still 
 unsatisfied, it is with anguish of spirit, and circumstances of 
 vexation. A great heap of riches makes neither our clothes 
 warm, nor our meat more nutritive, nor our beverage more 
 pleasant ; and it feeds the eye, but never fills it, but, like 
 drink to an hydropic person, increases the thirst, and pro- 
 motes the torment. But the grace of God, though but like 
 a grain of mustard-seed, fills the furrows of the heart ; and as 
 the capacity increases, itself grows up in equal degrees, and 
 never suffers any emptiness or dissatisfaction, but carries 
 content and fulness all the way ; and the degrees of aug- 
 mentation are not steps and near approaches to satisfaction, 
 but increasings of the capacity ; the soul is satisfied all the 
 way, and receives more, not because it wanted any, but that 
 it can now hold more, is more receptive of felicities ; and in
 
 WITH THE WOMAN OF SAMARIA. 381 
 
 every minute of sanctification there is so excellent a con- 
 dition of joy and high satisfaction, that the very calamities, 
 the afflictions, and persecutions of the world, are turned into 
 felicities by the activity of the prevailing ingredient ; like a 
 drop of water falling into a tun of wine, it is ascribed into a 
 new family, losing its own nature by a conversion into the 
 more noble. For now that all passionate desires are dead, 
 and there is nothing remanent that is vexatious, the peace, 
 the serenity, the quiet sleeps, the evenness of spirit, and 
 contempt of things below, remove the soul from all neigh- 
 bourhood of displeasure, and place it at the foot of the 
 throne, whither, when it is ascended, it is possessed of feli- 
 cities eternal. These were the waters which were given to 
 us to drink, when, with the rod of God, the rock Christ Jesus 
 was smitten : the Spirit of God moves for ever upon these 
 waters ; and, when the angel of the covenant hath stirred the 
 pool, whoever descends hither shall find health and peace, 
 joys spiritual, and the satisfactions of eternity. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O holy Jesus, fountain of eternal life, thou spring of joy and 
 spiritual satisfactions, let the holy stream of blood and 
 water issuing from thy sacred side cool the thirst, soften 
 the hardness, and refresh the barrenness of my desert soul ; 
 that I, thirsting after thee, as the wearied hart after the 
 cool stream, may despise all the vainer complacencies of 
 this world, refuse all societies but such as are safe, pious, 
 and charitable, mortify all sottish appetites, and may desire 
 nothing but thee, seek none but thee, and rest in thee with 
 entire dereliction of my own caitive inclinations ; that the 
 desires of nature may pass into desires of grace, and my 
 thirst and my hunger may be spiritual, and my hopes 
 placed in thee, and the expresses of my charity upon thy 
 relatives, and all the parts of my life may speak thy love, 
 and obedience to thy commandments : that thou possessing 
 my soul, and all its faculties, during my whole life, I may 
 possess thy glories in the fruition of a blessed eternity ; by 
 the light of thy Gospel here, and the streams of thy grace, 
 being guided to thee, the fountain of life and glory, there
 
 382 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 to be inebriated with tbe waters of paradise, with joy, and 
 love, and contemplation, adoring and admiring the beauties 
 of the Lord for ever and ever. Amen. 
 
 Ad SECTION XII. 
 
 Considerations upon Christ's First Preaching, and the 
 Accidents happening about that Time. 
 
 1. " WHEN John was cast into prison, then began Jesus to 
 preach ;" not only because the ministry of John, by order of 
 Divine designation, was to precede the publication of Jesus, 
 but also upon prudent considerations and designs of Provi- 
 dence, lest two great personages at once upon the theatre of 
 Palestine might have been occasion of divided thoughts, and 
 these have determined upon a schism, some professing them- 
 selves to be of Christ, some of John. For once an offer was 
 made of a dividing question by the spite of the Pharisees, 
 ** Why do the disciples of John fast often, and thy disciples 
 fast not?" But when John went off from the scene, then 
 Jesus appeared, like the sun in succession to the morning 
 star, and there were no divided interests upon mistake, or 
 the fond adherences of the followers. And although the 
 holy Jesus would certainly have cured all accidental incon- 
 veniences which might have happened in such accidents ; 
 yet this may become a precedent to all prelates, to be prudent 
 in avoiding all occasions of a schism, and, rather than divide 
 a people, submit and relinquish an opportunity of preaching 
 to their inferiors, as knowing that God is better served by 
 charity than a homily ; and if my modesty made me resign 
 to my inferior, the advantages of honour to God by the 
 cession of humility are of greater consideration than the 
 smaller and accidental advantages of better penned and more 
 accurate discourses. But our blessed Lord, designing to 
 gather disciples, did it in the manner of the more extraor- 
 dinary persons and doctors of the Jews, and particularly of 
 the Baptist, he initiated them into the institution by the 
 solemnity of a baptism ; but yet he was pleased not to 
 minister it in his own person. His apostles were baptized in
 
 CHRIST'S FIRST PREACHING, &c. 383 
 
 John's baptism, said Tertullian ; a or else, St. Peter only was 
 baptized by his Lord, and he baptized the rest. However, 
 the Lord was pleased to depute the ministry of his servants, 
 that so he might constitute a ministry ; that he might re- 
 serve it to himself as a specialty to " baptize with the Spirit," 
 as his servants did "with water;" that he might declare, 
 that the efficacy of the rite did not depend upon the dignity 
 of the minister, but his own institution, and the holy cove- 
 nant ; arid lastly, lest they who were baptized by him in 
 person might please themselves above their brethren, whose 
 needs were served by a lower ministry. 
 
 2. The holy Jesus, the great Physician of our souls, now 
 entering upon his cure, and the diocese of Palestine, which 
 was afterwards enlarged to the pale of the Catholic Church, 
 was curious to observe alt advantages of prudence for the 
 benefit of souls, by the choice of place, by quitting the place 
 of his education, (which, because it bad been poor and 
 humble, was apt to procure contempt to his doctrine, and 
 despite to his person,) by fixing in Capernaum, which had 
 the advantage of popularity, and the opportunity of extend- 
 ing the benefit, yet had not the honour and ambition of 
 Jerusalem ; that the ministers of religion might be taught to 
 seek and desire employment in such circumstances which 
 may serve the end of God, but not of ambition ; to promote 
 the interest of souls, but not the inordination of lower ap- 
 petites. Jesus quitted his natural and civil interests, when 
 they were less consistent with the end of God and his pro- 
 phetical office, and considered not his mother's house, and 
 the vicinage in the accounts of religion, beyond those other 
 places in which he might better do his Father's work : in 
 which a forward piety might behold the insinuation of a duty 
 to such persons, who, by rights of law and custom, were so 
 far instrumental to the cure of souls, as to design the 
 persons ; they might do but duty if they first considered the 
 interests of souls before the advantages of their kindred and 
 
 o 
 
 relatives ; and although, if all things else be alike, they may 
 in equal dispositions prefer their own before strangers ; yet 
 it were but reason that they should first consider sadly if the 
 men be equal, before they remember that they are of their 
 
 Lib. de Bqrtis.
 
 384 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 kindred, and not let this consideration be ingredient into the 
 former judgment. And another degree of liberty yet there 
 is ; if our kindred be persons apt and holy, and without 
 exceptions either of law, or prudence, or religion, we may 
 do them advantages before others who have some degrees of 
 learning and improvement beyond the other : or else no man 
 might lawfully prefer his kindred, unless they were absolutely 
 the ablest in a diocese or kingdom ; which doctrine were a 
 snare apt to produce scruples to the consciences, rather than 
 advantages to the cure. But then, also, patrons should be 
 careful, that they do not account their clerks by an estimate 
 taken from comparison with unworthy candidates, set up on 
 purpose, that when we choose our kindred we may abuse our 
 consciences by saying, we have fulfilled our trust, and made 
 election of the more worthy. In these and the like cases, 
 let every man who is concerned deal with justice, nobleness, 
 and sincerity, with the simplicity of a Christian and the 
 wisdom of a man, without tricks and stratagems, to dis- 
 advantage the Church by doing temporal advantages to his 
 friend or family. 
 
 3. The blessed Master began his office with a sermon of 
 repentance, as his decessor, John the Baptist, did in his 
 ministration, to tell the world that the new covenant, which 
 was to be established by the mediation and office of the holy 
 Jesus, was a covenant of grace and favour, not established 
 upon works, but upon promises, and remission of right on 
 God's part, and remission of sins on our part. The law was 
 *' a covenant of works," and whoever prevaricated any of its 
 sanctions in a considerable degree, he stood sentenced by it 
 without any hopes of restitution supplied by the law. And 
 therefore it was the " covenant of works ;" not because good 
 works were then required more than now, or because they 
 had more efficacy than now ; but because all our hopes did 
 rely upon the perfection of works and innocence, without the 
 suppletories of grace, pardon, and repentance. But the 
 Gospel is therefore " a covenant of grace," not that works 
 are excluded from our duty, or from co-operating to heaven ; 
 but that, because there is in it so much mercy, the imperfec- 
 tions of the works are made up by the grace of Jesus, and 
 the defects of innocence are supplied by the substitution of 
 repentance. Abatements are made for the infirmities and
 
 CHRIST'S FIRST PREACHING, &c. 385 
 
 miseries of humanity ; and if we do our endeavour now, after 
 the manner of men ; the faith of Jesus Christ, that is, con- 
 formity to his laws, and submission to his doctrine, entitles 
 us to the grace he hath purchased for us, that is, our sins for 
 his sake shall be pardoned . So that the law and the Gospel 
 are not opposed barely upon the title of faith and works, but 
 as the " covenant of faith" and the " covenant of works." 
 In the faith of a Christian, works are the great ingredient 
 and the chief of the constitution, but the Gospel is not " a 
 covenant of works," that is, it is not an agreement upon the 
 stock of innocence without allowances of repentance, requir- 
 ing obedience in rigour and strictest estimate. But the 
 Gospel requires the holiness of a Christian, and yet after the 
 manner of a man; for, always provided that we do not allow 
 to ourselves a liberty, but endeavour with all our strength, 
 and love with all our soul, that which, if it were upon our 
 allowance, would be required at our hands, now that it is 
 against our will, and highly contested against, is put upon 
 the stock of Christ, and allowed to us by God in the accounts 
 of pardon by the merits of Jesus, by the covenant of the 
 Gospel. And this is the repentance and remission of sins 
 which John first preached upon the approximation of the 
 kingdom, and Christ at the first manifestation of it, and the 
 apostles afterward in the name of Jesus. 
 
 4. Jesus now having begun his preaching, began also 
 to gather his family ; and first called Simon and Andrew, 
 then James and John, at whose vocation he wrought a 
 miracle, which was a signification of their office, and the 
 success of it ; a draught of fishes so great and prodigious, 
 that it convinced them that he was a person very extraordi- 
 nary, whose voice the fishes heard, and came at his call : and 
 since he designed them to become " fishers of men," although 
 themselves were as unlikely instruments to persuade men, as 
 the voice of the Son of Man to command fishes, yet they 
 should prevail in so great numbers, that the whole world 
 should run after them, and, upon their summons, come into 
 the net of the Gospel, becoming disciples of the glorious 
 Nazarene. St. Peter, the first time that he threw his net, at 
 the descent of the Holy Ghost in Pentecost, caught three 
 thousand men; and, at one sermon, sometimes the princes of 
 a nation have been converted, and the whole land presently 
 
 VOL. II. G G
 
 386 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 baptized ; and the multitudes so great, that the apostles were 
 forced to design some men to the ministration of baptism by 
 way of peculiar office ; and it grew to be work enough, the 
 easiness of the ministry being made busy and full of employ- 
 ment where a whole nation became disciples. And indeed 
 the doctrine is so holy, the principle so divine, the instru- 
 ments so supernatural, the promises so glorious, the reve- 
 lations so admirable, the rites so mysterious, the whole fabric 
 of the discipline so full of wisdom, persuasion, and energy, 
 that the infinite number of the first conversions were not 
 so great a wonder, as that there are so few now : every man 
 calling himself Christian, but few having that " power of 
 godliness" which distinguishes Christian from a word and an 
 empty name. And the word is now the same, and the ar- 
 guments greater (for some have been growing ever since, as 
 the prophecies have been fulfilled), and the sermons more, 
 and " the Spirit the same ;" and yet such " diversity of 
 operations," that we hear and read the sermons and dictates 
 evangelical as we do a romance, but that it is with less 
 passion, but altogether as much unconcerned as with a story 
 of Salmanasar or Ibrahim Bassa : for we do not leave one 
 vice, or reject one lust, or deny one impetuous temptation 
 the more, for the four Gospels' sake, and all St. Paul's 
 epistles mingled in the argument. And yet all think them- 
 selves fishes within Christ's net, and the prey of the Gospel : 
 and it is true they are so ; for " the kingdom is like unto a 
 net, which enclosed fishes good and bad ;" but this shall be 
 of small advantage when the net shall be drawn to the shore, 
 and the separation made. 
 
 5. When Jesus called those disciples, they had been 
 " fishing all night, and caught nothing ;" but when Christ 
 bade them " let down the net," they took multitudes : to 
 shew to us, that the success of our endeavours is not in 
 proportion to our labours, but the Divine assistance and 
 benediction. It is not the excellence of the instrument, but 
 the capacity of the subject ; nor yet this alone, but the apt- 
 ness of the application, nor that without an influence from 
 Heaven, can produce the fruits of a holy persuasion and 
 conversion. " Paul may plant, and Apollos may water ; but 
 God gives the increase." Indeed, when we let down the 
 nets at the Divine appointment, the success is the more
 
 CHRIST'S FIRST PREACHING, &c. 387 
 
 probable ; and certainly God will bring benefit to the place, 
 or honour to himself, or salvation to them that will obey, 
 or conviction to them that will not : but whatever the fruit 
 be in respect of others, the reward shall be great to them- 
 selves. And therefore St. Paul did not say he had profited, 
 but, " he had laboured more than they all," as knowing the 
 Divine acceptance would take its account in proportion to 
 our endeavours and intendments ; not by commensuration to 
 the effect, which being without us, depending upon God's 
 blessing, and the co-operation of the recipients, can be no 
 ingredients into our account. But this also may help to 
 support the weariness of our hopes, and the protraction and 
 deferring of our expectation, if a laborious prelate and an 
 assiduous preacher have but few returns to his many cares 
 and greater labours. A whole night a man may labour (the 
 longest life is no other), and yet catch nothing, and then the 
 Lord may visit us with his special presence, and more for- 
 ward assistances, and the harvest may grow up with the 
 swiftness of a gourd, and the fruitfulness of olives, and the 
 plaisance of the vine, and the strength of wheat ; and whole 
 troops of penitents may arise from the darkness of their 
 graves at the call of one sermon, even when he pleases : and 
 till then we must be content that we do our duty, and lay 
 the consideration of the effect at the feet of Jesus. 
 
 6. In the days of the patriarchs, the governors of the 
 Lord's people were called shepherds ; so was Moses, and so 
 was David. In the days of the Gospel they are shepherds 
 still, but with the addition of a new appellative, for now they 
 are called fishers. Both the callings were honest, humble, 
 and laborious, watchful, and full of trouble ; but now that 
 both the titles are conjunct, we may observe the symbol of 
 an implicit and folded duty. There is much simplicity and 
 care in the shepherd's trade ; there is much craft and labour 
 in the fisher's : and a prelate is to be both full of piety to his 
 flock, careful of their welfare ; and, because in the political 
 and spiritual sense too, feeding and governing are the same 
 duty, it concerns them that have cure of souls to be discreet 
 and wary, observant of advantages, laying such baits for the 
 people as may entice them into the nets of Jesus's discipline. 
 " But being crafty I caught you," saith St. Paul ; for he w;is 
 a fisher too. And so must spiritual persons be fishers to all
 
 388 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 spiritual senses of watchfulness, and care, and prudence : 
 only they must not fish for preferment and ambitious pur- 
 poses, but must say with the king of Sodom, " Date nobis 
 animas, caetera vobis tollite ;" which St. Paul renders, " We 
 seek not yours, but you." And in order to such acquist, the 
 purchase of souls, let them have the diligence and the craft of 
 fishers, the watchfulness and care of shepherds, the prudence 
 of politics, the tenderness of parents, the spirit of govern- 
 ment, the wariness of observation, great knowledge of the 
 dispositions of their people, and experience of such advan- 
 tages 'by means of which they may serve the ends of God, 
 and of salvation upon their souls. 
 
 7. When Peter had received the fruits of a rich miracle, 
 in the prodigious and prosperous draught of fishes, he in- 
 stantly " falls down at the feet of Jesus," and confesses 
 himself " a sinner," and unworthy of the presence of Christ. 
 In which confession I not only consider the conviction of 
 his understanding by the testimony of the miracle, but the 
 modesty of his spirit, who, in his exaltation, and the joy of a 
 sudden and happy success, retired into humility and consi- 
 deration of his own unworthiness, lest, as it happens in 
 sudden joys, the lavishness of his spirit should transport 
 him to intemperance, to looser affections, to vanity, and 
 garishness, less becoming the severity and government of 
 a disciple of so great a Master. For in such great and 
 sudden accidents, men usually are dissolved and melted into 
 joy and inconsideration, and let fly all their severe principles 
 and discipline of manners, till, as Peter here did, though to 
 another purpose, they say to Christ, " Depart from me, 
 O Lord ;" as if such excellences of joys, like the lesser stars, 
 did disappear at the presence of him, who is the fountain of 
 all joys regular and just. When the spirits of the body have 
 been bound up by the cold winter air, the warmth of the 
 spring makes so great an aperture of the passages, and, by 
 consequence, such dissolution of spirits, in the presence of 
 the sun, that it becomes the occasion of fevers and violent 
 diseases. Just such a thing is a sudden joy, in which the 
 spirits leap out from their cells of austerity and sobriety, and 
 are warmed into fevers and wildnesses, and forfeiture of all 
 judgment and vigorous understanding. In these accidents, 
 the best advice is to temper and allay our joys with some
 
 CHRIST'S FIRST PREACHING, &c. 389 
 
 instant consideration of the vilest of our sins, the shameful- 
 ness of our disgraces, the most dolorous accidents of our 
 lives, the worst of our fears, with meditation of death, or 
 the terrors of doomsday, or the unimaginable miseries of 
 damned and accursed spirits. 5 For such considerations as 
 these are good instruments of sobriety, and are correctives 
 to the malignity of excessive joys or temporal prosperities, 
 which, like minerals, unless allayed by art, prey upon the 
 spirits, and become the union of a contradiction, being 
 turned into mortal medicines. 
 
 8. At this time " Jesus preached to the people from the 
 ship," which, in the fancies and tropical discoursings of the 
 old doctors, signifies the Church, and declares, that the 
 homilies of order and authority must be delivered from the 
 oracle ; they that preach must be sent, and God hath ap- 
 pointed tutors and instructors of our consciences by special 
 designation and peculiar appointment : if they that preach 
 do not make their sermons from the ship, their discourses 
 either are the false murmurs of heretics and false shepherds, 
 or else of thieves and invaders of authority, or corrupters of 
 discipline and order. For God, that loves to hear us in 
 special places, will also be heard himself by special persons; 
 and since he sent his angels ministers to convey his purposes 
 of old, then when " the law was ordained by angels, as by 
 the hands of a mediator," now also he will send his servants, 
 the sons of men, since the new law was ordained by the Son 
 of Man, who is the Mediator between God and man in the 
 new covenant. And, therefore, in the ship Jesus preached, 
 but he had first caused it " to put off from land;" to re- 
 present to us that the ship in which we preach must be put 
 off from the vulgar communities of men, d separate from the 
 people by the designation of special appointment and of 
 special holiness ; that is, they neither must be common men, 
 nor of common lives, but consecrated by order, and hallowed 
 by holy living, lest the person want authority in destitution 
 of a divine character, and his doctrine lose its energy and 
 
 b Simul et quod gaudes et quod times contrahe. Seneca, 
 c Gal. iii. 19. 
 
 d Hagrft ytt^ ra 'o'fiaiev -rgof op.uiv, oiv KKI pave; is^i-jf o <rt${ t-'fytrtci, (two; 
 Sto<fi\ttSi p'ovof II&MS iv?,affxi' ftnos ya.^ eTSt rift,*.*, rw |/v fj.n auy^itu T*V 
 Tipupiwii, Hal 9 "XotYiywitwui hai7}> itturat -rieffiiyiuv.Uierocl, in Pyt'iag.
 
 390 ON CHRIST'S FIRST PREACHING, &c. 
 
 power when the life is vulgar, and hath nothing in it holy 
 and extraordinary. 
 
 9. The holy Jesus, in the choice of his apostles, was 
 resolute and determined to make election of persons bold 
 and confident, (for so the Galilaeans were observed naturally 
 to be, and Peter was the boldest of the twelve, and a good 
 sword-man, till the spirit of his Master had fastened his 
 sword within the scabbard, and charmed his spirit into quiet- 
 ness;) but he never chose any of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
 none of the doctors of the law, but persons ignorant and 
 unlearned ; which, in design and institutions whose divinity 
 is not demonstrated from other arguments, would seem an 
 art of concealment and distrust. But in this, which derives 
 its rays from the fountain of wisdom most openly and in- 
 fallibly , r it is a contestation against the powers of the world 
 upon the interests of God, that he who does all the work 
 might have all the glory, and in the productions in which 
 he is fain to make the instruments themselves, and give 
 them capacity and activity, every part of the operation, and 
 causality and effect, may give to God the same honour he 
 had from the creation for his being the only workman ; with 
 the addition of those degrees of excellence which, in the 
 work of redemption of man, are beyond that of his creation 
 and first being. 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O eternal Jesu, Lord of the creatures, and Prince of the 
 Catholic Church, to whom all creatures obey in acknow- 
 ledgment of thy supreme dominion, and all according to 
 thy disposition co-operate to the advancement of thy 
 kingdom, be pleased to order the affairs and accidents of 
 the world, that all things in their capacity may do the 
 work of the Gospel, and co-operate to the good of the 
 elect, and retrench the growth of vice, and advance the 
 interests of virtue. Make all the states and orders of 
 men disciples of thy holy institution : let princes worship 
 thee and defend religion ; let thy clergy do thee honour 
 by personal zeal and vigilance over their flocks ; let all 
 the world submit to thy sceptre, and praise thy righteous- 
 ness, and adore thy judgments, and revere thy laws : and,
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 391 
 
 in the multitudes of thy people within the enclosure of thy 
 nets, let me also communicate in the offices of a strict and 
 religious duty, that I may know thy voice, and obey thy 
 call, and entertain thy Holy Spirit, and improve my 
 talents ; that I may also communicate in the blessings of 
 the Church ; and when the nets shall be drawn to the 
 shore, and the angels shall make separation of the good 
 fishes from the bad, I may not be rejected, or thrown into 
 those seas of fire which shall afflict the enemies of thy 
 kingdom ; but be admitted into the societies of saints, and 
 the everlasting communion of thy blessings and glories, 
 O blessed and eternal Jesu. Amen. 
 
 DISCOURSE IX. 
 Of Repentance. 
 
 1. THE whole doctrine of the Gospel is comprehended by 
 the Holy Ghost in these two summaries, " faith and re- 
 pentance ; " a that those two potent and imperious faculties, 
 which command our lower powers, which are the fountain of 
 actions, occasion and capacity of laws, and the title to 
 reward or punishment, the will and the understanding, that 
 is, the whole man considered in his superior faculties, may 
 become the subjects of the kingdom, servants of Jesus, and 
 heirs of glory. Faith supplies our imperfect conceptions, 
 and corrects our ignorance, making us to distinguish good 
 from evil, not only by the proportions of reason, and custom, 
 and old laws, but by the new standard of the Gospel; it 
 teaches us all those duties which were enjoined us in order 
 to a participation of mighty glories ; it brings our under- 
 standing into subjection, making us apt to receive the Spirit 
 for our guide, Christ for our master, the Gospel for our rule, 
 the laws of Christianity for our measure of good and evil : 
 and it supposes us naturally ignorant, and comes to supply 
 those defects which, in our understandings, were left after 
 the spoils of innocence and wisdom made in paradise upon 
 Adam's prevarication, and continued and increased by our 
 
 Acts, xx. 21.
 
