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occasioning a great overthrow of English. But he that had the baseness to do, had the boldness to deny the doing of so foul a fact; until he was challenged in combat by Robert de Momford, a knight, eye-witness thereof, and by him overcome in a duel. Whereupon his large inheritance was confiscated to the king, and he himself, partly thrust, partly going, into a convent, hid his head in a cowl; under which, betwixt shame and sanctity, he blushed out the remainder of his life.

The latter passage has elicited an admirable critical note from Charles Lamb, which is well worth transcription:

The fine imagination of Fuller has done what might have been pronounced impossible. It has given an interest and a holy character to coward infamy. Nothing can be more beautiful than the concluding account of the last days and expiatory retirement of poor Henry de Essex. The address with which the whole of this little story is told is most consummate: the charm of it seems to consist in a perpetual balance of antithesis not too violently opposed, and the consequent activity of mind in which the reader is kept: Betwixt traitor and coward' -'baseness to do, boldness to deny '-'partly thrust, partly going, into a convent'-'betwixt shame and sanctity. The reader by this artifice is taken into a kind of partnership with the writer; his judgment is exercised in settling the preponderance; he feels as if he were consulted as to the issue. But the modern historian flings at once the dead-weight of his own judgment into the scale, and settles the matter.

We may add that the phrase, not noticed by Lamb, of hid his head in a cowl,' is also figuratively striking, and seems to have been remembered by Sheridan, who used a similar expression -'to hide his head in a coronet.'

JEREMY TAYLOR.

The English Church at this time was honoured by the services of many able and profound theologians; men who had both studied and thought deeply, and possessed a vigorous and original character of intellect. The most eloquent and imaginative of all her divines was, however, JEREMY TAYLOR (1613-1667), who has been styled by some the Shakspeare, and by others the Spenser, of our theological literature. He seems to be closely allied, in the complexion of his taste and genius, to the poet of the Faery Queen. He has not the unity and energy, or the profound mental philosophy, of the great dramatist; while he strongly resembles Spenser in his prolific fancy and diction, in a certain musical arrangement and sweetness of expression, in prolonged description, and in delicious musings and reveries, suggested by some favourite image or metaphor, on which he dwells with the fondness and enthusiasm of a young poet. In these passages, he is also apt to run into excess; epithet is heaped upon epithet, and figure upon figure; all the quaint conceits of his fancy and the curious stores of his learning are dragged in, till both precision and propriety are sometimes lost. He writes like an orator, and produces his effect by reiterated strokes and multiplied impressions. His picture of the Resurrection, in one of his sermons, is in the highest style of poetry, but generally he deals with the gentle and familiar; and his allusions to natural objects-as trees, birds, and flowers, the rising or setting sun, the charms of youthful innocence and beauty, and the helplessness of infancy and childhood-possess an

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almost angelic purity of feeling and delicacy of fancy. When presenting rules for morning meditation and prayer, he stops to indulge his love of nature. Sometimes,' he says, 'be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.' He compares a young man to a dancing bubble, empty and gay, and shining like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose very imagery and colours are fantastical.' The fulfilment of our duties he calls 'presenting a rosary or chaplet of good works to our Maker;' and he dresses even the grave with the flowers of fancy. This freshness of feeling and imagination remained with him to the last, amidst all the strife and violence of the Civil War-in which he was an anxious participator and sufferer and the still more deadening effects of polemical controversy and systems of casuistry and metaphysics. The stormy vicissitudes of his life seem only to have taught him greater gentleness, resignation, toleration for human failings, and a more ardent love of humankind.

Jeremy Taylor was a native of Cambridgebaptised on the 15th of August 1613-and descended of gentle, and even heroic blood. He was the lineal representative of Dr Rowland Taylor, who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Queen Mary; and his family had been one of some distinction in the county of Gloucester. The Taylors, however, had fallen into the portion of weeds and outworn faces,' to use an expression of their most illustrious member, and Jeremy's father followed the humble occupation of a barber in Cambridge. He put his son to college, as a sizar, in his thirteenth year, having himself previously taught him the rudiments of grammar and mathematics, and given him the advantages of the Free Grammarschool. In 1630, Jeremy Taylor took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in Caius College, and in 1634 having taken his degree of M.A. was ordained. He then removed to London, to deliver some lectures for a college friend in St Paul's Cathedral. His eloquent discourses, aided by what a contemporary calls 'his florid and youthful beauty, and pleasant air,' entranced all hearers, and procured him the patronage of Archbishop Laud, the friend of learning, if not of liberty. By Laud's assistance, Taylor obtained a fellowship in All Souls College, Oxford, which he enjoyed but for two years, after which he was vicar of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. In 1639, he married Phoebe Langdale, a female of whom we know nothing but her musical name, and that she bore three sons to her accomplished husband, and died three years after her marriage. The sons of Taylor also died before their father, clouding with melancholy and regret his late and troubled years. The turmoil of the Civil War now agitated the country, and Jeremy Taylor embarked his fortunes in the fate of the royalists. By virtue of the king's mandate, he was made a doctor of divinity; and at the command of Charles, he wrote a defence of Episcopacy, to which he was by principle and profession strongly attached. In 1644, while accompanying the royal army as chaplain, Jeremy Taylor was taken prisoner by the Parliamentary forces, in the battle fought before the castle of Cardigan, in Wales. He was soon released, but the tide of war had turned against the royalists, and in the wreck of the church, Taylor resolved to continue in Wales, and, in

conjunction with two learned and ecclesiastical friends, to establish a school at