 392 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 neglect, evil customs, voluntary deceptions, and infinite pre- 
 judices. And as faith presupposes our ignorance, so re- 
 pentance presupposes our malice and iniquity. The whole 
 design of Christ's coming and the doctrines of the Gospel 
 being to recover us from a miserable condition ; from igno- 
 rance to spiritual wisdom, by the conduct of faith ; and 
 from a vicious, habitually depraved life and ungodly man- 
 ners, to the purity of the sons of God, by the instrument of 
 repentance. 
 
 2. And this is a loud publication of the excellence and 
 glories of the Gospel, and the felicities of man over all the 
 other instances of creation. The angels, who were more 
 excellent spirits than human souls, were not comprehended 
 and made safe within a covenant and provisions of repent- 
 ance. Their first act of volition was their whole capacity of 
 a blissful or a miserable eternity : they made their own 
 sentence when they made their first election ; and having 
 such excellent knowledge, and no weaknesses to prejudge 
 and trouble their choice, what they first did was not capable 
 of repentance ; because they had at first, in their intuition 
 and sight, all which could afterward bring them to repent- 
 ance. But weak man, who knows first by elements, and, 
 after long study, learns a syllable, and in good time gets 
 a word, could not at first know all those things which were 
 sufficient or apt to determine his choice, but as he grew to 
 understand more saw more reasons to rescind his first 
 elections. The angels had a full peremptory will, and a 
 satisfied understanding at first, and therefore were not to 
 mend their first act by a second contradictory : but poor 
 man hath a will always strongest when his understanding 
 is weakest, and chooseth most when he is least able to 
 determine; and, therefore, is most passionate in his de- 
 sires, and follows his object with greatest earnestness, when 
 he is blindest, and hath the least reason so to do. And 
 therefore God, pitying man, begins to reckon his choices 
 to be criminal just in the same degree as he gives him 
 understanding. The violences and unreasonable actions of 
 childhood are no more remembered by God than they are 
 understood by the child. The levities and passions of youth 
 are not aggravated by the imputation of malice, but are 
 sins of a lighter dye, because reason is not yet impressed,
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 393 
 
 and marked upon them with characters and tincture in grain. 
 But he who (when he may choose, because he understands) 
 shall choose the evil, and reject the good, stands marked with 
 a deep guilt, and hath no excuse left to him, but as his 
 degrees of ignorance left his choice the more imperfect. 
 And because every sinner, in the style of Scripture, is a 
 fool, and hath an election as imperfect as is the action, that 
 is, as great a declension from prudence as it is from piety, 
 and the man understands as imperfectly as he practises: 
 therefore God sent his Son to " take upon him, not the 
 nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham, " b and to pro- 
 pound salvation upon such terms as were possible, that is, 
 upon such a piety which relies upon experience, and trial of 
 good and evil ; and hath given us leave, if we choose amiss 
 at first, to choose again, and choose" better ; Christ having 
 undertaken to pay for the issues of their first follies, to make 
 up the breach made by our first weaknesses and abused 
 understandings. 
 
 3. But as God gave us this mercy by Christ, so he also 
 revealed it by him. He first used the authority of a Lord, 
 and a Creator, and a Lawgiver : he required obedience, 
 indeed, upon reasonable terms, upon the instance of but a 
 few commandments at first, which when he afterwards mul- 
 tiplied, he also appointed ways to expiate the smaller irre- 
 gularities ; but left them eternally bound without remedy 
 who should do any great violence or a crime. But then he 
 bound them but to a temporal death. Only this, as an 
 eternal death was also tacitly implied, so also a remedy was 
 secretly ministered, and repentance particularly preached by 
 homilies distinct from the covenant of Moses' law. The 
 law allowed no repentance for greater crimes ; "he that was 
 convicted of adultery, was to die without mercy ;" c but God 
 pitied the miseries of man, and the inconveniences of the 
 law, and sent Christ to suffer for the one, and remedy the 
 other ; "for so it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from 
 the dead, and that repentance and remission of sins should 
 be preached in his name among all nations." d And now 
 this is the last and only hope of man, who in his natural 
 condition is imperfect, in his customs vicious, in his habits 
 
 b Heb. ii. 16. c Lev. xx. 10. d Luke, xxiv. 46.
 
 394- OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 impotent and criminal. Because man did not remain in- 
 nocent, it became necessary he should be penitent, and that 
 this penitence should, by some means, be made acceptable, 
 that is, become the instrument of his pardon, and restitution 
 of his hope. Which, because it is an act of favour, and 
 depends wholly upon the Divine dignation, and was revealed 
 to us by Jesus Christ, who was made, not only the Prophet 
 and Preacher, but the Mediator of this new covenant and 
 mercy ; it was necessary we should become disciples of the 
 holy Jesus, and servants of his institution ; that is, run to 
 him to be made partakers of the mercies of this new cove- 
 nant, and accept of him such conditions as he should require 
 of us. 
 
 4. This covenant is then consigned to us when we first 
 come to Christ, that is, when we first profess ourselves his 
 disciples and his servants, disciples of his doctrine and 
 servants of his institution; that is, in baptism, in which 
 Christ, who died for our sins, makes us partakers of his 
 death. " For we are buried by baptism into his death, " f 
 saith St. Paul. Which was also represented in ceremony by 
 the immersion appointed to be the rite of that sacrament. 
 And then it is that God pours forth, together with the sacra- 
 mental waters, a salutary and holy fountain of grace, to 
 wash the soul from all its stains and impure adherences 
 And, therefore, this first access to Christ is, in the style of 
 Scripture, called " regeneration, the new birth, redemption, 
 renovation, expiation, or atonement with God, and justifi- 
 cation." 8 And these words in the New Testament relate 
 principally and properly to the abolition of sins committed 
 before baptism. For we are "justified freely by his grace, 
 through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ ; whom God 
 hath set forth to be a propitiation, to declare his righteousness 
 for the remission of sins that are past : to declare, I say, 
 at this time, his righteousness." And this is that which St. 
 Paul calls " justification by faith," that boasting might 
 
 ' Parcus deorum cultor et infrequens, 
 
 Insanientis dum sapiential 
 
 Consultus erro, nunc retrorsum 
 
 Vela dare, atque iterare cursus 
 
 Cogor relictos. Hur. lib. i. od. 3-4. 
 f Rom. vi. 4. 
 i 1 Pet iii. 21. Rom. v. 1. Tit. iii. 5, 7. Rom. iii. 26. Gal. ii. 16.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 395 
 
 be excluded," and the grace of God by Jesus made exceeding 
 glorious. 11 For this being the proper work of Christ, the first 
 entertainment of a disciple, and manifestation of that state 
 which is first given him as a favour, and next intended as a 
 duty, is a total abolition of the precedent guilt of sin, and 
 leaves nothing remaining that can condemn ; we then freely 
 receive the entire and perfect effect of that atonement which 
 Christ made for us, we are put into a condition of innocence 
 and favour. And this, I say, is done regularly in baptism, 
 and St. Paul expresses it to this sense ; after he had enume- 
 rated a series of vices subjected in many, he adds, " and such 
 were some of you ; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified."' 
 There is nothing of the old guilt remanent; when "ye were 
 washed ye were sanctified," or, as the Scripture calls it in 
 another place, " Ye were redeemed from your vain conversa- 
 tion."* 
 
 5. For this grace was the formality of the covenant : 
 " Repent, and believe the Gospel. 1 Repent, and be con- 
 verted," (so it is in St. Peter's sermon,) " and your sins shall 
 be done away," m that was the covenant. But that Christ 
 chose baptism for its signature, appears in the parallel ; 
 " Repent, and be baptized, and wash away your sins: for 
 Christ loved his Church, and gave himself for it ; that he 
 might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by 
 the word ; that he might present it to himself a glorious 
 church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but 
 that it should be holy, and without blemish." n The sanctifi- 
 cation is integral, the pardon is universal and immediate. 
 
 6. But here the process is short; no more at first but 
 this, " Repent, and be baptized, and wash away your sins ;" 
 which baptism, because it was speedily administered, and yet 
 not without the preparatives of faith and repentance, it is 
 certain those predispositions were but instruments of recep- 
 
 h Rom. iii. 24-28. 1 Cor. vi. 11. k 1 Pet. i. 18. 
 
 1 Mark, i. 15. m Acts, iii. 19. 
 
 n Acts, ii. 38. Mark, xvi. 16. Eph. v. 25-27. 
 
 * ^faivifffi /u.01 eu xa.<r atfpuTot %avri{, aXXa Kara, '\riffwv Xj/ffrsy ran 01 tiftei; 
 a*afa.yoyra, 7v nrriuatris iii TOM Sawzrav avrtu 3< TW fieLiTTiffputrof XOIHUHOI riif 
 dtttfrtifftas ctuTiu yi*r,s6i. Igniit. ad Trail. 
 
 ElVfly 6i, S<" voaros, xcii <ritrria;,xai lc,u).ov, e'l treiirxgttfxivcc%of*l</oi, xa.t ftiTctnoevvrif 
 i$' els w/tagrov, lufiu^oireii Trjy ft,iM.ouffav iTti7la< rou 9tu Kfifn. Just, Mart. 
 Dial, cum T
 
 396 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 tion, actions of great facility, of small employment, and such 
 as, supposing the person not unapt,P did confess the infinite- 
 ness of the Divine mercy, and fulness of the redemption, and 
 is called by the apostle, " a being justified freely." q 
 
 7. Upon this ground it is, that, by the doctrine of the 
 Church, heathen persons, " strangers from the covenant of 
 grace," were invited to a confession of faith, and dereliction 
 of false religions, with a promise that, at the very first re- 
 signation of their persons to the service of Jesus, they should 
 obtain full pardon/ It was St. Cyprian's counsel to old 
 Demetrianus, " Now, in the evening of thy days, when thy 
 soul is almost expiring, repent of thy sins, believe in Jesus, 
 and turn Christian ; and although thou art almost in the 
 embraces of death, yet thou shalt be comprehended of im- 
 mortality." " Baptizatus ad horam securus hinc exit," saith 
 St. Austin ; a baptized person dying immediately shall live 
 eternally and gloriously. And this was the case of the thief 
 upon the cross ; he confessed Christ, and repented of his 
 sins, and begged pardon, and did acts enough to facilitate 
 his first access to Christ, and but to remove the hinderances 
 of God's favour; then he was redeemed and reconciled to 
 God by the death of Jesus, that is, he was pardoned with a 
 full, instantaneous, integral, and clear pardon ; with such a 
 pardon which declared the glory of God's mercies, and the 
 infiniteness of Christ's merits, and such as required a mere 
 reception and entertainment on man's part. 
 
 8. But then we, having received so great a favour, enter 
 into covenant to correspond with a proportionable endeavour ; 
 the benefit of absolute pardon, that is, salvation of our souls, 
 being not to be received till " the times of refreshing shall 
 come from the presence of the Lord :" s all the interval we 
 have promised to live a holy life, in obedience to the whole 
 discipline of Jesus. That is the condition on our part : and 
 if we prevaricate that, the mercy shewn to the blessed thief 
 
 P Acts, viii. 37; x. 47 ; and xvi. 15, 33. 1 Rom. iii. 24. 
 
 r Eadem est ratio laborantium in vinea quos dominus in parabola, 
 Mcittb. xx. umlecima demum bora conduxerat, onmes acqualera sortem pro- 
 merebantur. Ratio autem est, quia an tea vocati non erant : " Nemo nos 
 conduxerat," verse 7. 6:Xt; $ixau<irga.'yr,<ra.i o \yff*ri; , XX ?rjaXa^t/3a/ darara; . 
 Cui respondet Christus, Ouro tgy Tij/^sw powv, U././M Tt trifni air^i^a^*. 
 Cyril. Hieros. 
 
 s Acts, iii. 19.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 397 
 
 is no argument of hope to us, because he was saved by the 
 mercies of the first access, which corresponds to the remis- 
 sion of sins we receive in baptism; and we shall perish, by 
 breaking our own promises and obligations, which Christ 
 passed upon us when he made with us the covenant of an 
 entire and gracious pardon.' 
 
 9. For in the precise covenant there is nothing else 
 described, but pardon so given and ascertained upon an 
 obedience persevering to the end. And this is clear in all 
 those places of Scripture which express a holy and innocent 
 life to have been the purpose and design of Christ's death for 
 us, and redemption of us from the former estate." " Christ 
 bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead 
 unto sins, should live unto righteousness ; by whose stripes 
 ye are healed. " x (Exinde,) from our being " healed," from 
 our " dying unto sin," from our being " buried with Christ," 
 from our being " baptized into his death ;" the end of Christ's 
 dying for us is, " that we should live unto righteousness." 
 Which was also highly and prophetically expressed by St. 
 Zacharias/ in his divine ecstasy: this was " the oath which 
 he sware to our forefather Abraham, that he would grant 
 unto us, that we, being delivered out of the hands of our 
 enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and 
 righteousness before him, all the days of our life." And 
 St. Paul 2 discourses to this purpose pertinently and largely: 
 " For the grace of God, that bringeth salvation, hath appeared 
 to all men, teaching us, that denying ungodliness and worldly 
 lusts, (" Hi sunt angeli quibus in lavacro renunciavimus," 
 saith Tertullian, " Those are the evil angels, the devil and his 
 works, which we deny or renounce in baptism,") we should 
 live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world," 
 that is, lead a whole life in the pursuit of universal holiness ; 
 sobriety, justice, and godliness, being the proper language to 
 
 ' Licet latro veniam meruisset in fine de omui suo crimine, non tamen dedit, 
 baptizatis peccandi et perseverandi auctoritatem. Tune enim baptizatus est, qui 
 tune primum Christum in cruce coufessus est. Poenitentia enim, si in extreme* 
 vitae hiatu advenerit, sanat et liberat in ablatione baptismi. Illi autem qui, cum 
 potuerunt, nunquam converti voluerunt, confitentes cum jam peccare nequeunt, 
 non sic facile acquirunt quod volunt. S. Aug. cap. Nullus de Pantt. dist. 7, 
 
 u Vide Part III. Consid.of Crucifix, of Jesus. 
 
 x 1 Tet. ii. 21. y Luke, i. 73, &c. z Titus, ii. 11, 12,
 
 398 OK REPENTANCE. 
 
 signify our religion and respects to God, to our neighbours, 
 and to ourselves. And that this was the very end of our dying 
 in baptism, and the design of Christ's manifestation of our 
 redemption, he adds, a " Looking for that blessed hope, and 
 the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus, 
 who gave himself for us," to this very purpose, " that he might 
 redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar 
 people, zealous of good works." Purifying a people peculiar to 
 himself, is cleansing it in the laver of regeneration, and appro- 
 priating it to himself in the rites of admission and profession. 
 Which plainly designs the first consignation of our redemp- 
 tion to be in baptism, and that Christ, there cleansing his 
 Church "from every spot or wrinkle," made a covenant with 
 us, that we should renounce all our sins, and he should 
 cleanse them all, and then that we should abide in that state. 
 Which is also very explicitly set down by the same apostle, 
 in that divine and mysterious epistle to the Romans : b " How 
 shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein ? Know 
 ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, 
 were baptized into his death?" Well, what then ? " Therefore 
 we are buried with him by baptism into his death, that, like 
 as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the 
 Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." 
 That is the end and mysteriousness of baptism ; it is a con- 
 signation into the death of Christ, and we die with him that 
 once ; that is, die to sin, that we may for ever after live the 
 life of righteousness. " Knowing this, that our old man is 
 crucified with him ; that the body of sin might be destroyed, 
 that henceforth we should not serve sin ;" c that is, from the 
 day of our baptism to the day of our death. And therefore 
 God, who knows the weaknesses on our part, and yet the 
 strictness and necessity of conserving baptismal grace by the 
 covenant evangelical, hath appointed the auxiliaries of the 
 Holy Spirit to be ministered to all baptized people in the 
 holy rite of confirmation, that it might be made possible to 
 be done by Divine aids, which is necessary to be done by the 
 Divine commandments. 
 
 10. And this might not be improperly said to be the 
 meaning of those words of our blessed Saviour, " He that 
 
 Titus, ii. 13, 14. b Rom. vi. 2-4. c Rom. v. 6.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 399 
 
 speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven 
 him ; but he that speaks a word against the Holy Ghost, it 
 shall not be forgiven him :" that is, those sins which were 
 committed in infidelity, before we became disciples of the 
 holy Jesus, are to be remitted in baptism and our first pro- 
 fession of the religion ; but the sins committed after baptism 
 and confirmation, in which we receive the Holy Ghost, and 
 by which the Holy Spirit is grieved, are to be accounted for 
 with more severity. And therefore the Primitive Church, d 
 understanding our obligations according to this discourse, 
 admitted not any to holy orders who had lapsed and fallen 
 into any sin of which she could take cognizance, that is, such 
 who had not kept the integrity of their baptism ; but sins 
 committed before baptism were no impediments to the sus- 
 ception of orders, because they were absolutely extinguished 
 in baptism. This is the nature of the covenant we made in 
 baptism, that is, the grace of the Gospel, and the effect of 
 faith and repentance ; and it is expected we should so re- 
 main. For it is nowhere expressed to be the mercy and 
 intention of the covenant evangelical, that this redemption 
 should be any more than once, or that repentance, which is 
 in order to it, can be renewed to the same, or so great 
 purposes and present effects. 
 
 1 1 . But after we are once reconciled in baptism, and put 
 entirely into God's favour, when we have once been re- 
 deemed, 6 if we then fall away into sin, we must expect God's 
 dealing with us in another manner, and to other purposes. 
 Never must we expect to be so again justified, and upon such 
 terms as formerly ; the best days of our repentance are inter- 
 rupted : not that God will never forgive them that sin after 
 baptism, and recover by repentance ; but that restitution by 
 repentance after baptism, is another thing than the first 
 redemption. No such entire, clear, and integral, determi- 
 
 d Vitia catechumeno non imputantur fideli, imo et polygamia ante baptismum 
 sacerdotibus non ponebat obicem. S. Hieron. in Jin. Apnl. I. contra Ruffin. 
 
 De Sacramento enim agitur, non de peccato. S. Aug. de Bono Conjugali. 
 
 Nam in baptismo omnia peccata dimittuutur. Can.Apost. 17. Condi. Eliber. 
 cap. 30, 31. 
 
 Mundus post diluvium rursus delinquens igni destinatur : sicut et homo qui 
 post baptismum delicta restaurat. Tertul. de Baptis. 
 
 c Nunc hie dies aliiim vitam adfert, alios mores postulat.
 
 400 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 nate, and presential effects of repentance ; but an imperfect, 
 little, growing, uncertain, and hazardous reconciliation : a 
 repentance that is always in production, a renovation by 
 parts, a pardon that is revocable, a " salvation" to be 
 "wrought by fear and trembling:" all our remanent life 
 must be in bitterness, our hopes allayed with fears, our meat 
 attempered with coloquintida, and " death is in the pot :" as 
 our best actions are imperfect, so our greatest graces are but 
 possibilities and aptnesses to a reconcilement, and all our life 
 we are working ourselves into that condition we had in 
 baptism, and lost by our relapse. As the habit lessens, so 
 does the guilt ; as our virtues are imperfect, so is the pardon ; 
 and because our piety may be interrupted, our state is uncer- 
 tain/ till our possibilities of sin are ceased, till our " fight is 
 finished," and the victory therefore made sure because there 
 is no more fight. And it is remarkable, that St. Peter gives 
 counsel to live holily, in pursuance of our redemption, of our 
 calling, and of our " escaping from that corruption that is in 
 the world through lust," lest we lose the benefit of our 
 purgation, to which, by way of antithesis, he opposes this : 
 " Wherefore the rather give diligence to make your calling 
 and election sure." And, " if ye do these things, ye shall 
 never fall." 8 Meaning, by the perpetuating our state of 
 baptism and first repentance we shall never fall, but be in a 
 sure estate ; " our calling and election shall be sure." h But. 
 not, if we fall; ''if we forget we were purged from our old 
 sins ;"* if we forfeit our " calling," we have also made our 
 " election" unsure, movable, and disputable. 
 
 12. So that now the hopes of lapsed sinners rely upon 
 another bottom. And, as in Moses' law there was no reve- 
 lation of repentance, but yet the Jews had hopes in God, and 
 were taught the succours of repentance by the homilies of 
 the prophets, and other accessory notices : so in the Gospel 
 the covenant was established upon faith and repentance, but 
 it was consigned in baptism, and was verifiable only in the 
 integrity of a following holy life according to the measures of 
 a man ; not perfect, but sincere ; not faultless, but heartily 
 endeavoured : but yet the mercies of God, in pardoning 
 
 f Ante obitum nemo supremaque funera feliz. 
 
 8 2 Pet. i. 4, 10. h Vide etiam Col. i. 21-23. 
 
 ' 2 Pet. i. 9.
 
 OF REPENTAN 7 CE. 401 
 
 sinners lapsed after baptism, was declared to us by collateral 
 and indirect occasions; by the sermons of the apostles, and 
 the commentaries of apostolical persons, who understood the 
 meaning of the Spirit, and the purposes of the Divine mercy, 
 and those other significations of his will, which the blessed 
 Jesus left upon record in other parts of his testament, as in 
 codicils annexed, besides the precise testament itself. And 
 it is certain, if, in the covenant of grace, there be the same 
 involution of an after-repentance, as there is of present pardon 
 upon past repentance and future sanctity, it is impossible to 
 justify, that a holy life, and a persevering sanctity, is enjoined 
 by the covenant of the Gospel : if, I say, in its first intention, 
 it be declared that we may as well, and upon the same terms, 
 hope for pardon upon a recovery hereafter, as upon the per- 
 severance in the present condition. 
 
 13. From these premises we may soon understand what 
 is the duty of a Christian in all his life, even to pursue his 
 own undertaking made in baptism, or his first access to Christ, 
 and redemption of his person from the guilt and punishment 
 of sins. The state of a Christian is called in Scripture "re- 
 generation, spiritual life, walking after the Spirit, walking in 
 newness of life;" that is, "a bringing forth fruits meet for 
 repentance." That repentance, which, tied up in the same 
 ligament with faith, was the disposition of a Christian to his 
 regeneration and atonement, must have holy life in perpetual 
 succession ; for that is the apt and proper fruit of the first 
 repentance which John the Baptist preached as an introduc- 
 tion to Christianity, and as an entertaining the redemption 
 by the blood of the covenant. And all that is spoken in the 
 New Testament is nothing but a calling upon us to do what 
 we promised in our regeneration, to perform that which was 
 the design of Christ, who therefore redeemed us, and " bare 
 our sins in his own body, that we might die unto sin, and live 
 unto righteousness." 
 
 14. This is that saying of St. Paul, k " Follow peace with 
 all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the 
 Lord : looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of 
 God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you." 
 Plainly saying, that unless we pursue the state of holiness 
 
 k Heb. xii. 14, 15. 
 VOL. II. H H
 
 402 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 and Christian communion, into which we were baptized when 
 we received the grace of God, we shall fail of the state of 
 grace, and never come to see the glories of the Lord. And 
 a little before, " Let us draw near with a true heart, in full 
 assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil 
 conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." 1 That 
 is the first state of our redemption, that is " the covenant 
 God made with us, to remember our sins no more, and to put 
 his laws in our hearts and minds."" 1 And this was done 
 " when our bodies were washed with water, and our hearts 
 sprinkled from an evil conscience," that is, in baptism. It 
 remains then that we persist in the condition, that we may 
 continue our title to the covenant ; for so it follows, " Let us 
 hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering : for if 
 we sin wilfully after the profession, there remains no more 
 sacrifice:" 11 that is, if we hold not fast the profession of our 
 faith, and continue not the condition of the covenant, but fall 
 into a contrary state, we have forfeited the mercies of the 
 covenant. So that all our hopes of blessedness, relying upon 
 the covenant made with God in Jesus Christ, are ascertained 
 upon us by " holding fast that profession," by retaining " our 
 hearts" still " sprinkled from an evil conscience," by "follow- 
 ing peace with all men, and holiness :" for by not "failing of 
 the grace of God," we shall not fail of our hopes, "the mighty 
 price of our high calling ; " but without all this, we shall 
 never see the face of God. 
 
 15. To the same purpose are all those places of Scripture, 
 which entitle us to Christ and the Spirit upon no other con- 
 dition but a holy life, and a prevailing, habitual, victorious 
 grace. "Know you not your ownselves," brethren, " how 
 that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?" 
 There are but two states of being in order to eternity, either 
 a state of the inhabitation of Christ, or the state of reproba- 
 tion : either " Christ is in us," or we " are reprobates." But 
 what does that signify, to have "Christ dwelling in us?" 
 That also we learn at the feet of the same doctor: " If Christ 
 be in you, the body is dead by reason of sin, but the spirit is 
 life because of righteousness.''? The body of sin is mortified, 
 
 l Heb. x. 22. m Ver. 16, 17. " Heb. x. 23, 26. 
 
 2 Cor. xiii. 5. P Rom. viii. 10.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 403 
 
 and the life of grace is active, busy, and spiritual, in all them 
 who are not in the state of reprobation. The parallel with 
 that other expression of his : "They that are Christ's, have 
 crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." q If sin be 
 vigorous, if it be habitual, if it be beloved, if it be not dead 
 or dying in us, we are not of Christ's portion, we belong not 
 to him, nor he to us. For "whoever is born of God doth 
 not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him ; and he cannot 
 sin, because he is born ofGod:" r that is, every regenerate 
 person is in a condition, whose very being is a contradiction 
 and an opposite design to sin. When he was regenerate, 
 and born anew " of water and the Spirit, the seed of God," 
 the original of piety, was put into him, and bidden to "in- 
 crease and multiply." " The seed of God" (in St. John), is 
 the same with " the word" of God (in St. James), " by which 
 he begat us ;" s and as long as this remains, a regenerate 
 person cannot be given up to sin ; for when he is, he quits 
 his baptism, he renounces the covenant, he alters his relation 
 to God in the same degree as he enters into a state of sin. 
 
 16. And yet this discourse is no otherwise to be under- 
 stood than according to the design of the thing itself and the 
 purpose of God ; that is, that it be a deep engagement and 
 an effectual consideration for the necessity of a holy life : 
 but at no hand let it be made an instrument of despair, nor 
 an argument to lessen the influences of the Divine mercy. 
 For although the nicety and limits of the covenant, being 
 consigned in baptism, are fixed upon the condition of a holy 
 and persevering uninterrupted sanctity ; and our redemption 
 is wrought but once, completed but once, we are but once 
 absolutely, entirely, and presentially forgiven, and reconciled 
 to God, this reconciliation being in virtue of the sacrifice, 
 and this sacrifice applied in baptism is one, as "baptism is 
 one," and as the sacrifice is one: yet the mercy of God, 
 besides this great feast, hath fragments, which the apostles 
 and ministers spiritual are to gather up in baskets, and 
 minister to the after-needs of indigent and necessitous 
 disciples. 
 
 17. And this we gather, as fragments are gathered, by 
 respersed sayings, instances, and examples of the Divine 
 
 i Gal. v. 24. r 1 John, iii. 9. James, i. 18.
 
 404 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 mercy recorded in holy Scripture. The holy Jesus com- 
 mands us to " forgive our brother seventy times seven times," 
 when he asks our pardon and implores our mercy ; and since 
 the Divine mercy is the pattern of ours, and is also procured 
 by ours, the one being made the measure of the other, by 
 way of precedent and by way of reward, God will certainly 
 forgive us as we forgive our brother : and it cannot be ima- 
 gined God should oblige us to give pardon oftener than he 
 will give it himself, especially since he hath expressed ours to 
 be a title of a proportionable reception of his ; and hath also 
 commanded us to ask pardon all days of our life, even in our 
 daily offices, and to beg it in the measure and rule of our 
 own charity and forgiveness to our brother. And therefore 
 God, in his infinite wisdom, foreseeing our frequent relapses, 
 and considering our infinite infirmities, appointed in his 
 Church an ordinary ministry of pardon : designing the minis- 
 ter to pray for sinners, and promising to accept him in that 
 his advocation, or that he would open or shut heaven re- 
 spectively to his act on earth ; that is, he would hear his 
 prayers, and verify his ministry, to whom he hath "com- 
 mitted the word of reconciliation." This became a duty to 
 Christian ministers, spiritual persons, that they should " re- 
 store a person overtaken in a fault," 1 that is, reduce him to 
 the condition he begins to lose ; that they should " pray over 
 sick persons,"" who are also commanded to "confess their 
 sins;" and God hath promised, that "the sins they have 
 committed shall be forgiven them." Thus St. Paul absolved 
 the incestuous, excommunicate Corinthian ; in the person of 
 Christ he forgave him. x And this, also, is the confidence St. 
 John taught the Christian Church, upon the stock of the 
 excellent mercy of God, and propitiation of Jesus: "If we 
 confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, 
 and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. " y Which dis- 
 course he directs to them who were Christians, already 
 initiated into the institution of Jesus. And the epistles which 
 
 ' Gal. vi. 1. a James, v. 14. 
 
 * E7 Tit \ielffKt-xei ri -r(>iffl->vrtt -rav tx-tff<rgifarra i-ro afiagria; au ^rfefSi^trai, 
 a).}.a u.TF>u.\\iru.i, xceSaioiiffSiy, OTI Xtnri7 Xgifrot ran tlvrovra, Xaja y'ni<rcu iv ru 
 ti/gaviu iri in aftccg-u}.* ft.iravaau>ri. Can, Apst. 51. 
 
 'O -riffT-u^iii x&fitt. Stau Xui/y xeci $t/rft,i7v, ii tyi^KuSguTOTtgos yivure, tux, irrai 
 itara-yttuffius a|/of. 6'. Basil. Can. Paeitit. 
 1 1 John, i. 9.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 405 
 
 the Spirit sent to the seven Asian churches, and were par- 
 ticularly addressed to the bishops, the angels, of those 
 churches, are exhortations, some to perseverance, some to 
 repentance, that " they may return from whence they are 
 fallen." 2 And the case is so with us, that it is impossible 
 we should be actually and perpetually free from sin, in the 
 long succession of a busy, and impotent, and a tempted con- 
 versation. And without these reserves of the Divine grace, 
 and after-emanations from the mercy-seat, no man could be 
 saved ; and the death of Christ would become inconsiderable 
 to most of his greatest purposes : for none should have re- 
 ceived advantages but newly baptized persons, whose albs of 
 baptism served them also for a winding-sheet. And, there- 
 fore, our baptism, although it does consign the work of God 
 presently to the baptized person in great, certain, and entire 
 effect, in order to the remission of M hat is past, in case the 
 catechumen be rightly disposed, or hinders not ; yet it hath 
 also influence upon the following periods of our life, and hath 
 admitted us into a lasting state of pardon, to be renewed and 
 actually applied by the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and 
 all other ministries evangelical, and so long as our repentance 
 is timely, active, and effective. a 
 
 18. But now, although it is infinitely certain, that the 
 gates of mercy stand open to sinners after baptism ; yet it is 
 with some variety, and greater difficulty. He that renounces 
 Christianity, and becomes apostate from his religion, not by 
 a seeming abjuration under a storm, but by a voluntary and 
 hearty dereliction, he seems to have quitted all that grace 
 which he had received when he was illuminated, and to have 
 lost the benefits of his redemption and former expiation. 
 And I conceive this is the full meaning of those words of 
 St. Paul, which are of highest difficulty and latent sense; 
 " For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened," 
 &c. "if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto re- 
 pentance." 13 The reason is there subjoined, and more clearly 
 explicated a little after: "For if we sin wilfully, after we 
 have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no 
 more sacrifice for sins ; for he hath counted the blood of the 
 
 1 Apocal. ii. 5. * See Discourse vi. of Baptism. k Heb, vi. 4, 6.
 
 406 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and 
 hath done despite to the Spirit of grace." The meaning is 
 diverse, according to the degrees of apostasy or relapse. They 
 who fall away after they were once enlightened in baptism, d 
 and felt all those blessed effects of the sanctification and the 
 emanations of the Spirit, if it be into a contradictory state of 
 sin and mancipation, and obstinate purposes to serve Christ's 
 enemies ; then " there remains nothing but a fearful expecta- 
 tion of judgment:" but if the backsliding be but the inter- 
 ruption of the first sanctity by a single act, or an uncon- 
 formed, unresolved, unmalicious habit; then, also, " it is im- 
 possible to renew them unto repentance," viz. as formerly ; 
 that is, they can never be reconciled as before, integrally, 
 fully, and at once, during this life. For that redemption and 
 expiation was by baptism, into Christ's death ; and there are 
 no more deaths of Christ, nor any more such sacramental 
 consignations of the benefit of it ; " there is no more sacrifice 
 for sins," but the redemption is one, as the sacrifice is one in 
 whose virtue the redemption does operate. And, therefore, 
 the Novatians, who were zealous men, denied to the first sort 
 of persons the peace of the Church, and remitted them to the 
 Divine judgment. The Church 6 herself was sometimes almost 
 as zealous against the second sort of persons lapsed into 
 capital crimes, granting to them repentance but once ; by 
 such discipline's consigning this truth, That every recession 
 from the state of grace, in which by baptism we were esta- 
 blished and consigned, is a further step from the possibilities 
 of heaven, and so near a ruin, that the Church thought them 
 persons fit to be transmitted to a judicature immediately 
 Divine ; as supposing either her power to be too little, or the 
 other's malice too great ; or else the danger too violent, or 
 the scandal insupportable. For concerning such persons, 
 
 c Heb. x. 26, 29. 
 
 d Quid igitur 1 rejecta est poenitentia 1 Haudquaquam : sed renovatio per 
 novum baptisma rejecta est. Renovatio namque solius lavacri est ; ex hac 
 causa ab apostolo dicitur lavacrum regenerationis et renovationis Spiritus Sancti. 
 Thenphyl. in hunc locum. 
 
 Idem aiunt S. Chrys. Ambros. Anselra. in 10. Heb. 
 
 Collocavit in vestibule poenitentiam secundam quae pulsantibus patefaciat, 
 sed jam semel, quia jam secundo ; sed amplius nunquam, quia proxime frustra. 
 Hujur igitus poenitentia3 secunda? et uuius, &c. Tertul. lib de Paenit. c.7, 9.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 407 
 
 who once were pious, holy, and forgiven (for so is every man 
 and woman worthily and aptly baptized), and afterwards fell 
 into dissolution of manners, "extinguishing the Holy Ghost, 
 doing despite to the Spirit of grace, crucifying again the 
 Lord of life ;" that is, returning to such a condition from 
 which they were once recovered, and could not otherwise be 
 so but by the death of our dearest Lord ; I say, concerning 
 such persons the Scripture speaks very suspiciously, and to 
 the sense and signification of an infinite danger. For if the 
 speaking a word " against the Holy Ghost be not to be par- 
 doned here nor hereafter," what can we imagine to be the 
 end of such an impiety which " crucifies the Lord of life, 
 and puts him to an open shame ;" which " quenches the 
 Spirit, doing despite to the Spirit of grace?" Certainly, that 
 is worse than speaking against him . And such is every person 
 who falls into wilful apostasy from the faith, or does that 
 violence to holiness which the other does to faith ; that is, 
 extinguishes the sparks of illumination, "quenches the Spirit," 
 and is habitually and obstinately criminal in any kind. For 
 the same thing that atheism was in the first period of the 
 world, and idolatry in the second, the same is apostasy in the 
 last ; it is a state wholly contradictory to all our religious 
 relation to God, according to the nature and manner of the 
 present communication. Only this last, because it is more 
 malicious, and a declension from a greater grace is some- 
 thing like the fall of angels. And of this the Emperor Julian 
 was a sad example. 
 
 19. But as these are degrees immediately next, and a 
 little less ; so the hopes of pardon are the more visible. 
 Simon Magus spake a word, or at least thought, against the 
 Holy Ghost ; he " thought he was to be bought with money." 
 Concerning him, St. Peter pronounced, " Thou art in the 
 gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity : yet repent, 
 and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be 
 forgiven thee." f Here the matter was of great difficulty ; 
 but yet there was a possibility left, at least no impossibility 
 of recovery declared. And, therefore, St. Jude bids us, "of 
 some to have compassion, making a difference ; and others 
 save with fear, pulling them out of the fire :" g meaning, that 
 
 ' Acts, viii. 22, 23. Ibid.
 
 408 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 their condition is only not desperate. And still in descent 
 retaining the same proportion, every lesser sin is easier par- 
 doned, as better consisting with the state of grace : the whole 
 Spirit is not destroyed, and the body of sin is not introduced : 
 Christ is not quite ejected out of possession, but, like an 
 oppressed prince, still continues his claim ; and such is his 
 mercy, that he will still do so, till all be lost, or that he is 
 provoked by too much violence, or that antichrist is put in 
 substitution, and " sin reigns in our mortal body." So that I 
 may use the words of St. John : " These things I write unto 
 you that you sin not. But if any man sin, we have an Advo- 
 cate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous : and he is a 
 propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only, but for the 
 sins of the whole world. " h That is, plainly, Although the 
 design of the Gospel be, that we should erect a throne for 
 Christ to reign in our spirits, and this doctrine of innocence 
 be therefore preached, that ye sin not ; yet if one be over- 
 taken in a fault, despair not ; Christ is our Advocate, and he 
 is the propitiation : he did propitiate the Father by his death, 
 and the benefit of that we receive at our first access to him ; 
 but then he is our Advocate too, and prays perpetually for 
 our perseverance or restitution respectively. But his purpose 
 is, and he is able so to do, " to keep you from falling, and to 
 present you faultless before the presence of his glory." 
 
 20. This consideration I intend should relate to all 
 Christians of the world : and although, by the present cus- 
 tom of the Church, we are baptized in our infancy, and do not 
 actually reap that fruit of present pardon which persons of a 
 mature age in the Primitive Church did (for we yet need it 
 not, as we shall when we have past the calentures of youth, 
 which was the time in which the wisest of our fathers in 
 Christ chose for their baptism, as appears in the instance of 
 St. Ambrose, St. Austin, and divers others) ; yet we must 
 remember that there is a baptism of the Spirit as well as 
 of water : and whenever this happens, whether it be together 
 with that baptism of water, as usually it was when only men 
 and women of years of discretion were baptized ; or whether 
 it be ministered in the rite of confirmation, which is an ad- 
 mirable suppletory of an early baptism, and intended by the 
 
 b 1 John.ii. 1, 2.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 409 
 
 Holy Ghost for a corroborative of baptismal grace, and a 
 defensative against danger ; or that, lastly, it be performed 
 by an internal and merely spiritual ministry, when we, by acts 
 of our own election, verify the promise made in baptism, and 
 so bring back the rite, by receiving the effect of baptism ; 
 that is, whenever the " filth of our flesh is washed away," 
 and that we have " the answer of a pure conscience towards 
 God," which St. Peter affirms to be the true baptism, and 
 which, by the purpose and design of God, it is expected we 
 should not defer longer than a great reason or a great neces- 
 sity enforces : when our sins are first expiated, and the sacri- 
 fice and death of Christ is made ours, and we made God's by 
 a more immediate title, (which at some time or other happens 
 to all Christians that pretend to any hopes of heaven :) then 
 let us look to our standing, and " take heed lest we fall. 
 When we once have tasted of the heavenly gift, and are made 
 partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word 
 of God, and the powers of the world to come," that is, when 
 we are redeemed by an actual mercy and presential applica- 
 tion, which every Christian that belongs to God is at some 
 time or other of his life ; then a fall into a deadly crime is 
 highly dangerous, but a relapse into a contrary estate is- next 
 to desperate. 
 
 21. I represent this sad, but most true doctrine, in the 
 words of St. Peter: " If, after they have escaped the pollu- 
 tions of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and 
 overcome ; the latter end is worse with them than the begin- 
 ning. For it had been better for them not to have known the 
 way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn 
 from the holy commandment delivered unto them."' So that 
 a relapse, after a state of grace, into a state of sin, into con- 
 firmed habits, is to us a great sign, and possibly in itself it is 
 more than a sign, even a state of reprobation and final 
 abscission. k 
 
 22. The sum of all this is. There are two states of like 
 opposite terms. First, " Christ redeems us from our vain 
 
 1 2 Pet. ii. 20, 21. 
 
 k Neque araissos colores 
 
 Lana refert medicnta fuco : 
 
 Nee vera virtus, ciim semel excidit, 
 
 Curat reponi deterioribus. Ror. lib. iii. Od. 5.
 
 410 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 conversation," and reconciles us to God, putting us into an 
 entire condition of pardon, favour, innocence, and acceptance ; 
 and becomes our Lord and King, his Spirit dwelling and 
 reigning in us. The opposite state to this, is that which in 
 Scripture is called a " crucifying the Lord of life, a doing 
 despite to the Spirit of grace, a being entangled in the pollu- 
 tions of the world ; " the apostasy, or falling away ; an impo- 
 tency, or disability to do good, viz. of such who " cannot 
 cease from sin;" 1 who are slaves of sin, and in whom " sin 
 reigns in their bodies." This condition is a full and integral 
 deletery of the first; it is such a condition, which, as it hath 
 no holiness or remanent affections to virtue, so it hath no 
 hope or revelation of a mercy, because all that benefit is lost 
 which they received by the death of Christ ; and the first 
 being lost, " there remains no more sacrifice for sins, but a 
 certain fearful expectation of judgment." But between these 
 two states, stand all those imperfections and single delin- 
 quencies, those slips and falls, those parts of recession and 
 apostasy, those grievings of the Spirit ; and so long as any 
 thing of the first state is left, so long we are within the cove- 
 nant of grace, so long we are within the ordinary limits of 
 mercy and the Divine compassion ; we are in possibilities of 
 recovery, and the same sacrifice of Christ hath its power over 
 us ; Christ is in his possession, though he be disturbed : but 
 then our restitution consists upon the only condition of a 
 renovation of our integrity ; as are the degrees of our inno- 
 cence, so are our degrees of confidence. 
 
 23. Now, because the intermedial state is divisible, various, 
 successive, and alterable ; so also is our condition of pardon. 
 Our flesh shall no more return as that of a little child ; our 
 wounds shall never be perfectly cured ; but a scar, and pain, 
 and danger of a relapse, shall for ever afflict us ; our sins 
 shall be pardoned by parts and degrees, to uncertain pur- 
 poses, but with certain danger of being recalled again ; and 
 the pardon shall never be consummate, till that day in which 
 all things have their consummation. 
 
 24. And this is evident to have been God's usual dealing 
 with all those upon whom his name is called. God pardoned 
 David's sins of adultery and murder ; but the pardon was but 
 to a certain degree, and in a limited expression : " God hath 
 
 1 2 Pet. ii. 14.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 411 
 
 taken away thy sin ; thou shalt not die." But this pardon 
 was as imperfect as his condition was : " Nevertheless, the 
 child that is born unto thee, that shall die."" 1 Thus God 
 pardoned" the Israelites, at the importunity of Moses, and yet 
 threatened to visit that sin upon them in the day of visitation. 
 And so it is in Christianity : when once we have broken and 
 discomposed the golden chain of vocation, election, and justi- 
 fication, which are entire links and methodical periods of our 
 happiness, when we first give up our names to Christ, for 
 ever after our condition is imperfect ; we have broken our 
 covenant, and we must be saved by the excrescences and 
 overflowings of mercy. Our whole endeavour must be, to be 
 reduced to the state of our baptismal innocence and integrity, 
 because in that the covenant was established. And since 
 our life is full of defailances, and all our endeavours can never 
 make us such as Christ made us, and yet upon that condition 
 our hopes of happiness were established ; I mean of remain- 
 ing such as he had made us : as are the degrees of our resti- 
 tution and access to the first federal condition, so also are the 
 degrees of our pardon. But as it is always in imperfection 
 during this life, and subject to change and defailance ; so 
 also are the hopes of our felicity ; never certain, till we are 
 taken froni all danger ; never perfect, till all that is imperfect 
 in us is done away." 
 
 25. And, therefore, in the present condition of things, 
 our pardon was properly expressed by David, and St. Paul, 
 by " a covering," and " a not imputing." P For because the 
 body of sin dies divisibly, and fights perpetually, and disputes 
 with hopes of victory, and may also prevail, all this life is a 
 condition of suspense ; our sin is rather covered, than pro- 
 perly pardoned ; God's wrath is suspended, not satisfied ; the 
 sin is not to all purposes of anger imputed, but yet is in some 
 sense remanent, or at least lies ready at the door. Our con- 
 dition is a state of imperfection ; and every degree of imper- 
 fection brings a degree of recession from the state Christ put 
 us in ; and every recession from our innocence is also an 
 abatement of our confidence ; the anger of God hovers over 
 our head, and breaks out into temporal judgments ; and he 
 
 m 2 Sam. xii. 13, 14. 
 
 a MJJTW [tiyttv tiiryt srgiv T&ivrrifu.i'r i$ys.S0phf>cl. 
 
 Psalm xxxii. 1,2. P Rom. iv. 7.
 
 412 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 retracts them again, and threatens worse, according as we 
 approach to, or retire from, that first innocence, which was the 
 first entertainment of a Christian, and the crown of the evan- 
 gelical covenant. Upon that we entertained the mercies of 
 redemption ; and God established it upon such an obedience, 
 which is a constant, perpetual, and universal sincerity and 
 endeavour : and as we perform our part, so God verifies his, 
 and not only gives a great assistance by the perpetual influ- 
 ences of his Holy Spirit, by which we are consigned to the 
 day of redemption, but also takes an account of obedience, 
 not according to the standard of the law and an exact scru- 
 tiny, but by an evangelical proportion ; in which we are, on 
 one side, looked upon as persons already redeemed and as- 
 sisted, and therefore highly engaged ; and, on the other side, 
 as compassed about with infirmities and enemies, and there- 
 fore much pitied. So that, as at first, our " calling and 
 election" is presently good, and shall remain so, if we make 
 it sure ; so if we once prevaricate it, we are rendered then full 
 of hazard, difficulty, and uncertainty, and we must, with pains 
 and sedulity, " work out our salvation with fear and trem- 
 bling ; " first, by preventing a fall ; or afterwards, by returning 
 to that excellent condition from whence we have departed. 
 
 26. But although the pardon of sins after baptism be, 
 during this life, difficult, imperfect, and revocable ; yet be- 
 cause it is to great effects for the present, and in order to a 
 complete pardon in the day of judgment, we are next to 
 inquire, what are the parts of duty to which we are obliged, 
 after such prevarications which usually interrupt the state of 
 baptismal innocence, and the life of the Spirit. St. John 
 gives this account : " If we say we have fellowship with God, 
 and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth. But if 
 we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have commu- 
 nion one with another, and the blood of Jesus cleanseth us 
 from all sin." q This state of duty St. Paul calls, " a casting 
 off the works of darkness, a putting on the armour of light, a 
 walking honestly, a putting on the Lord Jesus Christ." 1 " And 
 to it he confronts, " making provision for the flesh, to fulfil 
 the lusts thereof." St. Peter, describing the duty of a Christ- 
 ian, relates the proportion of it as high as the first precedent, 
 
 < 1 John, i. 6. 7. ' Rom. xiii. 12-14.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 413 
 
 even God himself: " As he which hath called you is holy, 
 so be ye holy, in all manner of conversation : not fashioning 
 yourselves according to the former lusts." 3 And again: 
 " Seeing, then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what 
 manner of persons ought we to be, in all holy conversation 
 and godliness?" 4 And St. John, with the same severity and 
 perfection : " Every one that hath this hope," (that is, every 
 one who either does not, or hath no reason to despair,) 
 " ptirifieth himself, even as God is pure ; " u meaning, that he 
 is pure by a divine purity, which God hath prescribed as an 
 imitation of his holiness, according to our capacities and pos- 
 sibilities. That purity must needs be a " laying aside all 
 malice, and guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and evil 
 speaking;"" so St. Peter expresses it: "a laying aside 
 every weight, and the sin that does so easily beset us;" y so 
 St. Paul. This is to " walk in the light, as he is in the light, 
 for in him is no darkness at all ; " z which we have then imi- 
 tated, when we have " escaped the corruption that is in the 
 world through lusts;"" that is, so as we are " not held by 
 them," that we take them for our enemies, for the object 
 and party of our contestation and spiritual fight, " when we 
 contend earnestly" against them, " and resist them unto 
 blood," if need be; that is, being " pure, as he is pure." 
 But besides this positive rejection of all evil, and perpe- 
 tually contesting against sin, we must pursue the interests of 
 virtue and an active religion. 
 
 27. " And besides this," saith St. Peter, " giving all dili- 
 gence, add to your faith virtue, to your virtue knowledge, 
 and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, 
 and to patience godliness, and to godliness brotherly kind- 
 ness, and to brotherly kindness charity." 6 All this is an evi- 
 dent prosecution of the first design, the holiness and righteous- 
 ness of a whole life : the being clear from all spots and 
 blemishes, a being pure, and so presented unto Christ : for 
 upon this the covenant being founded, to this all industries 
 
 1 Pet. i. 14, 15. 2 Pet. iii. 11. " 1 John, iii. 3. 
 
 1 Pet. ii. 1. 1 Heb. xii. 1. * 1 John, i. 5, 7. 
 
 2 Pet. i.4. b Ibid. ver. 5, &c. 
 
 Veri boni aviditas tuta est. Quid sit istud, interrogas, aut unde subeat"! 
 dicam : ex bona conscientia, ex honestis consiliis, ex rectis actionibus, ex con- 
 temptu fortuitorum, ex placido vitae et continue tenore uiiam prementis viam. 
 Sen. ep. 23.
 
 414 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 must endeavour, and arrive in their proportions. " For if 
 these things be in you and abound, they shall make that you 
 be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, 
 and hath forgotten he was purged from his old sins;" c that 
 is, he hath lost his baptismal grace, and is put from the first 
 state of his redemption, towards that state which is contra- 
 dictory and destructive of it. 
 
 28. Now, because all these things are in latitude, distance, 
 and divisibility, and only enjoin a sedulity and great endea- 
 vour, all that we can dwell upon is this, That he who endea- 
 vours most is most secure, and every degree of negligence is 
 a degree of danger ; and although in the intermedial con- 
 dition, between the two states of Christianity and a full im- 
 piety, there is a state of recovery and possibility, yet there is 
 danger in every part of it ; and it increases, according as the 
 deflexion and irregularity comes to its height, position, state, 
 and finality. So that we must " give all diligence to work 
 out our salvation," and it would ever be " with fear and 
 trembling : " with fear, that we do not lose our innocence ; 
 and with trembling, if we have lost it, for fear we never 
 recover, or never be accepted. But holiness of life and un- 
 interrupted sanctity, being the condition of our salvation, the 
 ingredient of the covenant, we must proportion our degrees 
 of hope, and confidence of heaven, according as we have ob- 
 tained degrees of innocence, or perseverance, or restitution. 
 Only this : as it is certain he is in a state of reprobation, who 
 lives unto sin, that is, whose actions are habitually criminal, 
 who gives more of his consent to wickedness than to virtue ; 
 so it is also certain he is not in the state of God's favour and 
 sanctifi cation, unless he lives unto righteousness; that is, 
 whose desires, and purposes, and endeavours, and actions, 
 and customs, are spiritual, holy, sanctified, and obedient. 
 When sin is dead, and the Spirit is life : when the lusts of 
 the flesh are mortified, and the heart is purged from an evil 
 conscience, and we abound in a whole system of Christian 
 virtues; when our hearts are right to God, and with our 
 affections and our wills we love God, and keep his command- 
 ments; when we do not only " cry Lord, Lord," but also 
 
 c 2 Pet. i. 8, 9.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 415 
 
 " do his will ;" then " Christ dwells in us," and we in Christ. 
 Now, let all this be taken in the lowest sense that can be 
 imagined, all I say, which out of Scripture I have tran- 
 scribed ; " casting away every weight, laying aside all 
 malice, mortifying the deeds of the flesh, crucifying the old 
 man with all his affections and lusts, and then having 
 escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust," 
 besides this, " adding virtue to virtue till all righteousness 
 be fulfilled in us, walking in the light, putting on the Lord 
 Jesus, purifying ourselves as God is pure, following peace 
 with all men, and holiness, resisting unto blood, living in the 
 Spirit, being holy in all manner of conversation as he is holy, 
 being careful and excellent in all conversation and godli- 
 ness," all this, being a pursuit of the first design of Christ's 
 death, and our reconcilement, can mean no less but that, 
 1. We should have in us no affection to a sin; of which we 
 can best judge, when we never choose it, and never fall 
 under it but by surprise, and never lie under it at all, but 
 instantly recover, judging ourselves severely : and, 2. That 
 we should choose virtue with great freedom of spirit and 
 alacrity, and pursue it earnestly, integrally , d and make it the 
 business of our lives : e and that, 3. The effect of this be, that 
 sin be crucified in us, and the desires to it dead, flat, and 
 useless ; and that our desires of serving Christ be quick- 
 spirited, active, and effective, inquisitive for opportunities, 
 apprehensive of the offer, cheerful in the action, and per- 
 severing in the employment. 
 
 29. Now let a prudent person imagine what infirmities 
 and oversights can consist with a state thus described, and 
 all that does no violence to the covenant : God pities us, 
 and calls us not to an account for what morally cannot, or 
 certainly will not, with great industry, be prevented/ But 
 whatsoever is inconsistent with this condition is an abate- 
 ment from our hopes, as it is a retiring from our duty, and 
 
 d Bonum ex Integra causa, malum ex quolibet defectu peculiari. 
 
 e \oc>o; aixctiov cty^otc ^iixvutrit ftovo}' 
 
 K.a.xo> %< x.a.1 I* fiftigtf yvo'ins fiiiZ.^Sophocl, Otd. Tj/r. 
 
 f Illud enim esset, (quod apud Diodtrrum Siculum,) T avfyuriYtii ncii xwr,s 
 afffavtiot; i<ri\a.va.vi<r6a,i, las civ ns va,aajT)5Tst/f xo>., TO ft'ir^ev vvi/tf-iu'ivii rrj; X.O.TO. 
 Qvffiv liravooQutriu;. Sopater dixit dissimulanda TO. fj.tx.oy. KOI vuirfin TUI a.u.u.o- 
 v. Male hoc ; nisi in quantum vitari non possunt.
 
 416 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 is, with greater or less difficulty, cured, as are the degrees of 
 its distance from that condition which Christ stipulated with 
 us, when we became his disciples. For we are just so re- 
 stored to our state of grace and favour, as we are restored to 
 our state of purity and holiness. Now this redintegration, 
 or renewing of us into the first condition, is also called 
 repentance, and is permitted to all persons who still remain 
 within the powers and possibilities of the covenant, that is, 
 who are not in a state contradictory to the state and portion 
 of grace; but with a difficulty increased by all circumstances, 
 and incidences, of the crime and person. And this I shall 
 best represent in repeating these considerations : 1 . Some 
 sins are past hopes of pardon in this life ; 2. All that are 
 pardoned are pardoned by parts, revocably and imperfectly 
 during this life, not quickly, nor yet manifestly ; 3. Repent- 
 ance contains in it many operations, parts, and employments, 
 its terms and purpose being to redintegrate our lost con- 
 dition ; that is, in a second and less perfect sense, but, as 
 much as in such circumstances we can, to verify our first 
 obligations of innocence and holiness, in all manner of con- 
 versation and godliness. 
 
 30. Concerning the first, it is too sad a consideration to 
 be too dogmatical and conclusive in it ; and, therefore, I 
 shall only recall those expresses of Scripture which may, 
 without envy, decree the article : such as are those of St. 
 Paul, that there is a certain sort of men, whom he twice 
 describes, whom "it is impossible to renew again unto re- 
 pentance;" or those of St. Peter, such whose " latter end is 
 worse than the beginning, because, after they once had 
 escaped the pollutions of the world, they are entangled 
 therein ;" such who, as our blessed Saviour threatens, 
 " shall never be forgiven in this world, nor in the world to 
 come." For there is an unpardonable estate, by reason of 
 its malice and opposition to the covenant of grace ; and there 
 is a state unpardonable, because the time of repentance is 
 past. There are days and periods of grace : " If thou hadst 
 known, at least in this thy day," said the weeping Saviour of 
 the world to foreknown and determined Jerusalem. When 
 God's decrees are gone out, they are not always revocable ; 
 and, therefore, it was a great caution of the apostle, that we 
 should " follow peace and holiness, and look diligently that
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 417 
 
 we fall not from the grace of God, lest any of us become 
 like Esau, to whose repentance there was no place left, 
 though he sought it carefully with tears:" 8 meaning, that 
 we also may put ourselves into a condition when it shall he 
 impossible we should be renewed unto repentance : and those 
 are they " who sin a sin unto death, for whom" we have, 
 from the apostle, no encouragement " to pray." h And these 
 are in so general and conclusive terms described in Scripture, 
 that every persevering sinner hath great reason to suspect 
 himself to be in the number: if he endeavours, as soon as he 
 thinks of it, to recover, it is the best sign he was not arrived 
 so far ; but he that liveth long in a violent and habitual 
 course of sin, is at the margin and brim of that state of final 
 reprobation ; and some men are in it before they be aware, 
 and to some God reckons their days swifter and their periods 
 shorter. The use I make of this consideration is, that if any 
 man hath reason to suspect, or to be certain, that his time 
 of repentance is past, it is most likely to be a death-bed 
 penitent, after a vicious life, a life contrary to the mercies and 
 grace of the evangelical covenant ; for he hath provoked 
 God as long as he could, and rejected the offers of grace 
 as long as he lived, and refused virtue till he could not en- 
 tertain her, and hath done all those things which a person 
 rejected from hopes of repentance can easily be imagined to 
 have done. And if there be any time of rejection, although 
 it may be earlier, yet it is also certainly the last. 
 
 31. Concerning the second I shall add this to the former 
 discourse of it, that perfect pardon of sins is not in this 
 world at all, after the first emission and great efflux of it in 
 our first regeneration. During this life we are in imperfec- 
 tion, minority, and under conditions, which we have preva- 
 ricated ; and our recovery is in perpetual flux, in heightenings 
 and declensions, and we are highly uncertain of our accept- 
 ation because we are not certain of our restitution and 
 innocence ; we know not whether we have done all that is 
 sufficient to repair the breach made in the first state of 
 favour and baptismal grace. But " he that is dead," saith 
 St. Paul, " is justified from sin ; "' not till then. And, there- 
 fore, in the doctrine of the most learned Jews, it is affirmed : 
 
 K Heb. xii. 14-16. > 1 John, v. 16. Rom. vi. 7. 
 
 VOL. II. I I
 
 418 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 " He that is guilty of the profanation of the name of God, he 
 shall not interrupt the apparent malignity of it by his present 
 repentance, nor make atonement in the day of expiation, nor 
 wash the stains away by chastising of himself; but during his 
 life it remains wholly in suspense, and before death is not 
 extinguished ; " according to the saying of the prophet 
 Isaiah, "This iniquity shall not be blotted out till ye die, 
 saith the Lord of Hosts. " k And some wise persons have 
 affirmed, that Jacob related to this in his expression and 
 appellatives of God, whom he called " the God of Abraham, 
 and the fear of his father Isaac," 1 because, as the doctors of 
 the Jews tell us, Abraham, being dead, was ascribed into the 
 final condition of God's family ; but Isaac, being living, had 
 apprehensions of God not only of a pious, but also of a 
 tremulous fear : he was not sure of his own condition, much 
 less of the degrees of his reconciliation, how far God had 
 forgiven his sins, and how far he had retained them. And it 
 is certain, that if every degree of the Divine favour be not 
 assured by a holy life, those sins, of whose pardon we were 
 most hopeful, return in as full 'vigour and clamorous impor- 
 tunity as ever, and are made more vocal by the appendant 
 ingratitude, and other accidental degrees. And this Christ 
 taught us by a parable : for as the lord made his uncharitable 
 servant pay all that debt which he had formerly forgiven 
 him ; even " so will God do to us, if we from our hearts 
 forgive not one another their trespasses." 1 " " Behold the 
 goodness and severity of God," saith St. Paul : " on them 
 which fell, severity; but on thee goodness, if thou continue 
 in that goodness ; otherwise thou shalt be cut off. For this 
 is my covenant which I shall make with them, when I shall 
 take away their sins." n And if this be true in those sins 
 which God certainly hath forgotten, such as were all those 
 which were committed before our illumination ; much rather 
 is it true in those which we committed after, concerning 
 whose actual and full pardon we cannot be certain without a 
 revelation. So that our pardon of sins, when it is granted 
 after the breach of our covenant, is just so secure as our 
 perseverance is: concerning which, because we must ascer- 
 
 k Isaiah, xxii. 14. ' Gen. xxxi. 42. 
 
 m Matt, xviii. 35. Rom. xi. 22, 27.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 419 
 
 tain it as well as we can, but ever with fear and trembling, 
 so also is the estate of our pardon hazardous, conditional, 
 revocable, and uncertain ; and therefore, the best of men do, 
 all their lives, ask pardon, even of those sins for which they 
 have wept bitterly, and done the sharpest and severest 
 penance. And, if it be necessary, we pray that we may not 
 enter into temptation, because temptation is full of danger, 
 and the danger may bring a sin, and the sin may ruin us : it 
 is also necessary that we understand the condition of our 
 pardon to be, as is the condition of our person, variable as 
 will, sudden as affections, alterable as our purposes, revocable 
 as our own good intentions, and then made as ineffective as 
 our inclinations to good actions. And there is no way to 
 secure our confidence and our hope but by being perfect, and 
 holy, and pure, as our heavenly Father is ; that is, in the 
 sense of human capacity, free from the habits of all sin, and 
 active, and industrious, and continuing in the ways of godli- 
 ness. For upon this only the promise is built, and by our 
 proportion to this state we must proportion our confidence ; 
 we have no other revelation. Christ reconciled us to his 
 Father upon no other conditions, and made the covenant 
 upon no other articles, but of a holy life, in obedience 
 universal and perpetual : and the abatements of the rigorous 
 sense of the words, as they are such as may infinitely testify 
 and prove his mercy, so they are such as must secure our 
 duty and habitual graces ; an industry manly, constant, and 
 Christian : and because these have so great latitude (and to 
 what degrees God will accept our returns he hath nowhere 
 punctually described), he that is most severe in his determin- 
 ation does best secure himself, and, by exacting the strictest 
 account of himself, shall obtain the easier scrutiny at the 
 hands of God. The use I make of this consideration is to 
 the same purpose with the former : for if every day of sin, 
 and every criminal act, is a degree of recess from the possi- 
 bilities of heaven, it would be considered at how great 
 distance a death-bed penitent, after a vicious life, may ap- 
 prehend himself to stand for mercy and pardon : and since 
 the terms of restitution must, in labour, and in extension of 
 time, or intention of degrees, be of value great enough to 
 restore him to some proportion or equivalence with that 
 state of grace from whence he is fallen, and upon which the
 
 420 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 covenant was made with him ; how impossible, or how near 
 to impossible, it will appear to him to go so far, and do 
 so much in that state, and in those circumstances of dis- 
 ability. 
 
 32. Concerning the third particular, I consider that re- 
 pentance, as it is described in Scripture, is a system of holy 
 duties, not of one kind, not properly consisting of parts, as if 
 it were a single grace ; but it is the reparation of that estate 
 into which Christ first put us, " a renewing us in the spirit 
 of our mind," so the apostle calls it; and the Holy Ghost 
 hath taught this truth to us by the implication of many 
 appellatives, and also by express discourses. For there is in 
 Scripture a " repentance to be repented of," and a " re- 
 pentance not to be repented of." p The first is mere sorrow 
 for what is past, an ineffective trouble, producing nothing 
 good ; such as was the repentance of Judas, " he repented, 
 and hanged himself;" and such was that of Esau, when it 
 was too late ; and so was the repentance of the five foolish 
 virgins : which examples tell us also when ours is an imper- 
 tinent and ineffectual repentance. To this repentance pardon 
 is nowhere promised in Scripture. But there is a repentance 
 which is called " conversion, or amendment of life," a re- 
 pentance productive of holy fruits, such as the Baptist and 
 our blessed Saviour preached, such as himself also pro- 
 pounded in the example of the ISinevites; q they " repented 
 at the preaching of Jonah," that is, " they fasted, they 
 covered them in sackcloth, they cried mightily unto God, 
 yea, they turned every one from his evil way, and from the 
 violence that was in their hands." 1 " And this was it that 
 appeased God in that instance. " God saw their works, that 
 they turned from their evil way ; and God repented of the 
 evil, and did it not." 
 
 33. The same character of repentance we find in the 
 prophet Ezekiel : ** When the wicked man turneth away 
 from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that 
 
 P yiirdteiK. MtrauiXxduf i-rifr^i^t, cui in Act. Apost. Opponitur f 
 fan avt KOU Iftffr^i^itrt, Acts, iii. 19. 
 
 Huic enim promittitur peccatorum remissio in seq. t'n i|aX^S?y 
 
 raf ifMtriu.;. 
 
 1 Matt. xii. 41. r Jonah, iii. 8, 10.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 421 
 
 which is lawful and right ; if the wicked restore the pledge, 
 give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life 
 without committing iniquity, he hath done that which is 
 lawful and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die."* 
 And in the Gospel, repentance is described with as full and 
 entire comprehensions as in the old prophets. For faith and 
 repentance are the whole duty of the Gospel. Faith, when 
 it is in conjunction with a practical grace, signifies an intel- 
 lectual.' Faith signifies the submission of the understanding 
 to the institution : and repentance includes all that whole 
 practice which is the entire duty of a Christian, after he hath 
 been overtaken in a fault. And, therefore, repentance first 
 includes a renunciation and abolition of all evil, and then 
 also enjoins a pursuit of every virtue, and that till they 
 arrive at an habitual confirmation. 
 
 34. Of the first sense are all those expressions of Scrip- 
 ture which imply repentance to be the deletery of sins. 
 " Repentance from dead works,"" St. Paul affirms to be the 
 prime fundamental of the religion ; that is, conversion, or 
 returning from dead works : for unless repentance be so 
 construed, it is not good sense. And this is, therefore, highly 
 verified, because repentance is intended to set us into the 
 condition of our first undertaking, and articles covenanted 
 with God. And therefore it is " a redemption of the time," 
 tbat is, a recovering what we lost, and making it up by our 
 doubled industry. " Remember whence thou art fallen, 
 repent," that is, return, " and do thy first works," said the 
 Spirit to the angel of the Church of Ephesus, or else " I will 
 remove thy candlestick, except thou repent. " x It is a resti- 
 tution ; " if a man be overtaken in a fault, restore such a 
 one,"y that is, put him where he was. And then, that 
 repentance also implies a doing all good, is certain by the 
 sermon of the Baptist, " Bring forth fruits meet for repent- 
 ance;" 2 " Do thy first works," was the sermon of the 
 Spirit ; " Laying aside every weight, and the sin that easily 
 
 * Ezek. xviii. 27, and xxxiii. 15. 
 
 * AioTig avx. aTiffrar'av ov^ivos TUI %gnff!pt,at J/a Totf "rgotfaitopirxs iuf%inet{' 
 jr/>fa,xriov ^\ rriv 'tS,iy, % ^nivra TO. xaXa yivirui Qyg/ZTU TOIS ay9ge>>vroi{. fOlyoiui* 
 
 Vide etiam Clem. Alexan. Strom, lib. ii. ubi ad eundem sensum definit 
 ptrnitentiam. 
 
 u Mjravsia a-ttit TUV vtxguv tayav, Heb. vi. 1. 
 
 * Apocal. ii. o. J Gal. vi. 1. * Matt. iii. 8.
 
 422 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 encircles us, let us run with patience the race that is set 
 before us ;" so St. Paul taught. And St. Peter gives charge, 
 that when we " have escaped the corruptions of the world, 
 and of lusts," 8 besides this, we " give all diligence" to ac- 
 quire the rosary and conjugation of Christian virtues. And 
 they are proper effects, or rather constituent parts, of a holy 
 repentance. " For godly sorrow worketh repentance," saith 
 St. Paul, " not to be repented of :" b and that ye may know 
 what is signified by repentance, behold the product was 
 " carefulness, clearing of themselves, indignation, fear, vehe- 
 ment desires, zeal, and revenge;" to which if we add the 
 epithet of holy, (for these were the results of a godly sorrow, 
 and the members of a repentance not to be repented of,) we 
 are taught that repentance, besides the purging out the 
 malice of iniquity, is also a sanctification of the whole man, 
 a turning nature into grace, passions into reason, and the 
 flesh into spirit. 
 
 35. To this purpose I reckon those phrases of Scripture 
 calling it a " renewing of our minds ;" c a " renewing of the 
 Holy Ghost ;" d a " cleansing of our hands, and purifying our 
 hearts," 6 that is, a becoming holy in our affections and 
 righteous in our actions; a '* transformation, " f or utter 
 change ; a " crucifying the flesh, with the affections and 
 lusts ;" g a " purging out the old leaven, and becoming a new 
 conspersion ;" h a " waking out of sleep, 1 and walking 
 honestly, as in the day ;" k a " being born again," and being 
 '* born from above ;" l a " new life." And I consider that these 
 preparative actions of repentance, such as are sorrow, and 
 confession of sins, and fasting, and exterior mortifications, 
 and severities, are but forerunners of repentance," 1 some of 
 the retinue, and they are of the family, but they no more 
 complete the duty of repentance than the harbingers are the 
 whole court, or than the singers are all the body. There 
 
 2 Pet. i. 4,5. b 2 Cor. vii. 10. c Rom. xii. 2. 
 
 d Tit. iii 5. * Jam. iv. 8. f Gal. v. 24. 
 
 f Col. iii. 5. h 1 Cor. v. 7. Eph. v. 14. Rom. xiii. 11. 
 
 k Rom. xiii. 13. ' John, iii. 3. 
 
 m Scelerum si bene poenitet, 
 
 Eradenda cupidinis 
 Pravi sunt elementa ; et tenera: nimis 
 Mentes asperioribus 
 Formaiidae studiis. Hor. lib. iii. ()</. 24.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 423 
 
 " is more joy in heaven," said our blessed Saviour, " over 
 one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety-nine just persons 
 who need no repentance." There is no man but needs a tear 
 and a sorrow, even for his daily weaknesses, and possibly 
 they are the instrumental expiations of our sudden, and fre- 
 quent, and lesser surprises of imperfection ; but the "just 
 persons need no repentance," that is, need no inversion of 
 state, no transformation from condition to condition, but 
 from the less to the more perfect the best man hath. And, 
 therefore, those are vain persons who, when they " owe God, 
 a hundred, will write fourscore, or a thousand, will write 
 fifty." It was the saying of an excellent person, that " re- 
 pentance is the beginning of philosophy, a flight and renun- 
 ciation of evil works and words, and the first preparation and 
 entrance into a life which is never to be repented of: and, 
 therefore, a penitent is not taken with umbrages and appear- 
 ances, nor quits a real good for an imaginary, or chooses evil 
 for fear of enemies and adverse accidents ; but peremptorily 
 conforms his sentence to the Divine laws, and submits his 
 whole life in a conformity with them."" He that said those 
 excellent words had not been taught the Christian institu- 
 tion, but it was admirable reason and deep philosophy, and 
 most consonant to the reasonableness of virtue, and the pro- 
 portions and designs of repentance, and no other than the 
 doctrine of Christian philosophy. 
 
 36. And it is considerable, since in Scripture there is a 
 repentance mentioned, which is impertinent and ineffectual as 
 to the obtaining pardon, a repentance implied which is to be 
 repented of, and another expressed which is " never to be 
 repented of;" and this is described to be a new state of life, 
 a whole conversion and transformation of the man : it fol- 
 lows, that whatsoever, in any sense, can be called repent- 
 ance, and yet is less than this new life, must be that ineffec- 
 tive repentance. A sorrow is a repentance, and all the acts 
 of dolorous expression are but the same sorrow in other 
 characters, and they are good when they are parts or instru- 
 
 n 'H Si (ti.ra.ttia. aurn ^i).offo<fias >! -yitirai, xa.} TUV atovrvr ?jyw <r xai Xoyui 
 <pwyv, xai Ttis a.f&craft.&ri'rou a>jj vi <xpju<rn jra.^a.tKiim bio OVTI vgorioxictif rat 
 ^.tytfiiytuy ayaSuv ra ovrois ayatSov av tr/>i'$y, ourt ^/3 rut itutriut <ri rtv xaxou 
 rgatit etigfoiTtu' itrrutrn St rn ytiaf&ri f^tf rout 9-litui xxtavas rot iv<ru // a 
 Hicrocl. in Pythag.
 
 424 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 ments of the true repentance : but when they are the whole 
 repentance, that repentance is no better than that of Judas, 
 nor more prosperous than that of Esau. Every sorrow is not 
 a " godly sorrow," and that which is, is but instrumental, and 
 in order to repentance. " Godly sorrow worketh repent- 
 ance," saith St. Paul ; that is, it does its share towards it, as 
 every grace does toward the pardon, as every degree of 
 pardon does toward heaven. By " godly sorrow," it is 
 probable St. Paul means the same thing which the school 
 hath since called contrition ; a grief proceeding from a holy 
 principle, from our love of God, and anger that we have 
 offended him : and yet this is a great way off from that 
 repentance without the performance of which we shall cer- 
 tainly perish : but no contrition alone is remissive of sins, 
 but as it co-operates towards the integrity of our duty. 
 " Cum conversus ingemuerit," is the prophet's expression ; 
 When a man " mourns, and turns from all his evil way, that 
 is a godly sorrow," and that is repentance too : but the 
 tears of a dolorous person, though running over with great 
 effusions, and shed in great bitterness, and expressed in 
 actions of punitive justice, all being but the same sense in 
 louder language, being nothing but the expressions of sorrow 
 are good only as they tend further ; and if they do, they 
 may, by degrees, bring us to repentance, and that repentance 
 will bring us to heaven ; but of themselves they may as well 
 make the sea swell beyond its margin, or water and refresh 
 the sun-burnt earth, as move God to mercy, and pierce the 
 heavens. But then to the consideration we may add, that 
 a sorrow upon a death-bed, after a vicious life, is such as 
 cannot easily be understood to be ordinarily so much as the 
 beginning of virtue, or the first instance towards a holy life. 
 For he that till then retained his sins, and now, when he is 
 certain and believes he shall die, or is fearful lest he should, 
 is sorrowful that he hath sinned, is only sorrowful because 
 he is like to perish : and such a sorrow may perfectly 
 consist with as great an affection to sin, as ever the man 
 
 fAiTaiiKeitri xai iriffrfi^ari, Acts, iii. 19. 
 
 'tlf 7/zj t%avrti S/x> T *.writffiat ijrJ ro7; *ivroivft.iteis, -ravaiTtu Ttjf i^yrif.. 
 Arist. 2 Rhetor. 
 
 'Aya^aJ a.oi%a.xiiif Sjif. Horn. 
 
 'O /tiTaneear tii <f>efi*i rut lia,triuv rrii <rov xaxav rja^n aitr.ftrcti Hierocl.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 425 
 
 had in the highest caresses and invitation of his lust. For 
 even then, in certain circumstances, he would have refused to 
 have acted his greatest temptation. The boldest and most 
 pungent lust would refuse to be satisfied in the market-place, 
 or with a dagger at his heart ; and the greatest intemperance 
 would refuse a pleasant meal, if he believed the meat to be 
 mixed with poison : and yet this restraint of appetite is no 
 abatement of the affection, any more than the violent fears 
 which, by being incumbent upon the death-bed penitent, 
 make him grieve for the evil consequents more than to hate 
 the malice and irregularity. He that does not grieve till his 
 greatest fear presses him hard, and damnation treads upon 
 his heels, feels indeed the effects of fear, but can have no 
 present benefit of his sorrow, because it had no natural 
 principle, but a violent, unnatural, and intolerable cause, 
 inconsistent with a free, placid, and moral election. But 
 this I speak only by way of caution : for God's mercy is 
 infinite, and can, if he please, make it otherwise. But it is 
 not good to venture, unless you have a promise. 
 
 37. The same also I consider concerning the purpose of 
 a new life, which that any man should judge to be repent- 
 ance, that duty which restores us, is more unreasonable than 
 to think sorrow will do it. For as a man may sorrow, and 
 yet never be restored, (and he may sorrow so much the more, 
 because he shall never be restored, as Esau did, as the five 
 foolish virgins did , and as many more do) : so he that pur- 
 poses to lead a new life, hath convinced himself that the duty 
 is undone, and therefore his pardon not granted, nor his 
 condition restored. As a letter is not a word, nor a word an 
 action ; as an embryo is not a man, nor the seed the fruit : 
 so is a purpose of obedience but the element of repentance, 
 the first imaginations of it differing from the grace itself as a 
 disposition from a habit, or (because itself will best express 
 itself) as the purpose does from the act.? For either a holy 
 life is necessary, or it is not necessary. If it be not, why 
 does any man hope to " escape the wrath to come," by 
 resolving to do an unnecessary thing ? or if he does not 
 
 P Nam illi qui ex alils propositis in alia transiliunt, aut ne transiliunt quidem, 
 sed casu quodam transmitluntur, quomodo habere quicquam certurn mansurumve 
 possunt, suspensi et vagi 1 Seneca, Ep. 23.
 
 426 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 purpose it, when he pretends he does, that is a mocking of 
 God, and that is a great way from being an instrument of his 
 restitution. But if a holy life be necessary, as it is certain 
 by infinite testimonies of Scriptures, it is the " unum neces- 
 sarium," the one great necessary ; it cannot reasonably be 
 thought that any thing less than doing it shall serve our 
 turns. That which is only in purpose is not yet done, and 
 yet it is necessary it should be done, because it is necessary 
 we should purpose it. And in this we are sufficiently con- 
 cluded by that ingeminate expression used by St. Paul : " In 
 Jesus Christ nothing can avail but a new creature ;" nothing 
 " but faith working by charity," nothing " but a keeping the 
 commandments of God." q " And as many as walk according 
 to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy; they are the Israel 
 of God. " r 
 
 38. This consideration I intended to oppose against the 
 carnal security of death-bed penitents, who have (it is to be 
 feared) spent a vicious life, who have therefore mocked them- 
 selves, because they meant to mock God, they would reap 
 what they sowed not. " But be not deceived," saith the 
 apostle ; " he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap 
 corruption ; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the 
 Spirit reap life everlasting." 3 Only this, " let us not be 
 weary of well-doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we 
 faint not :"' meaning, that by a persevering industry, and a 
 long work, and a succession of religious times, we must sow 
 to the Spirit; a work of such length, that the greatest danger 
 is of fainting and intercision : but he that sows to the Spirit, 
 not being weary of well-doing, not fainting in the long pro- 
 cess, he, and he only, shall reap life everlasting. But a 
 purpose is none of all this. If it comes to act, and be 
 productive of a holy life, then it is useful, and it was like 
 the eve of a holiday festival in the midst of its abstinence 
 and vigils, it was the beginnings of a repentance. But if 
 it never come to act, it was to no purpose, a mocking of God, 
 an act of direct hypocrisy, a provocation of God, and a 
 deceiving our own selves ; you are unhappy you began not 
 
 * Gal. vi. 15, v. 6. 1 Cor. vii. 19. r Gal. vi. 16. 
 
 Gal. vi. 7, 8. Ver. 9.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 427 
 
 early, or that your earlier days return not together with your 
 good purposes." 
 
 32. And neither can this have any other sentence, though 
 the purpose be made upon our death-bed. For God hath 
 made no covenant with us on our death-bed distinct from 
 that he made with us in our life and health. And since, in 
 our life and present abilities, good purposes, and resolutions, 
 and vows (for they are but the same thing in differing 
 degrees), did signify nothing till they came to act, and no 
 man was reconciled to God by good intentions, but by doing 
 the will of God ; can we imagine that such purposes can 
 more prevail at the end of a wicked life than at the begin- 
 ning? that less piety will serve our turns after fifty or sixty 
 years' impiety, than after but five or ten ? that a wicked and 
 sinful life should by less pains be expiated than an unhappy 
 year ? For it is not in the state of grace as in other exterior 
 actions of religion or charity, where God will accept the will 
 for the deed, when the external act is inculpably out of our 
 powers, and may also be supplied by the eternal : as bend- 
 ings of the body, by the prostrations of the soul ; alms, by 
 charity; preaching, by praying for conversion. These things 
 are necessary, because they are precepts, and obligatory only 
 in certain circumstances, which may fail, and we be innocent 
 and disobliged. But it is otherwise in the essential parts of 
 our duty, which God hath made the immediate and next 
 condition of our salvation, such which are never out of our 
 power but by our own fault. x Such are charity, forgiveness, 
 repentance, and faith ; such to which we are assisted by God, 
 such which are always put by God's grace into our power, 
 therefore because God indispensably demands them. In 
 these cases, as there is no revelation God will accept the will 
 
 u Mutatus 
 
 Dices, heu ! (quoties te in speculo videris alterum) 
 Que mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero fuit 1 ? 
 Vel cur his animis iucolumes non redeuut gense ? 
 
 Hor. lib. iv. Od. 10. 
 
 1 E<V TfoTov ?T< %gove> av/3a'Xj TO TUV p>l\Tiff'Tav a%i/>vv fftxvrov, xiti tv fir.iiv] 
 waja/Sam/v rot ^laigtvtra Xay , Taoit).ri(f>aj TO, Siu^r./j.a.'rit ii; fan <ri fv/LtfatiX^nr, xtti 
 -l//i/3s/3A|*af ; xoHov out tn SiS-xaA.a Tgorbexaif, riv ilf ixitvov v-Jfi^f/ni TJJH icrasvojSaw/v 
 troiriffcti Tjy fftaurou '. aux tn it f&ugtixiot, aXA." avtjg n^n riXxof. "Ay Toitvt aftt^.>iirrif, 
 xai paQvftriirris, xeii cili virigfinii \\ i/Tiafifftav foiris, jrgodifiis ix ir^oiiffiai, xiti r.fiiexf 
 >.Xaj \<r cc/.Xtti; o/>i%ris, ftlff &s T^offs^fis fftavriy, \r,ffns ffietuTet til frjxo^tf, X>. 
 tbturrit S<riXi<rj(f xcti v xou i*o0tfxuv* Epict, C. 7o.
 
 428 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 for the deed, the purpose for the act, so it is unreasonable to 
 expect it ; because God did once put it into our powers, and, 
 if we put it out, we must not complain of want of fire which 
 ourselves have quenched, nor complain we cannot see, when 
 we have put our own lights out ; and hope God will accept 
 the will for the deed, since we had no will to it when God 
 put it into our powers. These are but fig-leaves to cover our 
 nakedness, which our sin hath introduced. 
 
 40. For either the reducing such vows and purposes to 
 act is the duty, without which the purpose is ineffectual ; or 
 else that practice is but the sign and testimony of a sincere 
 intention, and that very sincere intention was of itself ac- 
 cepted by God in the first spring. If it was nothing but a 
 sign, then the covenant which God made with man in Jesus 
 Christ was faith and good meaning, not faith and repentance, 
 and a man is justified as soon as ever he purposes well, before 
 any endeavours are commenced, or any act produced, or habit 
 ratified ; and the duties of a holy life are but shadows and 
 significations of a grace, no part of the covenant, not so much 
 as smoke is of fire, but a mere sign of a person justified as 
 soon as he made his vow : but then also a man may be justi- 
 fied five hundred times in a year, as often as he makes a new 
 vow and confident resolution, which is then done most heartily, 
 when the lust is newly satisfied, and the pleasure disappears 
 for the instant, though the purpose disbands upon the next 
 temptation. Yea, but, unless it be a sincere purpose, it will 
 do no good; and although we cannot discern it, nor the man 
 himself, yet God knows the heart ; and if he sees it would 
 have been reduced to act, then he accepts it, and this is the 
 hopes of a dying man. But faint they are and dying, as the 
 man himself. 
 
 41. For it is impossible for us to know but that what a 
 man intends (as himself thinks) heartily, is sincerely meant, 
 and if that maybe insincere, and is to be judged only by a 
 never-following event (in case the man dies), it cannot become 
 to any man the ground of hope, nay, even to those persons 
 who do mean sincerely, it is still an instrument of distrust 
 and fears infinite, since his own sincere meaning hath nothing 
 in the nature of the thing, no distinct formality, no principle, 
 no sign to distinguish it from the insincere vows of sorrowful, 
 but not truly penitent, persons. 2. A purpose acted and not
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 429 
 
 acted, differs not in the principle, but in the effect, which is 
 extrinsical and accidental to the purpose, and each might be 
 without the other : a man might live holily, though he had 
 not made that vow; and when he hath made the vow, he 
 may fail of living holily J And as we should think it hard 
 measure to have a damnation increased upon us for those 
 sins which we would have committed if we had lived ; so it 
 cannot be reasonable to build our hopes of heaven upon an 
 imaginary piety, which we never did, and, if we had lived, 
 God knows whether we would or not. 3. God takes away 
 the godly, lest malice should corrupt their understandings, 
 and " for the elect's sake those days are shortened, which, if 
 they should continue, no flesh should escape :" but now shall 
 all that be laid upon their score, 2 which, if God had not so 
 prevented by their death, God knows they would have done ? 
 And God deals with the wicked in a proportionable manner, 
 to the contrary purpose, he shortens their days, and takes 
 away their possibilities and opportunities, when the time of 
 repentance is past, because he will not do violence to their 
 wills ; and this " lest they should return, and be converted, 
 and I should heal them :" a so that it is evident, some persons 
 are by some acts of God, after a vicious life, and the frequent 
 rejection of the Divine grace, at last prevented from mercy, 
 who, without such courses, and in contrary circumstances, 
 might possibly do acts of repentance, and return, and then 
 "God would heal them." 4. Let their purposes and vows 
 be never so sincere in the principle, yet, since a man who is 
 in the state of grace may again fail of it, and forget he was 
 " purged from his old sins," (and every dying sinner did so, if 
 ever he was washed in the laver of regeneration, and sancti- 
 fied in his spirit ;) then much more may such a sincere purpose 
 fail, and then it would be known to what distance of time or 
 state from his purpose will God give his final sentence. 
 
 > Et quis tandem est nostrum qui, quod ad sese attinet, aequum censeat quen- 
 quam poenas dare ob earn rem, quod arguatur male facere voluisse 1 Nemo, 
 
 opinor. Sed si honorem non aequum est habere ob earn rem, quod bene facere 
 
 voluisse quis dicit, neque fecit tamen ; Rhodiensibus tale erit, non quod male 
 fecerunt, sed quia voluisse dicuntur facere. Orat. M. Catonis pro Rhodien*. apud 
 A, Cellium, lib. vii. cap. 3. 
 
 1 Nunquam crescit ex post facto prseteriti sestimatio. D. de Reg. Jur. 
 
 a Matt. xiii. 15, exlsa. vi. 9, 10. Mark, iv. 12. Luke, viii. 10. John,xii.40. 
 Acts, xxviii. 27. Rom. xi. 8.
 
 430 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 Whether will he quit him, because in the first stage he will 
 correspond with his intention, and act his purposes ; or con- 
 demn him, because in his second stage he would prevaricate ? 
 And when a man does fail, it is not because his first principle 
 was not good ; for the Holy Spirit, which is certainly the best 
 principle of spiritual actions, may be extinguished in a man, 
 and a sincere or hearty purpose may be lost, or it may again 
 be recovered, and be lost again : so that it is as unreasonable 
 as it is unrevealed, that a sincere purpose on a death-bed 
 shall obtain pardon, or pass for a new state of life. Few men 
 are at those instants, and in such pressures, hypocritical and 
 rain ; and yet to perform such purposes is a new work and a 
 new labour ; it comes in upon a new stock, differing from that 
 principle, and will meet with temptations, difficulties, and 
 impediments ; and an honest heart is not sure to remain so, 
 but may split upon a rock of a violent invitation. A promise 
 is made to be faithful or unfaithful ex post facto, by the event, 
 but it was sincere or insincere in the principle, only if the 
 person promising did, or did not, respectively at that time 
 mean what he said. A sincere promise many times is not 
 truly performed. 
 
 42. Concerning all the other acts which it is to be sup- 
 posed a dying person can do, I have only this consideration : 
 If they can make up a new creature, become a new state, be 
 in any sense a holy life, a keeping the commandments of 
 God, a following of peace and holiness, a becoming holy in 
 all conversation ; if they can arrive to the lowest sense of 
 that excellent condition Christ intended to all his disciples, 
 when he made " keeping the commandments" to be the 
 condition of " entering into life," and not " crying Lord, 
 Lord, but doing the will of God ;" if he that hath served the 
 lusts of the flesh, and taken pay under all God's enemies, 
 during a long and malicious life, can, for any thing a dying 
 person can do, be said in any sense to have lived holily ; 
 then his hopes are fairly built : if not, they rely upon a sand, 
 and the storm of death, and the Divine displeasure will beat 
 too violently upon them. There are no suppletories of the 
 evangelical covenant: if we "walk according to the rule," 
 then " shall peace and righteousness kiss each other ;" if we 
 have sinned, and prevaricated the rule, repentance must bring 
 us into the ways of righteousness, and then we must go on
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 431 
 
 upon the old stock; but the "deeds of the flesh" must be 
 " mortified," and Christ must " dwell in us," and the Spirit 
 must " reign in us," and virtue must be habitual, and the 
 habits must be confirmed : and this as we do by the Spirit of 
 Christ, so it is hallowed and accepted by the grace of God, 
 and we put into a condition of favour, and redeemed from 
 sin, and reconciled to God. But this will not be put off with 
 single acts, nor divided parts, nor newly commenced pur- 
 poses, 6 nor fruitless sorrow ; it is a great folly to venture 
 eternity upon dreams : so that now let me represent the 
 condition of a dying person after a vicious life. 
 
 43. First : He that considers the frailty of human bodies, 
 their incidences and aptness to sickness, casualties, death, 
 sudden or expected, the condition of several diseases, that 
 some are of too quick a sense, and are intolerable, some are 
 dull, stupid, and lethargical ; then adds the prodigious judg- 
 ments which fall upon many sinners in the act of sin, and are 
 marks of our dangers, and God's essential justice and severity ; 
 and that security which possesses such persons whose lives 
 are vicious, and that habitual carelessness, and groundless 
 confidence, or an absolute inconsideration, which is generally 
 the condition and constitution of such minds, every one 
 whereof is likely enough to confound a persevering sinner in 
 miseries eternal ; will soon apprehend the danger of a delayed 
 repentance to be infinite and unmeasurable. c 
 
 44. Secondly : But suppose such a person, having escaped 
 the antecedent circumstances of the danger, is set fairly upon 
 his death-bed, with the just apprehensions of his sins about 
 him, and his addresses to repentance ; consider then the 
 strength of his lusts, that the sins he is to mortify are inve- 
 terate, habitual, and confirmed, having had the growth arid 
 stability of a whole life ; that the liberty of his will is 
 impaired, (the Scripture saying of such persons, " whose eyes 
 are full of lust, and that cannot cease from sin ;" and that 
 " his servants they are whom they obey:" d that they are 
 
 b Audies plerosque dicentes, A quinquagesimo in otium secedam ; Sexa- 
 gesimus annus ab officiis me dimittet. Et quern tandem longioris vitae praedem 
 accipis? Senec. 
 
 c Jltiar.tfi 31 TOIS truteuffi p.* a.ia.fta.^iffla.t TO tt.ya.tiv, ?<ri rovi irXXi<f VtttTr, -r^afif- 
 fciat igigeftivous IO^TO.; fj -ra.wyv^us, us a.-r Ixiitut dg%t>fi,ivws rau ft,* ij>ivffx<r6a.i, *< 
 mu TO. Sjsvra roiKtrav. Lucian. Nigrin, 
 
 d 2 Pet. ii. 14.
 
 432 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 slaves to sin, and so not sui juris, not at their own dispose,) 
 that his understanding is blinded, his appetite is mutinous, 
 and of a long time used to rebel and prevail ; that all the 
 inferior faculties are in disorder ; that he wants the helps of 
 grace proportionable to his necessities, (for the longer he 
 hath continued in sin, the weaker the grace of God is in 
 him : so that, in effect, at that time the more need he hath, 
 the less he shall receive, it being God's rule to "give to him 
 that hath, and from him that hath not, to take even what he 
 hath :") then add the innumerable parts and great burdens 
 of repentance, that it is not a sorrow, nor a purpose, because 
 both these suppose that to be undone which is the only 
 necessary support of all our hopes in Christ when it is done ; 
 the innumerable difficult cases of conscience that may then 
 occur, particularly in the point of restitution, (which, among 
 many other necessary parts of repentance, is indispensably 
 required of all persons that are able, and in every degree in 
 which they are able ;) the many temptations of the devil, the 
 strength of passions, the impotence of the flesh, the illusions 
 of the spirits of darkness, the tremblings 6 of the heart, the 
 incogitancy of the mind, the implication and entanglings of 
 ten thousand thoughts, and the impertinences of a disturbed 
 fancy, and the great hinderances f of a sick body, and a sad 
 and weary spirit : all these represent a death-bed to be but 
 an ill station for a penitent. 8 If the person be suddenly 
 snatched away, he is not left so much as to dispute ; if he 
 be permitted to languish in his sickness, he is either stupid, 
 and apprehends nothing, or else miserable, and hath reason 
 to apprehend too much. However, all these difficulties are 
 to be past and overcome before the man be put into a 
 saveable condition. From this consideration, though perhaps 
 it may infer more, yet we cannot but conclude this difficulty 
 to be as great as the former danger, that is, vast, and pon- 
 derous, and insupportable. 
 
 e 'Eiriiilit ns lyyvs y fou oiiffau nXtuTYifiii, ilfi^^trou KUTV ty'sfio; KO.I ^jovrif, 
 rifi i T x^'erhv evie ilfff.tt. Plato de Repub. 
 
 1 Nequit sane fieri ut homo intelligat aut cognoscat quicquam ex cogni- 
 tione Creatoris, si adversa valetudine contabescat. Maimon. Can. Eth. 
 cap. 4. 
 
 * Ante senectutem, curandum est ut homo bene vivat; in senectute autem, ut 
 bene moriatur. Seneca.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 433 
 
 45. Thirdly : Suppose the clinic, or death-bed penitent, 
 to be as forward in these employments, and as successful in 
 the mastering many of the objections, as reasonably can be 
 thought : yet it is considerable, that there is a repentance 
 which is to be repented of, and that is a repentance which is 
 not productive of fruits of amendment of life; that there is a 
 period set down by God in his judgment, and that many, who 
 have been profane as Esau was, are reduced into the condition 
 of Esau, and "there is no place left for their repentance, 
 though they seek it carefully with tears ; " that they who have 
 long refused to hear God calling them to repentance, God 
 will refuse to hear them calling for grace and mercy ; that 
 " he will laugh "at some men, "when their calamity comes ;" h 
 that the five foolish virgins addressed themselves at the noise 
 of the bridegroom's coming, and begged oil, and went out to 
 buy oil, and yet, for want of some more time and an early 
 diligence, came too late, and were shut out for ever; that it 
 is nowhere revealed that such late endeavours and imperfect 
 practices shall be accepted ; that God hath made but one 
 covenant with us in Jesus Christ, which is faith and repent- 
 ance consigned in baptism ; and the signification of them, arid 
 the purpose of Christ is, "that we should henceforth no more 
 serve sin," but mortify and kill him perpetually, and destroy 
 his kingdom, and extinguish, as much as in us lies, his very 
 title ; that we should " live holily, justly, and soberly in this 
 present world, in all holy conversation and godliness;" and 
 that either we must be continued or reduced to this state of 
 holy living and habitual sanctity, or we have no title to the 
 promises ; that every degree of recession from the state Christ 
 first put us in, is a recession from our hopes, and an inse- 
 
 k O si compunctas humana superbia mentes 
 Ante obitum mutare, nee exspectare suprema 
 
 Fata velit 
 
 Poenitet ambigue quern sero pcenitet ; ergo 
 
 Praesentis spatium nobis dum creditur aevi, 
 
 Dum patulam cunctis Christ! dementia sese 
 
 Praebet, praeterits plangamus crimina vitas, 
 
 Dum licet, et sano ingeuioque animoque valemus. Alcimta Avit. 
 
 Bis jam pene tibi consul trigesimus instat, 
 
 Et numerat paucos vix tua vita dies. Mart. lib. i. Ep. 16. 
 
 Vide S. Ambros. lib. ii. de Poenit cap. i. et ii. S. Aug. in lib. Homil. 
 homil. xli. S. Basil. Oral. iv. S. Bernard, in pan-is Serm. ser. xxxviii. 
 VOL. II. K K
 
 434 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 curing our condition, and we add to our confidence only as 
 our obedience is restored. All this is but a sad story to a 
 dying person, who " sold himself to work wickedness," in an 
 habitual iniquity and aversation from the conditions of the 
 holy covenant in which he was sanctified. 
 
 46. And certainly it is unreasonable to plant all our hopes 
 of heaven upon a doctrine that is destructive of all piety, 
 which supposes us in such a condition that God hath been 
 offended at us all our life long, and yet that we can never 
 return our duties to him, unless he will unravel the purposes 
 of his predestination, or call back time again, and begin a 
 new computation of years for us ; and if he did, it would be 
 still as uncertain. For what hope is there to that man who 
 hath fulfilled all iniquity, and hath not fulfilled righteousness ? 
 Can a man live to the devil, and die to God ? " sow to the 
 flesh," and "reap to the Spirit?" hope God will in mercy 
 reward him who hath served his enemy? Sure it is, the 
 doctrine of the avail of a death-bed repentance cannot easily 
 be reconciled with God's purposes and intentions to have us 
 live a good life, for it would reconcile us to the hopes of 
 heaven for a few thoughts, or words, or single actions, when 
 our life is done; it takes away the benefit of many graces, 
 and the use of more, and the necessity of all. 
 
 47. For let it be seriously weighed, To what purpose is 
 the variety of God's grace? what use is there of preventing, 
 restraining, concomitant, subsequent, and persevering grace, 
 unless it be in order to a religious conversation ? And by de- 
 ferring repentance to the last, we despoil our souls, and rob 
 the Holy Ghost of the glory of many rays and holy influences, 
 with which the Church is watered and refreshed ; that it may 
 " grow from grace to grace," till it be consummate in glory. 
 It takes away the very being of chastity and temperance ; no 
 such virtues, according to this doctrine, need to be named 
 among Christians. For the dying person is not in capacity 
 to exercise these ; and then, either they are troublesome, 
 without which we may do well enough, or else the condition 
 of the unchaste and intemperate clinic is sad and deplorable. 
 For how can he eject those devils of lust, and drunkenness, 
 and gluttony, from whom the disease hath taken all powers of 
 election and variety of choice, unless it be possible to root 
 out long-contracted habits in a moment, or acquire the habits
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 435 
 
 of chastity, sobriety, and temperance, those self-denying and 
 laborious graces, without doing a single act of the respective 
 virtues, in order to obtaining of habits; unless it be so that 
 God will infuse habits into us more immediately than he 
 creates our reasonable souls, in an instant, and without the 
 co-operation of the suscipent, without " the working out our 
 salvation with fear," and without " giving all diligence," and 
 " running with patience," and "resisting unto blood," and 
 " striving to the last," and '* enduring unto the end," in a 
 long fight and a long race ? If God infuses such habits, why 
 have we laws given us, and are commanded to work, and to 
 do our duty with such a succession and lasting diligence, as 
 if the habits were to be acquired ; to which, indeed, God pro- 
 mises and ministers his aids, still leaving us the persons 
 obliged to the law and the labour, as we are capable of the 
 reward ? I need not instance any more. But this doctrine 
 of a death-bed repentance is inconsistent with the duties of 
 mortification ; with all the vindictive and punitive parts of 
 repentance, in exterior instances; with the precepts of wait- 
 ing, and watchfulness, and preparation, and standing in a 
 readiness against "the coming of the bridegroom;" with 
 "the patience of well-doing ;" with exemplary living ; with 
 the imitation of the life of Christ, and conformities to his 
 passion; with the kingdom, and dominion, and growth of 
 grace. And, lastly, it goes about to defeat one of God's 
 great purposes ; for God, therefore, concealed the time of our 
 death,' that we might always stand upon our guard. The 
 holy Jesus told us so : " Watch, for ye know not what hour 
 the Lord will come :" but this makes men seem more crafty 
 in their late begun piety, than God was provident and myste- 
 rious in concealing the time of our dissolution. 
 
 48. And now, if it be demanded, How long time must our 
 repentance and holy living take up ? What is the last period 
 of commencement of our piety, after which it will be unac- 
 cepted or ineffectual? Will a month, or a year, or three 
 
 1 Prudens futuri temporis exitutn 
 
 Caliginosa nocte premit Deus. Horat. lib. iii. Od. 29. 
 Vita data est utenda, data est sine frenore nobis 
 
 JMutua, nee certa persoliienda die. 
 
 Quaeris quod sit longissimum vitae spatiuml Usque ad sapientiam pervenire. 
 Qui ad illam pervenit, attingit non longissimuui finem, sed maximum. Senec.
 
 436 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 years, or seven, suffice? For since every man fails of his 
 first condition, and makes violent recessions from the state of 
 his redemption and his baptismal grace, how long may he lie 
 in that state of recession, with hopes of salvation ? k To this 
 I answer, He cannot lie in sin a moment, without hazarding 
 his eternity ; every instant is a danger, and all the parts of 
 its duration do increase it ; and there is no answer to be given 
 antecedently, and by way of rule, but all the hopes of our 
 restitution depend upon the event. It is just as if we should 
 ask, How long will it be before an infant comes to the perfect 
 use of reason, or before a fool will become wise, or an igno- 
 rant person become excellently learned ? The answer to such 
 questions must be given according to the capacity of the man, 
 to the industry of his person, to his oportunities or hinder- 
 ances, to his life and health, and to God's blessing upon 
 him. Only this ; every day of deferring it lessens our hopes, 
 and increases the difficulty ; and when this increasing, divi- 
 sible difficulty comes to the last period of impossibility, God 
 only knows, because he measures the thoughts of man, and 
 comprehends his powers in a span : and himself only can tell 
 how he will correspond, in those assistances, without which 
 we can never be restored. 1 " Agree with thy adversary 
 quickly, while thou art in the way :" quickly. And, there- 
 
 k Male vivunt qui semper vivere incipiunt. Non potest stare paratus ad 
 mortem, qui modo incipit vivere. Quidam vivere tuuc incipiunt cum desinendum 
 
 est ; quidam ante vivere desierunt quam incipercnt Senec. Ep. 23. 
 
 1 Hie est locus solvendi ajris alieni Senec. ibid. 
 
 Mortem venientem nemo bilaris excipit, nisi qui se ad earn diu composuerat. 
 Idem, Ep. 30. 
 
 Qui peccatum moriens diniittit, et ipsa 
 
 In serum tempus differt admissa fateri, 
 Non tarn dimittit quam dimittatur ab illis. Alcim. Avitus. 
 Non potest stare paratus ad mortem, qui modo incipit vivere. Id agendum 
 est, ut satis vixerimus. Quidam vivere tune incipiunt cum desiuendum est. 
 Si hoc judicas rnirum, adjiciam quod magis admireris. Quidam ante vivere 
 desierunt quam inciperent. Senec. Ep. 23. 
 
 Cras te victurum, eras dicis, Posthume, semper. 
 
 Die mibi, Cras istud, Postbume, quando venit? 
 Cras vivesl hodiejam vivere, Posth'ume, serum est: 
 
 Ille sapit quisquis, Postbume, visit heri. Martial, lib. v. Ep. 59. 
 Non bene distuleris, videas quae posse negari; 
 
 Et solum boc ducas, quod fuit, esse tuum. 
 Non est, crede niihi, sapieutis dicere, Vivam. 
 Sera minis vita est crastina; vive bodie. Ibid. lib. i. Ep. 16.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 437 
 
 fore, the Scripture sets down no other time than " to-day ; 
 while it is yet called to-day." But, because it will every day 
 he called to-day, we must remember, that our duty is such as 
 requires a time, a duration ; it is a course, " a race that is set 
 before us ;" a duty requiring patience, and longanimity, and 
 perseverance, and great care and diligence, " that we faint 
 not." And, supposing we could gather probably, by circum- 
 stances, when the last period of our hopes begins ; yet he that 
 stands out as long as he can, gives probation, that he came 
 not in of good will or choice ; that he loves not the present 
 service ; that his body is present, but his heart is estranged 
 from the yoke of his present employment ; and then all that 
 he can do is odious to God, being a sacrifice without a heart, 
 an offertory of shells and husks, while the devil and the man's 
 lusts have devoured the kernels. 
 
 49. So that this question is not to be asked beforehand ; 
 but after a man hath done much of the work, and in some 
 sense lived holily, then he may inquire into his condition ; 
 whether, if he persevere in that, he may hope for the mercies 
 of Jesus. But he that inquires beforehand, as commonly he 
 means ill, so he can be answered by none but God ; because 
 the satisfaction of such a vain question depends upon future 
 contingencies, and accidents depending upon God's secret 
 pleasure and predestination. He that repents but to-day, 
 repents late enough, that he put it off from yesterday. It 
 may be that some may begin to-day, and find mercy, and to 
 another person it may be too late ; but no man is safe or wise 
 that puts it off till to-morrow. And that it may appear how 
 necessary it is to begin early, and that the work is of difficulty 
 and continuance, and that time still increases the objections, 
 it is certain that all the time that is lost must be redeemed 
 by something in the sequel, equivalent, or fit to make up the 
 breach, and to cure the wounds long since made, and long 
 festering; and this must be done by doing the first works, 
 by something that God hath declared he will accept instead 
 of them : the intention of the following actions, and the fre- 
 quent repetition, must make up the defect in the extension 
 and co-existence, with a longer time. It was an act of an 
 heroical repentance, and great detestation of the crime, which 
 Thomas Cantipratanus relates, of a young gentleman con- 
 demned to die for robberies : who, endeavouring to testify his
 
 438 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 repentance, and, as far as was then permitted him, to expiate 
 the crime, begged of the judge, that tormentors might be 
 appointed him, that he might be long a dying, and be cut in 
 small pieces, that the severity of the execution might be pro- 
 portionable to the immensity of his sorrow and greatness of 
 the iniquity. Such great acts do facilitate our pardon, and 
 hasten the restitution, and in a few days comprise the elapsed 
 duty of many months : but to rely upon such acts is the last 
 remedy, and like unlikely physic to a despairing person : if it 
 does well, it is well; if it happen otherwise, he must thank 
 himself, it is but what in reason he could expect. The 
 Romans sacrificed a dog to Mana Geneta, and prayed, " Ne 
 quis domi natorum bonus fiat," that none of their domestics 
 might be good ; that is, that they might not die, (said Plu- 
 tarch," 1 ) because dead people are called good. But if they be 
 so only when they die, they will hardly find the reward of 
 goodness in the reckonings of eternity, when to kill and to 
 make good is all one, (as Aristotle observed it to be in the 
 Spartan covenant with the Tegeatae," and as it is in the case 
 of penitents, never mending theirlives till their lives be done ;) 
 that goodness is fatal, and the prologue of an eternal death. 
 
 50. I conclude this point with the words of St. Paul : 
 " God will render to every man according to his deeds : to 
 them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for 
 glory, and honour, and immortality : " to them, " eternal life. 
 But to them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, 
 but obey unrighteousness ; " to them " indignation and wrath : 
 tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth 
 evil." 
 
 51. Having now discoursed of repentance upon distinct 
 principles, I shall not need to consider upon those particulars, 
 which are usually reckoned parts or instances of repentance : 
 such as are contrition, confession, and satisfaction. Repent- 
 ance is the fulfilling all righteousness, and includes in it what- 
 soever is matter of Christian duty, and expressly commanded ; 
 such as is contrition or godly sorrow, and confession to God, 
 both which are declared in Scripture to be in order to pardon 
 and purgation of our sins. " A contrite and a broken heart, 
 
 n MfiStE xgtirro> troiuv, i. e. d-roxrivvvvai. Plutar. ibid, ex Aristotele. 
 Rom. ii. 6-9.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 439 
 
 O God, them wilt not despise :" and, " if we confess our sins, 
 God is just and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to 
 cleanse us from all iniquity." To which add, concerning 
 satisfaction, that it is a judging and punishing of our- 
 selves ; that it also is an instrument of repentance, and a 
 fruit of godly sorrow, and of good advantage for obtaining 
 mercy of God. For " indignation and revenge" are reckoned 
 by St. Paul, effects of " a godly sorrow;" and the blessing 
 which encourages its practice, is instanced by the same saint : 
 " When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord ; but if 
 we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged :" where 
 he expounds "judged" by *' chastened ;" if we were severer 
 to ourselves, God would be gentle and remiss. p And there 
 are only these two cautions to be annexed, and then the 
 direction is sufficient. 1. That when promise of pardon is 
 annexed to any of these or another grace, or any good action, 
 it is not to be understood as if alone it were effectual, either 
 to the abolition or pardon of sins; but the promise is made 
 to it, as to a member of the whole body of piety. In the 
 coadunation and conjunction of parts, the title is firm, but not 
 at all in distinction and separation. For it is certain, if we 
 fail in one, we are guilty of all ; and therefore cannot be 
 repaired by any one grace, or one action, or one habit. And, 
 therefore, " charity hides a multitude of sins," q with men and 
 God too ; " alms deliver from death : r humility pierceth the 
 clouds," and will not depart before its answer be gracious ; 
 and " hope purifieth, 5 and makes not ashamed;"' and pa- 
 tience, and faith, and piety to parents, and prayer, and the 
 eight beatitudes, " have promises of this life, and of that which 
 is to come,"" respectively : and yet nothing will obtain these 
 promises, but the harmony and uniting of these graces, in a 
 holy and habitual confederation. And when we consider the 
 promise, as singularly relating to that one grace, it is to be 
 understood comparatively ; that is, such persons are happy, if 
 compared with those who have contrary dispositions. For 
 such a capacity does its portion of the work, towards complete 
 felicity, from which the contrary quality does estrange and 
 
 P Tat/j /* yo,^ a^auftiteut KOU dtrilt.i'yarrecs ^>.X. aX^^i' iffts Si ralf i(M- 
 Ayurs ^ixaiu; xo}.di<rSai fvfieu/u,toi. Arist. Rhet. 2. 
 
 "> Jam. v. 20. * Tob. iv. 10. 1 John, iii. 3. 
 
 Rom. v.5. u 1 Tim. iv. 8.
 
 440 OF REPENTANCE. 
 
 disentitle us. 2. The special and minute actions and in- 
 stances of these three preparatives of repentance, are not 
 under any command in the particulars, but are to be disposed 
 of by Christian prudence, in order to those ends to which 
 they are most aptly instrumental and designed : such as are 
 fasting, and corporal severities in satisfaction, or the punitive 
 parts of repentance ; they are either vindictive of what is 
 past, and so are proper acts or effects of contrition and godly 
 sorrow : or else they relate to the present and future estate, 
 and are intended for correction or emendation, and so are of 
 good use as they are medicinal, and in that proportion not to 
 be omitted. And so is confession to a spiritual person an 
 excellent instrument of discipline, a bridle of intemperate 
 passions, an opportunity of restitution : " Ye which are spi- 
 ritual restore such a person overtaken in a fault,"" saith the 
 apostle ; it is the application of a remedy, the consulting 
 with a guide, and the best security to a weak, or lapsed, or 
 an ignorant person, in all which cases he is unfit to judge his 
 own questions, and in these he is also committed to the care 
 and conduct of another. But these special instances of re- 
 dentance are capable of suppletories, and are, like the corporal 
 works of mercy, necessary only in time and place, and in 
 accidental obligations. He that relieves the poor, or visits 
 the sick, choosing it for the instance of his charity, though 
 he do not redeem captives, is charitable, and hath done his 
 alms. And he that cures his sin by any instruments, by 
 external, or interior and spiritual remedies, is penitent, though 
 his diet be not ascetic and afflictive, or his lodging hard, or 
 his sorrow bursting out into tears, or his expressions pas- 
 sionate and dolorous/ I only add this, that acts of public 
 repentance must be by using the instruments of the Church, 
 such as she hath appointed ; of private, such as, by expe- 
 rience, or by reason, or by the counsel we can get, we shall 
 learn to be most effective of our penitential purposes. And 
 yet it is a great argument that the exterior expressions of 
 corporal severities are of good benefit, because, in all ages, 
 wise men and severe penitents have chosen them for their 
 instruments. 
 
 * Gal. vi. i. 
 
 3 Vide Disc, of Mortification, Part i. and Disc, of Fasting, Part ii.
 
 OF REPENTANCE. 441 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O eternal God, who wert pleased in mercy to look upon us 
 when we were in our blood, to reconcile us when we were 
 enemies, to forgive us in the midst of our provocations of 
 thy infinite and eternal majesty, finding out a remedy for 
 us which mankind could never ask, even making an atone- 
 ment for us by the death of thy Son, sanctifying us by the 
 blood of the everlasting covenant and thy all-hallowing 
 and divinest Spirit ; let thy graces so perpetually assist 
 and encourage my endeavours, conduct my will, and fortify 
 my intentions, that I may persevere in that holy condition 
 which thou hast put me in by the grace of the covenant, 
 and the mercies of the holy Jesus. O let me never fall into 
 those sins, and retire to that vain conversation, from which 
 the eternal and merciful Saviour of the world hath re- 
 deemed me ; but let me grow in grace, adding virtue to 
 virtue, reducing my purposes to act, and increasing my 
 acts till they grow into habits, and my habits till they be 
 confirmed, and still confirming them till they be consum- 
 mate in a blessed and holy perseverance. Let thy pre- 
 venting grace dash all temptations in their approach ; let 
 thy concomitant grace enable me to resist them in the 
 assault, and overcome them in the fight : that my hopes 
 be never discomposed, nor my faith weakened, nor my 
 confidence made remiss, nor my title and portion in the 
 covenant be lessened. Or if thou permittest me at any 
 time to fall, (which, holy Jesu, avert, for thy mercy and 
 compassion's sake,) yet let me not sleep in sin, but recall 
 me instantly by the clamours of a nice and tender con- 
 science, and the quickening sermons of the Spirit, that I 
 may never pass from sin to sin, from one degree to another ; 
 lest sin should get the dominion over me, lest thou be 
 angry with me, and reject me from the covenant, and I 
 perish. Purify me from all uncleanness, sanctify my spirit, 
 that I may be holy as thou art, and let me never provoke 
 thy jealousy, nor presume upon thy goodness, nor distrust 
 thy mercies, nor defer my repentance, nor rely upon vain 
 confidences ; but that I may, by a constant, sedulous, and 
 timely endeavour, make my calling and election sure, living
 
 442 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 to thee and dying to thee ; that, having sowed to the Spirit, 
 I may from thy mercies reap in the Spirit bliss, and eternal 
 sanctity, and everlasting life, through Jesus Christ, our 
 Saviour, our hope, and our mighty and ever-glorious 
 Redeemer. Amen. 
 
 Upon Christ's Sermon on the Mount, and the Eight 
 Beatitudes. 
 
 1. THE holy Jesus, being entered upon his prophetical office, 
 in the first solemn sermon gave testimony that he was not 
 only an interpreter of laws then in being, but also a Lawgiver, 
 and an Angel of the new and everlasting covenant ; which 
 because God meant to establish with mankind by the media- 
 tion of his Son, by his Son also he now began to publish the 
 conditions of it : and that the publication of the Christian 
 law might retain some proportion at least, and analogy of 
 circumstance, with the promulgation of the law of Moses, 
 Christ went up into a mountain, and from thence gave the 
 oracle. And here he taught all the disciples; for what he 
 was now to speak was to become a law, a part of the con- 
 dition on which he established the covenant, and founded 
 our hopes of heaven. Our excellent and gracious Lawgiver, 
 knowing that the great argument in all practical disciplines is 
 the proposal of the end, which is their crown and their reward, 
 begins his sermon, as David began his most divine collection 
 of hymns, with " blessedness." And having enumerated eight 
 duties, which are the rule of the spirits of Christians, he begins 
 every duty with a beatitude, and concludes it with a reward ; 
 to manifest the reasonableness, and to invite and determine 
 our choice to such graces which are circumscribed with feli- 
 cities, which have blessedness in present possession, and glory 
 in the consequence, which, in the midst of the most passive 
 and afflictive of them, tells us that we are blessed, which is 
 indeed a felicity, as a hope is good, or as a rich heir is rich, 
 who, in the midst of his discipline, and the severity of tutors 
 and governors, knows he is designed to, and certain of, a 
 great inheritance.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 443 
 
 2. The eight beatitudes, which are the duty of a Christian, 
 and the rule of our spirit, and the special discipline of Christ, 
 seem like so many paradoxes and impossibilities reduced to 
 reason ; and are indeed virtues made excellent by rewards, 
 by the sublimity of grace, and the mercies of God, hallowing 
 and crowning those habits which are despised by the world, 
 and are esteemed the conditions of lower and less consider- 
 able people. But God " sees not as man sees," and his rules 
 of estimate and judgment are not borrowed from the exterior 
 splendour, which is apt to seduce children, and cozen fools, 
 and please the appetites of sense and abused fancy ; but they 
 are such as he makes himself, excellences which, by abstrac- 
 tions and separations from things below, land us upon celestial 
 appetites. And they are states of suffering rather than states 
 of life : for the great employment of a Christian being to bear 
 the cross, Christ laid the pedestal so low, that the rewards 
 were like rich mines interred in the deeps and inaccessible 
 retirements, and did choose to build our felicities upon the 
 torrents and violences of affliction and sorrow. Without 
 these graces we cannot get heaven ; and without sorrow and 
 sad accidents we cannot exercise these graces. Such are, 
 
 3. First : " Blessed are the poor in spirit ; for theirs is 
 the kingdom of heaven." Poverty of spirit is in respect of 
 secular affluence and abundance, or in respect of great opinion 
 and high thoughts; 8 either of which have divers acts and 
 offices. That the first is one of the meanings of this text is 
 certain, because St. Luke, repeating this beatitude, delivers it 
 plainly, " Blessed are the poor ;" b and to it he opposes riches. 
 And our blessed Saviour speaks so suspiciously of riches 
 and rich men, that he represents the condition to be full of 
 danger and temptation: and St. James d calls it full of sin; 
 describing rich men to be oppressors, litigious, proud, spite- 
 ful, and contentious ; which sayings, like all others of that 
 nature, are to be understood in common and most frequent 
 accidents, not regularly, but very improbable to be otherwise. 
 For if we consider our vocation, St. Paul informs us, that 
 " not many mighty, not many noble, are called ;" but " God 
 
 * ngoxoTti ^t%5j?, wgaxaTw rcuriivuffiaf, ' Luke, vi. 20. 
 
 c Ver. 24. d James, ii. 6. &c. v. 1. &c.
 
 444 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith :" And how 
 " hard it is for a rich man to enter into heaven," our great 
 Master hath taught us, by saying, " It is more easy for a 
 camel to pass through a needle's eye." And the reason is, 
 because of the infinite temptation which riches minister to 
 our spirits ; it being such an opportunity of vices, that nothing 
 remHins to countermand the act, but a strong, resolute, unal- 
 tered, and habitual purpose, and pure love of virtue : riches, 
 in the meantime, offering to us occasions of lust, fuel for 
 revenge, instruments of pride, entertainment of our desires, 
 engaging them in low, worldly, and sottish appetites, inviting 
 us to shew our power in oppression, our greatness in vanities, 
 our wealth in prodigal expenses, and to answer the importu- 
 nity of our lusts, not by a denial, but by a correspondence 
 and satisfaction, till they become our mistresses, imperious, 
 arrogant, tyrannical, and vain. e But poverty is the sister of 
 a good mind ; it ministers aid to wisdom, industry to our 
 spirit, severity to our thoughts, soberness to counsels, mo- 
 desty to our desires; it restrains extravagance and dissolution 
 of appetites ; the next thing above our present condition, 
 which is commonly the object of our wishes, being temperate 
 and little, proportionable enough to nature, not wandering 
 beyond the limits of necessity or a moderate convenience, or, 
 at furthest, but to a free refreshment and recreation. And 
 the cares of poverty are single and mean, rather a fit employ- 
 ment to correct our levities, than a business to impede our 
 better thoughts ; since a little thing supplies the needs of 
 
 Nulli fortunae minus bene quam optimae creditur. Alia felicitate ad 
 tuendam felicitatem est opus. Senec. 
 
 "CtyiXc;, a ri/^Xf f\tt>Ti, i^rtT it ySj, ftvr' It ^aXarTj), ftrir it T/j ^atr,tai, aXXas 
 raorctget T\ taut xai d^i^atrai' Sj fi ya.^ icitra. It itSguTois K.O.KO.. Timocr. Lyr. 
 Vel nos in mare proximum 
 
 Gemmas et lapides, aurum et inutile, 
 Summi materiam mail, 
 
 Mittamus Hor. lib. iii. Od. 24. 
 
 'O 3s wXot/Tsj r,fj.a.;, Kttfdft^ id-rgos KO.X.O;, 
 TV^Xau?, /3Xf!ToTaf xa.^a.').a.f>ut, -ra.tra.( ftiti. 
 
 Incert. apud Stob. Floril. tit. 93. 
 Aai/Xsj 'Er/*T!T0f yitapnt, xai feaftetn trnaof, 
 
 Keu irittnt "leaf, xai if/Xa; a0atdro4f. 
 Y'f.a.x.To^a.'yut, ifi'iut TI, iixaurdTat eLtSoufut^ 
 
 dixit Homerus de Mjsis et Hippomolgis, lib. xiii. II. Justissimos et longa;vos 
 dixit qui vescebantur lacte et cibo modesto.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 445 
 
 nature, and the earth and the fountain f with little trouble 
 minister food to us, and God's common providence and daily 
 dispensation eases the cares, and makes them portable. But 
 the cares and businesses of rich men are violences to our 
 whole man ; they are loads of memory, business for the 
 understanding, work for two or three arts and sciences, 
 employment for many servants to assist in, increase the 
 appetite, and heighten the thirst; and, by making their 
 dropsy bigger, and their capacities large, they destroy all 
 those opportunities and possibilities of charity, in which only 
 riches can be useful. 
 
 4. But it is not a mere poverty of possession which 
 entitles us to the blessing, but a poverty of spirit ; that is, 
 a contentedness in every state, an aptness to renounce all 
 when we are obliged in duty, a refusing to continue a pos- 
 session, when we for it must quit a virtue or a noble action, 
 a divorce of our affections from those gilded vanities, a 
 generous contempt of the world ; and at no hand heaping 
 riches, either with injustice or with avarice, either with wrong 
 or impotence, of action or affection. Not like Laberius, 
 described by the poet, 8 who thought nothing so criminal as 
 poverty, and every spending of a sesterce was the loss of a 
 moral virtue, and every gaining of a talent was an action 
 glorious and heroical. But poverty of spirit accounts riches 
 to be the servants of God first, and then of ourselves, being 
 sent by God, and to return when he pleases, and all the while 
 they are with us to do his business. It is a looking upon 
 riches and things of the earth, as they do who look upon it 
 from heaven, to whom it appears little and unprofitable. 
 And because the residence of this blessed poverty is in the 
 mind, it follows that it be here understood, that all that 
 exinanition and renunciation, abjection and humility of mind, 
 which depauperates the spirit, making it less worldly and 
 more spiritual, is the duty here enjoined. For if a man 
 
 1 Satis est fluviusque Ceresque Lucan. 
 
 "Eon J T'I St? fioroiffi *Xjv 
 
 ^iffri, x,ou TI^U riu.cc; rgiptiv. 
 Quoad vixit, credhlit ingens 
 
 Pauperiem vitium, et cavit nil acrius, ut si 
 Forte minus locuples uno quadrante periret, 
 Ipse videretur uequior sibi --- Horat.
 
 416 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 throws away his gold, as did Crates the Theban, or the proud 
 philosopher Diogenes, and yet leaves a spirit high, airy, 
 fantastical, and vain, pleasing himself, and with complacence 
 reflecting upon his own act, his poverty is but a circumstance 
 of pride, and the opportunity of an imaginary and a secular 
 greatness. Ananias and Sapphira renounced the world by 
 selling their possessions; but because they were not "poor 
 in spirit," but still retained the affections to the world, there- 
 fore they " kept back part of the price," and lost their hopes. 
 The Church of Laodicea h was possessed with a spirit of pride, 
 and flattered themselves in imaginary riches ; they were not 
 poor in spirit, but they were poor in possession and condition. 
 These wanted humility, the other wanted a generous con- 
 tempt of worldly things ; and both were destitute of this 
 grace. 
 
 5. The acts of this grace are : 1. To cast off all inordinate 
 affection to riches. 1 2. In heart and spirit, that is, prepara- 
 tion of mind, to quit the possession of all riches, and actually 
 so to do when God requires it, that is, when the retaining 
 riches loses a virtue. 3. To be well pleased with the whole 
 economy of God, his providence and dispensation of all 
 things, being contented in all estates. 4. To employ that 
 wealth God hath given us, k in actions of justice and religion. 
 5. To be thankful to God in all temporal losses. 6. Not to 
 distrust God, or to be solicitous and fearful of want in the 
 future. 7. To put off the spirit of vanity, pride, and fantastic 
 complacence in ourselves, thinking lowly or meanly of what- 
 soever we are or do. 8. To prefer others before ourselves, 
 doing honour and prelation to them, and either contentedly 
 receiving affronts done to us, or modestly undervaluing our- 
 selves. 9. Not to praise ourselves, but^when God's glory 
 and the edification of our neighbour is concerned in it, nor 
 willingly to hear others praise us. 10. To despoil ourselves 
 
 h Apocal. iii. 17. 
 
 ' 'Eyu OUT' 'Af&a).ftini /3t/X//itj xgf, our Ina, irttrvxaiTct txarov Tuorvnu 
 i. Anacreon. 
 
 k Non possidentem multa vocaveris 
 
 Recte beatum : rectius occupat 
 
 Nomen beati, qui deorum 
 
 Muneribus sapienter utl, 
 Duramque callet pauperiem pati, 
 Pejusque letho flagitium timet, &c. Hor. lib. ir. Od. 9.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 44*7 
 
 of all interior propriety, denying our own will in all instances 
 of subordination to our superiors, and our own judgment in 
 matters of difficulty and question, permitting ourselves and 
 our affairs to the advice of wiser men, and the decision of 
 those who are trusted with the cure of our souls. 1 1 . Empty- 
 ing ourselves of ourselves, and throwing ourselves wholly 
 upon God, relying upon his providence, trusting his promises, 
 craving his grace, and depending upon his strength for all 
 our actions, and deliverances, and duties. 
 
 6. The reward promised is " the kingdom of heaven. 
 Fear not little flock, it is your Father's pleasure to give you 
 a kingdom." 1 To be little in our own eyes is to be great in 
 God's; the poverty of the spirit shall be rewarded with the 
 riches of the kingdoms, of both kingdoms : m that of heaven 
 is expressed. Poverty is the highway of eternity. But, 
 therefore, the kingdom of grace is taken in the way, the way 
 to our country ; and it, being the forerunner of glory, and 
 nothing else but an antedated eternity, is part of the reward 
 as well as of our duty. And, therefore, whatsoever is signi- 
 fied by kingdom, in the appropriate evangelical sense, is 
 there intended as a recompense. For the kingdom of the 
 Gospel is a congregation and society of Christ's poor, of his 
 "little ones:" they are the communion of saints, and their 
 present entertainment is knowledge of the truth, remission 
 of sins, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and what else in Scrip- 
 ture is signified to be a part, or grace, or condition of the 
 kingdom. For " to the poor the Gospel is preached ;" n that 
 is, to the poor the kingdom is promised and ministered. 
 
 7. Secondly : " Blessed are they that mourn ; for they 
 shall be comforted." This duty of Christian mourning is 
 commanded not for itself, but in order to many good ends. 
 It is in order to patience : " Tribulation worketh patience ;" 
 and therefore " we glory in them," saith St. Paul; and St. 
 James, " My brethren, count it all joy when ye enter into 
 divers temptations, knowing that the trial of your faith (viz. 
 
 1 Latilis regnes avidum domando 
 
 Spiritum, quam si Libvam remotis 
 
 Gadibus jungas, et uterque Poenus 
 
 Serviat uni. Hor. lib. ii. Od. 2. 
 
 Serviet aeternum, qui parvo nesciet uti Hur. 
 m Matt. xi. 11. and xviii. 4. n Matt. si. 5. 
 
 Rom. v. 3. Gaudet patienlia duris.
 
 448 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 by afflictions) worketh patience. "P 2. It is in order to 
 repentance: "Godly sorrow worketh repentance. " q By 
 consequence it is in order to pardon ; for " a contrite heart 
 God will not reject." And after all this it leads to joy ; and 
 therefore St. James preached a homily of sorrow: "Be 
 afflicted, and mourn, and weep," that is, in penitential mourn- 
 ing; for he adds, "humble yourselves in the sight of the 
 Lord, and he shall lift you up." r The acts of this duty are : 1. 
 To bewail our own sins. 2. To lament our infirmities, as they 
 are principles of sin, and recessions from our first state. 3. 
 To weep for our own evils and sad accidents, as they are 
 issues of the Divine anger. 4. To be sad for the miseries 
 and calamities of the Church, or of any member of it ; and, 
 indeed, to " weep with every one that weeps ; " that is, not 
 to rejoice in his evil, but to be compassionate, and pitiful, 
 and apt to bear another's burden. 5. To avoid all loose 
 and immoderate laughter, all dissolution of spirit and man- 
 ners, uncomely jestings, free revellings, carnivals, and balls, 
 which are the perdition of precious hours (allowed us for 
 repentance and possibilities of heaven), which are the instru- 
 ments of infinite vanity, idle talking, impertinence, and lust, 
 and very much below the severity and retiredness of a 
 Christian spirit. Of this Christ became to us the great ex- 
 ample ; for St. Basil reports a tradition of him, that he never 
 laughed, but wept often. And if we mourn with him, we 
 also shall rejoice in the joys of eternity. 
 
 8. Thirdly: "Blessed are the rneek ; for they shall 
 possess the earth:" that is, the gentle and softer spirits, 
 persons not turbulent or unquiet, not clamorous or impatient, 
 not over-bold or impudent, not querulous or discontented, 
 not brawlers or contentious, not nice or curious, but men 
 who submit to God, and know no choice of fortune, or em- 
 ployment, or success, but what God chooses for them, having 
 peace at home, because nothing from without does discom- 
 pose their spirit. In some, meekness is an indifference to 
 
 P James, i. 2, 3. 1 2 Cor. vii. 10. 
 
 r James, iv. 9, 10. 
 
 Sic enim per oculos cum notas turpes trahat, 
 Rursixs per ipsos lacrymas fundit pias, 
 Egressione ut eluat qua? ingressa sunt. 
 
 Dum dolemus admissa, admittenda excludimus; et fit quondam de condemna- 
 tione culpae discipliua iimocentiae. S. Ambros.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 449 
 
 any exterior accident, a being reconciled to all conditions 
 and instances of Providence, a reducing ourselves to such an 
 evenness and interior satisfaction, that there is the same 
 conformity of spirit and fortune by complying with my 
 fortune, as if my fortune did comply with my spirit. 8 And, 
 therefore, in the order of beatitudes, meekness is set between 
 mourning and desire, that it might balance and attemper 
 those actions by indifference, which, by reason of their abode, 
 are apt to the transportation of passion. 4 The reward ex- 
 pressed is " a possession of the earth ;" that is, a possession 
 of all which is excellent here below, to consign him to a 
 future glory, as Canaan was a type of heaven. For meek- 
 ness is the best cement and combining of friendships ; it is a 
 great endearment of us to our company. It is an ornament 
 to have " a meek and quiet spirit,"" a prevention of quarrels 
 and pacifier of wrath ; x it purchaseth peace, and is itself a 
 quietness of spirit : it is the greatest affront to all injuries in 
 the world ; for it returns them upon the injurious, and makes 
 them useless, ineffective, and innocent ; and is an antidote 
 against all the evil consequents of anger and adversity, and 
 tramples upon the usurping passions of the irascible faculty. 
 9. But the greatest part of this paysage and landscape 
 is sky : and as a man in all countries can see more of 
 heaven than of the earth he dwells on ; so also he may in 
 this promise. For although the Christian hears the promise 
 of " the inheritance of the earth," yet he must place his eye, 
 and fix his heart, upon heaven, which, by looking downward 
 also upon this promise, as in a vessel of limpid water, he may 
 
 TIaKi7 s slffiv al xaTiirrti*.ft>t>i rot. *, xai #avros xti>u 
 
 tv tX,u* Ta/>a%iiv ivaixouffxv O.UTU* r&7{ -^v^ais. S. Basil, til rial. ji). 
 1 Mansuetus et tequus secundum Arist. est ivrv%v> pirgiof, et arv^vt 
 K^-o^u^as, 
 
 "Orfa, TI Saijtiov/jjJ"/ rv%ai( Qgaroi aXys' t%tvfir, 
 
 T n 0.1 imlyti i%rii, irfaas <f'^'-, ffd aya'dxru -- Pythag. Carm. Aur. 
 JEquaiu memento rebus in arduis 
 Servare mentem ; non seciis in bonis 
 Ah insolenti temperatam 
 
 Latitia, morituie Deli __ Horat. Carm. lib. ii. OJ. 3. 
 Quern res plus niniio delectavere secundce, 
 Mutatae quatient --- -M fc. 
 " 1 Pet. iii. 4. 
 
 * 'O tvfMi Qovat alnoi, iriifif^as fvpftaxe*, fai tin'^yn xal iriftixf, %((** 
 IfruXna., 'in Ss xai if facia.; a.o^nyav. Aristot. 
 
 VOL. II. ! L
 
 450 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 see by reflection, without looking upwards by a direct in- 
 tuition. It is heaven that is designed by this promise, as well 
 as by any of the rest ; though this grace takes in also the 
 refreshments of the earth by equivalence, and a suppletory 
 design. But " here we have no abiding city," and therefore 
 no inheritance ; this is not our country, and therefore here 
 cannot be our portion ; unless we choose, as did the prodigal, 
 to go into a strange country, and spend our portion with 
 riotous and beastly living, and forfeit our Father's blessing. 
 The devil, carrying our blessed Saviour to a high mountain, 
 shewed him all the kingdoms of the world ; but, besides that 
 they were offered upon ill conditions, they were not eligible 
 by him upon any. And neither are they to be chosen by us 
 for our inheritance and portion evangelical : for the Gospel 
 is founded upon " better promises," and therefore the hopes 
 of a Christian ought not to determine upon any thing less 
 than heaven. Indeed our blessed Saviour chose to describe 
 this beatitude in the words of the Psalmist, so inviting his 
 disciples to an excellent precept, by the insinuation of those 
 Scriptures which themselves admitted. But as the earth, 
 which was promised to the meek man in David's psalm, was 
 no other earth but the terra promissionis, the land of Canaan ; 
 if we shall remember that this land of promise was but a 
 transition and an allegory to a greater and more noble, that 
 it was but a type of heaven, we shall not see cause to wonder 
 why the holy Jesus, intending heaven for the reward of this 
 grace also, together with the rest, did call it " the inheritance 
 of the earth." For now is revealed to us "a new heaven 
 and a new earth, an habitation made without hands, eternal 
 in the heavens." And he understands nothing of the excel- 
 lence of Christian religion, whose affections dwell below, and 
 are satisfied with a portion of dirt and corruption. " If we 
 be risen with Christ let us seek those things that are above, 
 where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God." But if a 
 Christian desires to take possession of this earth in his way, 
 as his inheritance or portion, he hath reason to fear it will be 
 his all. We have but one inheritance, one country ; and here 
 we are " strangers and pilgrims." Abraham told Dives that 
 he had "enjoyed his good things here ;" he had " the in- 
 heritance of the earth," in the crass material sense ; and 
 therefore he had no other portion but what the devils have.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 451 
 
 And when we remember that persecution is the lot of the 
 Church, and that poverty is her portion, and her quantum is 
 but " food and raiment" at the best, and that patience is her 
 support, and hope her refreshment, and self-denial her secur- 
 ity, and meekness is all her possession and title to a sub- 
 sistence ; it will appear certain, that as Christ's " kingdom 
 was not of this world," so neither shall his saints have their 
 portion in that which is not his kingdom. They are miser- 
 able if they do not reign with him, and he never reigned 
 here ; but " if we suffer with him, we shall also reign with 
 him" hereafter. True it is, Christ promised to him that 
 should lose any interest for his sake, the restitution of " a 
 hundred fold in this world." But as the sense of that cannot 
 be literal, for he cannot receive a hundred mothers or a 
 hundred wives ; so whatsoever that be, it is to be enjoyed 
 " with persecution." And then such a portion of the earth 
 as Christ hath expressed in figure, and shall, by way of 
 recompense, restore us, and such a recompense as we can 
 enjoy with persecution, and such an enjoyment as is con- 
 sistent with our having lost all our temporals, and such an 
 acquist and purchase of it as is not destructive of the grace 
 of meekness ; all that we may enter into our accounts as 
 part of our lot, and the emanation from the holy promise. 
 But in the foot of this account we shall not find any great 
 affluence of temporal accruments. However it be, although 
 when a meek man hath earthly possessions, by this grace he 
 is taught how to use them and how to part with them ; yet 
 if he hath them not, by the virtue here commanded, he is 
 not suffered to use any thing violent towards the acquiring 
 them, not so much as a violent passion, or a stormy imagina- 
 tion ; for then he loses his meekness, and whatever he gets 
 can be none of the reward of this grace. He that fights for 
 temporals (unless by some other appendant duty he be 
 obliged) loses his title, by striving incompetently for the 
 reward ; he cuts off that hand by which alone he can receive 
 it. For unless he be indeed meek, he hath no right to what 
 he calls " the inheritance of the earth ;" and he that is not 
 content to want the inheritance of the earth when God re- 
 quires him, is not meek. So that if this beatitude be under- 
 stood in a temporal sense, it is an offer of a reward upon a 
 condition we shall be without it, and be content too : for,
 
 452 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 in every sense of the word, meekness implies a just satis- 
 faction of the spirit, and acquiescence in every estate or 
 contingency whatsoever, though we have no possessions but 
 of a good conscience, no bread but that of carefulness, no 
 support but from the Holy Spirit, and a providence minister- 
 ing to our natural necessities, by an extemporary provision. 
 And certain it is, the meekest of Christ's servants, the 
 apostles and the primitive Christians, had no other verifica- 
 tion of this promise but this, that " rejoicing in tribulation, 
 and knowing how to want, as well as how to abound, through 
 many tribulations they entered into the kingdom of heaven :" 
 for that is the country in which they are co-heirs with Jesus. 
 But if we will certainly understand what this reward is, we 
 may best know it by understanding the duty ; and this we 
 may best learn from him that gave it in commandment. 
 " Learn of me, for I am meek," said the holy Jesus : and to 
 him was promised that " the uttermost ends of the earth 
 should be his inheritance ;" and yet he died first, and went to 
 heaven, before it was verified to him in any sense, but only 
 of content and desire, and joy in suffering, and in all variety 
 of accident. And thus, also, if we be meek, we may receive 
 the inheritance of the earth. 
 
 10. The acts of this grace are : 1. To submit to all the 
 instances of Divine providence/ not repining at any acci- 
 dent which God hath chosen for us, and given us as part of 
 our lot, or a punishment of our deserving, or an instrument 
 of virtue ; not envying the gifts, graces, or prosperities of our 
 neighbours. 2. To pursue the interest and employment of 
 our calling in which we are placed, not despising the mean- 
 ness of any work, though never so disproportionate to our 
 abilities. 3. To correct all malice, wrath, evil-speaking, and 
 inordinations of anger, whether in respect of the object or 
 the degree. 4. At no hand to entertain any thoughts of 
 revenge or retaliation of evil. 5. To be affable and courteous 
 in our deportment towards all persons of our society and 
 
 y Non si male nunc, et olim 
 
 Sic erit 
 
 Rebus angustis animosus atque 
 Fortis appare : sapienter idem 
 Contrabes vento nimium secundo 
 
 Turgida vela. Hor. lib. ii. Od. 10.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 453 
 
 intercourse. 6. Not to censure or reproach the weakness of 
 our neighbour, but support his burden, cover and cure his 
 infirmities. 7. To excuse what may be excused, lessening 
 severity, and being gentle in reprehension. 8. To be patient 
 in afflictions, and thankful under the cross. 9. To endure 
 reproof, with shame at ourselves for deserving it, and thank- 
 fulness to the charitable physician that offers the remedy. 1 
 10. To be modest and fairly mannered toward our superiors, 
 obeying, reverencing, speaking honourably of, and doing 
 honour to, aged persons, and all whom God hath set over us, 
 according to their several capacities. 11. To be ashamed 
 and very apprehensive of the unworthiness of a crime ; at no 
 hand losing our fear of the invisible God, and our reverence 
 to visible societies, or single persons. 3 12. To be humble in 
 our exterior addresses and behaviour in churches and all holy 
 places. 13. To be temperate in government, not imperious, 
 unreasonable, insolent, or oppressive, lest we provoke to 
 wrath those, whose interest of person and of religion we are 
 to defend or promote. 14. To do our endeavour to expiate 
 any injury we did, by confessing the fact, and offering satis- 
 faction and asking forgiveness. 
 
 1 1. Fourthly : " Blessed are they that hunger and thirst 
 after righteousness; for they shall be filled." This grace is 
 the greatest indication of spiritual health, when our appetite 
 is right, strong, and regular; when we are desirous of spirit- 
 ual nourishment, when we long for manna, and " follow 
 Christ for loaves," not of a low and terrestrial gust, but of 
 that " bread which came down from heaven." Now there 
 are two sorts of holy repast, which are the proper objects of 
 our desires. The bread of heaven, which is proportioned to 
 our hunger ; that is, all those immediate emanations from 
 Christ's pardon of our sins, and redemption from our former 
 conversation, holy laws and commandments. To this food 
 there is also a spiritual beverage to quench our thirst : and 
 
 1 IToa/Tov ayaSui, TO ettafidarvrov' StuTjo St, ctif%v*ai Melts. Disc. 19. 
 
 Neque ulli patientius reprehenduntur qnam qui niaxime laudari merentur. 
 P/in. lib. vii. c. 10. 
 
 &f>sc<rvrrtfti7v yuo ou tr^iini rous vrratx;. jEsch. 'ixtnSlf. 
 
 * Salva res est, propter spem salutis quam promittit indoles erubescentis. 
 Comcrrf. 
 
 Tfiourxui 3' eLffrtlffi fitratrtiirti, ei$i rif avroi 
 B/.acTT^v ov& eLtbwf ai/Sl 04xr,; idj/U;. 7 heog.
 
 454) CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 this is the effects of the Holy Spirit, who first " moved upon 
 the waters" of baptism, and afterwards became to us "the 
 breath of life," giving us holy inspirations and assistances, 
 refreshing our wearinesses, cooling our fevers, and allaying 
 all our intemperate passions, making us holy, humble, 
 resigned, and pure, " according to the pattern in the mount," 
 even "as our Father is pure." So that the first redemption 
 and pardon of us by Christ's merits is the bread of life for 
 which we must hunger ; and the refreshments and daily 
 emanations of the Spirit, who is the spring of comforts and 
 purity, is that drink which we must thirst after : a being first 
 reconciled to God by Jesus, and a being sanctified and pre- 
 served in purity by the Holy Spirit, is the adequate object of 
 our desires. Some, to hunger and thirst best, fancy the 
 analogy and proportion of the two sacraments, the waters of 
 baptism, and the food of the eucharist ; some, the bread of 
 the patin, and the wine of the chalice. But it is certain they 
 signify one desire, expressed by the most impatient and 
 necessary of our appetites, hungering and thirsting. And the 
 object is whatsoever is the principle or the effect, the begin- 
 ning, or the way, or the end of righteousness ; that is, the 
 mercies of God, the pardon of Jesus, the graces of the Spirit, 
 a holy life, and a holy death, and a blessed eternity. 
 
 12. The blessing and reward of this grace is fulness or 
 satisfaction : which relates immediately to heaven, because 
 nothing here below can satisfy us. The grace of God is our 
 viaticum, and entertains us by the way ; its nature is to 
 increase, not to satisfy, the appetites : not because the grace 
 is empty and unprofitable, as are the things of the world ; 
 but because it is excellent, but yet in order to a greater 
 perfection ; it invites the appetite by its present goodness, 
 but it leaves it unsatisfied, because it is not yet arrived at 
 glory : and yet the present imperfection, in respect of all the 
 good of this world's possession, is rest and satisfaction, and 
 is imperfect only in respect of its own future complement 
 and perfection ; and our hunger continues, and our needs 
 return, because all we have is but an antepast. But the 
 glories of eternity are also the proper object of our desires; 
 that is the reward of God's grace, this is "the crown of 
 righteousness." "As for me, I will behold thy face in 
 righteousness ; and when I awake up after thy likeness, I
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 455 
 
 shall be satisfied with it." b The acts of this virtue are 
 multiplied according to its object; for they are only, 1. to 
 desire, and 2. pray for, and 3. labour, for all that which is 
 righteousness in any sense : 1 . for the pardon of our sins ; 
 2. for the graces and sanctification of the Spirit ; 3. for the 
 advancement of Christ's kingdom ; 4. for the reception of the 
 holy sacrament, and all the instruments, ordinances, and 
 ministries of grace; 5. for the grace of perseverance ; 6. and 
 finally, for the crown of righteousness. 
 
 13. Fifthly : " Blessed are the merciful ; for they shall 
 obtain mercy." Mercy is the greatest mark and token of 
 the holy, elect, and predestinate persons in the world. " Put 
 ye on, my beloved, as the elect of God, the bowels of mercy, 
 holy and precious." For mercy is an attribute, in the 
 manifestation of which as all our happiness consists,* 1 so 
 God takes greatest complacency and delights in it above all 
 his other works. " He punishes to the third and fourth 
 generation, but shews mercy unto thousands." Therefore 
 the Jews say, that Michael flies with one wing, and Gabriel 
 with two ; meaning, that the pacifying angel, the minister 
 of mercy, flies swift, but the exterminating angel, the mes- 
 senger of wrath, is slow. And we are called to our approxi- 
 mation to God by the practice of this grace : we are made 
 " partakers of the Divine nature" by being " merciful as our 
 heavenly Father is merciful." This mercy consists in the 
 affections, and in the effects and actions. In both which 
 the excellence of this Christian precept is eminent above 
 the goodness of the moral precept of the old philosophers, 
 and the piety and charity of the Jews by virtue of the 
 Mosaic law. The Stoic philosophers affirm it to be the duty 
 of a wise man to succour and help the necessities of indigent 
 and miserable persons ; but at no hand to pity them, or 
 suffer any trouble or compassion in our affections : for they 
 intended that a wise person should be dispassionate, un- 
 moved, and without disturbance in every accident, and ob- 
 ject, and concernment. But the blessed Jesus, who came to 
 
 b Psalm xvii. 15. c Col. iii. 12. 
 
 d Xeque enim sunt isti audiendi qui virtutem duram et quasi ferream esse 
 volunt ; qua: quidem est cum in multis rebus, turn in amicitia, tenera atque 
 tractabilis, at et bonis amici quasi diffundantur, et incommodis coutrahanlur. 
 Licliuf apud Af. T. Cic.
 
 456 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 reconcile us to his Father, and purchase us an entire pos- 
 session, did intend to redeem us from sin, and make our 
 passions obedient and apt to be commanded, even and 
 moderate in temporal affairs, but high and active in some 
 instances of spiritual concernment ; and in all instances, that 
 the affection go along with the grace; that we must be as 
 merciful in our compassion, as compassionate in our exterior 
 expressions and actions. The Jews, by the prescript of their 
 law, were to be merciful to all their nation and confederates 
 in religion; and this their mercy was called justice: "He 
 hath dispersed abroad and given to the poor, his righteous- 
 ness (or justice) remaineth for ever." But the mercies of 
 a Christian are to extend to all : " Do good to all men, 
 especially to the household of faith." 6 And this diffusion of a 
 mercy, not only to brethren, but to aliens and enemies, is 
 that which St. Paul calls " goodness," f still retaining the old 
 appellative for Judaical mercy, "righteousness:" "For 
 scarcely for a righteous g man will one die, yet perad venture 
 for a good man some will even dare to die." So that the 
 Christian mercy must be a mercy of the whole man, the 
 heart must be merciful, and the hand operating in "the 
 labour of love ;" and it must be extended to all persons of all 
 capacities, according as their necessity requires, and our 
 ability permits, and our endearments and other obligations 
 dispose of and determine the order. 
 
 14. The acts of this grace are : 1. To pity the miseries of 
 all persons, and all calamities, spiritual or temporal, having a 
 fellow-feeling in their afflictions. 2. To be afflicted and sad 
 in the public judgments imminent or incumbent upon a 
 church, or state, or family. 3. To pray to God for remedy 
 for all afflicted persons. 4. To do all acts of bodily as- 
 sistance to all miserable and distressed people, to relieve the 
 poor, to redeem captives, to forgive debts to disabled per- 
 sons, to pay debts for them, to lend them money, to feed the 
 hungry, and clothe the naked, to rescue persons from dangers, 
 to defend and relieve the oppressed, to comfort widows and 
 fatherless children, to help them to right that suffer wrong ; 
 and, in brief, to do anything of relief, support, succour, and 
 
 e Gal. vi. 10. f Rom. v. 7. 
 
 * Syms iuterpres non legit uf Itx.a.'iov, sed S/*t/, injusti.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 457 
 
 comfort. 5. To do all acts of spiritual mercy, to counsel 
 the doubtful, to admonish the erring, to strengthen the 
 weak, to resolve the scrupulous, to teach the ignorant, and 
 any thing else which may be instrumental to his conversion, 
 perseverance, restitution, and salvation, or may rescue him 
 from spiritual dangers, or supply him in any ghostly neces- 
 sity. The reward of this virtue is symbolical to the virtue 
 itself, the grace and glory differing in nothing but degrees, 
 and every virtue being a reward to itself. " The merciful 
 shall receive mercy ; " mercy " to help them in time of need ;" 
 mercy from God, who will not only give them the great 
 mercies of pardon and eternity, but also dispose the hearts of 
 others to pity and supply their needs, as they have done to 
 others. For the present, there is nothing more noble than to 
 be beneficial to others, and to " lift up the poor out of the 
 mire," and rescue them from misery ; it is to do the work of 
 God : h and for the future, nothing is a greater title to a 
 mercy, at the day of judgment, than to have shewn mercy to 
 our necessitous brother ; it being expressed to be the only rule 
 and instance in which Christ means to judge the world, in 
 their mercy and charity, or their unmercit'ulness, respectively; 
 " I was hungry, and ye fed me," or ye fed me not: and so 
 we stand or fall in the great and eternal scrutiny. And it 
 was the prayer of St. Paul (Onesiphorus shewed kindness to 
 the great apostle), " The Lord shew him a mercy in that 
 day." For a cup of charity, though but full " of cold water, 
 shall not lose its reward." 
 
 15. Sixthly: " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
 shall see God." This purity of heart includes purity of 
 hands. " Lord, who shall dwell in thy tabernacle? even he 
 that is of clean hands and a pure heart;" that is, " he that 
 hath not given his mind unto vanity, nor sworn to deceive 
 his neighbour." 1 It signifies justice of action and candour 
 of spirit, innocence of manners and sincerity of purpose; it 
 is one of those great circumstances that consummate cha- 
 rity : " for the end of the commandment is charity, out of a 
 
 h Bona comparat przcsidia misericordia ; et babet in adversis auxilia qui in 
 secundis commodat. Publiiis. 
 
 Deus est mortali juvare mortalem, atque haec est ad aeternitatem via. 
 Sen. 
 
 ' Psalm xxiv. 3, 4.
 
 458 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 pure heart, and of a good conscience, and faith unfeigned ;" k 
 that is, a heart free from all carnal affections, not only in the 
 matter of natural impurity, but also spiritual and immaterial ; 
 such as are heresies, (which are therefore impurities, because 
 they mingle secular interest or prejudice with persuasions in 
 religion,) seditions, hurtful and impious stratagems, and all 
 those which St. Paul enumerates to be " works" or " fruits 
 of the flesh." " A good conscience ; " that is, a conscience 
 either innocent or penitent, a state of grace, either a not 
 having prevaricated, or a being restored to our baptismal 
 purity. " Faith unfeigned ;" that also is, the purity of sin- 
 cerity, and excludes hypocrisy, timorous and half persuasions, 
 neutrality and indifference in matters of salvation. And all 
 these do integrate the whole duty of charity. But purity, as 
 it is a special grace, signifies only honesty and uprightness of 
 soul, without hypocrisy to God and dissimulation towards 
 men ; and then a freedom from all carnal desires, so as not 
 to be governed or led by them. Chastity is the purity of the 
 body, simplicity is the purity of the spirit : both are the 
 sanctification of the whole man, for the entertainment of the 
 spirit of purity and the spirit of truth. 
 
 16. The acts of this virtue are: 1. To quit all lustful 
 thoughts, not to take delight in them, not to retain them or 
 invite them, but, as objects of displeasure, to avert them from 
 us. 2. To resist all lustful desires, and extinguish them by 
 their proper correctories, and remedies. 3. To refuse all 
 occasions, opportunities, and temptations to impurity ; deny- 
 ing to please a wanton eye, or to use a lascivious gesture, or 
 to go into a danger, or to converse with an improper, unsafe 
 object; " hating the garment spotted with the flesh," so St. 
 Jude calls it ; and " not to look upon a maid," so Job ; " not 
 to sit with a woman that is a singer," so the son of Sirach. 
 4. To be of a liberal soul, not mingling with affections of 
 money and inclinations of covetousness, not doing any act of 
 violence, rapine, or injustice. 5. To be ingenuous in our 
 thoughts, purposes, and professions, speaking nothing con- 
 trary to our intentions, but being really what we seem. 
 6. To give all our faculties and affections to God, without 
 dividing interests between God and his enemies, without 
 
 k 1 Tim. i. 5.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 459 
 
 entertaining of any one crime in society with our pretences 
 for God. 7. Not to lie in sin, but instantly to repent of it 1 
 and return, " purifying our conscience from dead works." 
 8. Not to dissemble our faith or belief when we are required 
 to its confession, pretending a persuasion complying with 
 those from whom secretly we differ. Lust, covetousness, and 
 hypocrisy, are the three great enemies of this grace ; they are 
 the motes of our eyes, and the spots of our souls. The re- 
 ward of purity is the vision beatifical. If we are " pure as 
 God is pure, we shall" also *' see him as he is: when we 
 awake up after his likeness, we shall behold his presence," 
 To which in this world we are consigned by freedom from 
 the cares of covetousness, the shame of lust, the fear of 
 discovery, and the stings of an evil conscience, which are the 
 portion of the several impurities here forbidden. 
 
 17. Seventhly : " Blessed are the peace-makers ; for they 
 shall be called the children of God. The wisdom of God is 
 first pure, and then peaceable;" 1 that is the order of the 
 beatitudes. As soon as Jesus was born, the angels sang a 
 hymn, " Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace, good- 
 will towards men ; " signifying the two great errands upon 
 which Christ was despatched in his legation from heaven to 
 earth. He is " the Prince of Peace." " Follow peace with 
 all men, and holiness, without which no man ever shall see 
 God ." The acts of this grace are : I . To mortify our anger, 
 peevishness, and fiery dispositions, apt to enkindle upon 
 every slight accident, inadvertence, or misfortune of a friend 
 or servant. 2. Not to be hasty, rash, provocative, or up- 
 braiding in our language. 3. To live quietly and serenely in 
 our families and neighbourhoods. 4. Not to backbite, slan- 
 der, misreport, or undervalue any man, carrying tales, or 
 sowing dissension between brethren. 5. Not to interest 
 ourselves in the quarrels of others, by abetting either part, 
 except where charity calls us to rescue the oppressed ; and 
 then also to do a work of charity without mixtures of uncha- 
 ritableness. 6. To avoid all suits of law, as much as is 
 possible, without intrenching upon any other collateral obli- 
 gation towards a third interest, or a necessary support for 
 
 1 Plato vocat puritatem avix(irn ^u^nui /3i>.r/. 
 m James, iii. 17.
 
 460 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 ourselves, or great convenience for our families ; or, if we be 
 engaged in law, to pursue our just interests with just means 
 and charitable maintenance. 7. To endeavour by all means 
 to reconcile disagreeing persons. 8. To endeavour, by affa- 
 bility and fair deportment, to win the love of our neighbours. 
 
 9. To offer satisfaction to all whom we have wronged or 
 slandered, and to remit the offences of others, and, in trials 
 of right, to find out the most charitable expedient to deter- 
 mine it, as by indifferent arbitration, or something like it. 
 
 10. To be open, free, and ingenuous, in reprehensions and 
 fair expostulations with persons whom we conceive to have 
 wronged us, that no seed of malice or rancour may be latent 
 in us, and, upon the breath of a new displeasure, break out 
 into a flame. 11. To be modest in our arguings, disputings, 
 and demands, not laying great interest upon trifles. 12. To 
 moderate, balance, and temper our zeal, by the rules of pru- 
 dence and the allay of charity, that we quarrel not for opinions, 
 nor entitle God in our impotent and mistaken fancies, nor lose 
 charity for a pretence of an article of faith. 13. To pray 
 heartily for our enemies, real or imaginary, always loving and 
 being apt to benefit their persons, and to cure their faults by 
 charitable remedies. 14. To abstain from doing all affronts, 
 disgraces, slightings, and uncomely jeerings and mockings of 
 our neighbour, nor giving him appellatives of scorn or irrision. 
 
 15. To submit to all our superiors in all things, either doing 
 what they command, or suffering what they impose : at no 
 hand lifting our heel against those upon whom the characters 
 of God, and the marks of Jesus, are imprinted in signal and 
 eminent authority ; such as are principally the king, and then 
 the bishops, whom God hath set to " watch over our souls." 
 
 16. Not to invade the possessions of our neighbours, or 
 commence war, but when we are bound by justice and legal 
 trust to defend the rights of others, or our own, in order to 
 our duty. 17. Not to " speak evil of dignities," or under- 
 value their persons, or publish their faults, or upbraid the 
 levities of our governors ; knowing that they also are de- 
 signed by God, to be converted to us for castigation and 
 amendment of us. 18. Not to be busy in other men's 
 affairs. And then " the peace of God will rest upon us."" 
 
 Pbil. iv. 9. 1 Thess. v. 2, 3. 2 Thess. iii. 16. Heb. xiii. 20.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 461 
 
 The reward is no less than the adoption and inheritance of 
 sons; for "he hath given unto us power to be called the 
 sons of God ; " for he is the Father of peace, and the sons of 
 peace are the sons of God, and therefore have a title to the 
 inheritance of sons, to be heirs with God, and co-heirs with 
 Christ, in the kingdom of peace, and essential arid never- 
 failing charity. 
 
 18. Eighthly: "Blessed are they which are persecuted 
 for righteousness' sake ; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." 
 This being the hardest command in the whole discipline of 
 Jesus, is fortified with a double blessedness ; for it follows 
 immediately, " Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, 
 and persecute you ; " meaning, that all persecution for a 
 cause of righteousness, though the affliction be instanced 
 only in reproachful language, shall be a title to the blessed- 
 ness. Any suffering, for any good or harmless action, is a 
 degree of martyrdom. It being the greatest testimony in 
 the world of the greatest love, to quitP that for God which 
 hath possessed our most natural, regular, and orderly affec- 
 tions. It is a preferring God's cause before our own interest ; 
 it is a loving of virtue without secular ends ; it is the noblest, 
 the most resigned, ingenuous, valiant act in the world, to die 
 for God, whom we never have seen ; it is the crown of faith, 
 the confidence of hope, and our greatest charity. The pri- 
 mitive churches, living under persecution, commenced many 
 pretty opinions concerning the state and special dignity of 
 martyrs, apportioning to them one of the three coronets 
 which themselves did knit, and supposed as pendants to the 
 great " crown of righteousness." They made it suppletory 
 of baptism, expiatory of sin, satisfactory of public penances; 
 they placed them in bliss* 1 immediately, declared them to 
 need no after-prayer, such as the devotion of those times 
 used to pour upon the graves of the faithful : with great 
 prudence they did endeavour to alleviate this burden, and 
 sweeten the bitter chalice ; and they did it by such doctrines, 
 
 Rom. viii. 17. 
 
 P Dulce periculum est, 
 
 O Lena-e, sequi deum 
 Cingentem viridi tempera p.impino. 
 
 y/or. lib. iii. Od. 25. 
 
 1 Animas prselio aut stippliciis peremptorum aeternas putant. Hinc moriendi 
 contemptus. C. Tacitut de Judais.
 
 462 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 which did only remonstrate this great truth, That since " no 
 love was greater than to lay down our lives," nothing could 
 be so great but God would indulge to them. And, indeed, 
 whatsoever they said in this had no inconvenience ; nor would 
 it now, unless men should think mere suffering to be sufficient 
 to excuse a wicked life, or that they be invited to dishonour 
 an excellent patience with the mixture of an impure action. 
 There are many who would die for Christ if they were put to 
 it, and yet will not quit a lust r for him : those are hardly to 
 be esteemed Christ's martyrs : unless they be " dead unto 
 sin," their dying for an article, or a good action, will not pass 
 the great scrutiny. And it may be boldness of spirit, or 
 sullenness, or an honourable gallantry of mind, or something 
 that is excellent in civil and political estimate, moves the 
 person, and endears the suffering ; but that love only " which 
 keeps the commandments" will teach us to die for love, and 
 from love to pass to blessedness through the red sea of blood. 
 And, indeed, it is more easy to die for chastity, than to live 
 with it:* and many women have been found, who suffered 
 death under the violence of tyrants for defence of their holy 
 vows and purity, who, had they long continued amongst 
 pleasures, courtships, curiosities, and importunities of men, 
 might perchance have yielded that to a lover, which they 
 denied to an executioner. St. Cyprian observes, that our 
 blessed Lord, in admitting the innocent babes of Bethlehem 
 first to die for him, did, to all generations of Christendom, 
 consign this lesson, That only persons holy and innocent 
 were fit to be Christ's martyrs. And I remember, that the 
 prince of the Latin poets,* over against the region and seats 
 of infants, places in the shades below persons that suffered 
 death wrongfully ; but adds, that this their death was not 
 enough to place them in such blessed mansions, but the 
 Judge first made inquiry into their lives, and accordingly 
 designed their station. It is certain that such dyings, or 
 
 r Non est autem consentaneum, qui metu noti frangatur, eum frangi 
 cupiditate ; nee qui invictum se a labore pi aistiterit, vinci a voluptate. 
 Cic. de Offic. lib. i. 
 Tertul. de Castit. 
 
 ' Hos juxta falso damnati orimine mortis. 
 Nee vero haj sine sorte data?, sine judice, sedes; 
 Quaesitor Minos urnam movet; tile silentuoi 
 Conciliumque rocat, vitasque et crimina discit. Virg. JEueid. 6.
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 463 
 
 great sufferings, are heroical actions, and of power to make 
 great compensations, and redemptions of time, and of omis- 
 sions and imperfections ; but if the man be unholy, so also 
 are his sufferings : u for heretics have died, and vicious per- 
 sons have suffered in a good cause, and a dog's neck may 
 be cut off' in sacrifice, and swine's blood may fill the trench 
 about the altar : but God only accepts the sacrifice which is 
 pure and spotless, first seasoned with salt, then seasoned 
 with fire. The true martyr must have all the preceding 
 graces, and then he shall receive all the beatitudes. 
 
 19. The acts of this duty are : 1. Boldly to confess the 
 faith, nobly to exercise public virtues, not to be ashamed of 
 any thing that is honest, and rather to quit our goods, our 
 liberty, our health, and life itself, than to deny what we are 
 bound to affirm, or to omit what we are bound to do, or to 
 pretend contrary to our present persuasion. 2. To rejoice 
 in afflictions ; counting it honourable to be conformable to 
 Christ, and to wear the cognizance of Christianity whose 
 certain lot it is to suffer the hostility and violence of enemies, 
 visible and invisible. 3. Not to revile our persecutors, but 
 to bear the cross with evenness, tranquillity, patience, and 
 charity. 4. To offer our sufferings to the glory of God, and 
 to join them with the passions of Christ, by doing it in love 
 to God, and obedience to his sanctions, and testimony cf 
 some part of his religion, and designing it as a part of duty. 
 The reward is "the kingdom of heaven;" which can be no 
 other but eternal salvation, in case the martyrdom be con- 
 summate : and " they also shall be made perfect;"* so the 
 words of the reward were read in Clement's time. If it be 
 less, it keeps its proportion : all suffering persons are the 
 combination of saints ; they make the Church, they are the 
 people of the kingdom, and heirs of the covenant. For if 
 they be but confessors, and confess Christ in prison, though 
 they never preach upon the rack or under the axe, yet '' Christ 
 will confess them before his heavenly Father;" and " they 
 shall have a portion where they shall never be persecuted 
 any more." y 
 
 u Athleta non vincit statim quia eruitur, nee ideo tr&nsnatant quia ae spoliaut. 
 Sever. Ep. 2. 
 
 * "On ecuroi tyoyrai riXtiti. 
 
 1 Sic etiam ohm legebatur haec periodus ; tn f^outi rixti o-rtv tit
 
 464 CONSIDERATIONS UPON 
 
 THE PRAYER. 
 
 O blessed Jesus, who art become to us the fountain of peace 
 and sanctity, of righteousness and charity, of life and 
 perpetual benediction, imprint in our spirits these glorious 
 characterisms of Christianity, that we, by such excellent 
 dispositions, may be consigned to the infinity of blessed- 
 ness, which thou earnest to reveal, and minister, and exhibit 
 to mankind. Give us great humility of spirit; and deny 
 us not, when we beg sorrow of thee, the mourning and 
 sadness of true penitents, that we may imitate thy excel- 
 lences, and conform to thy sufferings. Make us meek, 
 patient, indifferent, and resigned in all accidents, changes, 
 and issues of Divine providence. Mortify all inordinate 
 anger in us, all wrath, strife, contention, murmurings, 
 malice, and envy ; and interrupt, and then blot out, all 
 peevish dispositions and morosities, all disturbances and 
 unevenness of spirit or of habit, that may hinder us in our 
 duty. Oh teach me so to " hunger and thirst after" the 
 ways of " righteousness," that it may be " meat and drink" 
 to me " to do thy Father's will." Raise my affections to 
 heaven and heavenly things, fix my heart there, and pre- 
 pare a treasure for me, which I may receive in the great 
 diffusions and communications of thy glory. And, in this 
 sad interval of infirmity and temptations, strengthen my 
 hopes, and fortify my faith, by such emissions of light and 
 grace from thy Spirit, that I may relish those blessings 
 which thou preparest for thy saints with so great appetite, 
 that I may despise the world and all its gilded vanities, 
 and may desire nothing but the crown of righteousness, 
 and the paths that lead thither, the graces of thy kingdom 
 and the glories of it; that when I have served thee in 
 holiness and strict obedience, I may reign with thee in the 
 glories of eternity ; for thou, O holy Jesus, art our hope, 
 and our life, and glory, our exceeding great reward. Amen. 
 
 II. 
 
 Merciful Jesu, who art infinitely pleased in demonstrations 
 of thy mercy, and didst descend into a state of misery,
 
 THE EIGHT BEATITUDES. 465 
 
 suffering persecution and affronts, that thou mightest give 
 us thy mercy, and reconcile us to thy Father, and make us 
 partakers of thy purities ; give unto us tender bowels, that 
 we may suffer together with our calamitous and necessitous 
 brethren, that we, having a fellow-feeling of their miseries, 
 may use all our powers to help them, and ease ourselves of 
 our common sufferings. But do thou, O holy Jesus, take 
 from us also all our great calamities, the carnality of our 
 affections, our sensualities and impurities, that we may 
 first be pure, then peaceable, living in peace with all men, 
 and preserving the peace which thou hast made for us 
 with our God, that we may never commit a sin which may 
 interrupt so blessed an atonement. Let neither hope nor 
 fear, tribulation nor anguish, pleasure nor pain, make us to 
 relinquish our interest in thee, and our portion of the ever- 
 lasting covenant. But give us hearts constant, bold, and 
 valiant, to confess thee before all the world in the midst of 
 all disadvantages and contradictory circumstances, choosing 
 rather to beg, or to be disgraced, or afflicted, or to die, than 
 quit a holy conscience, or renounce an article of Christianity : 
 that we, either in acts, when thou shalt call us, or always in 
 preparation of mind, suffering with thee, may also reign with 
 thee in the Church triumphant, O holy and most merciful 
 Saviour Jesu. Amen. 
 
 END OF THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 LONDON: 
 i HINTED BY JAMF.S MOVFS, CASTLE STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE.
 
 AT 
 
 LOS ANGHJHJ 
 LEBRAST
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
 DEC H 1968 
 
 DISCHARGE uRL 
 
 H .APR] 
 MAR 91981 
 
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 JL839 The whole 
 
 v.2 works. 
 
 DEM CO J14N 
 
 BR75 
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 v.2 
 
 3 1158 00671 1211 

 
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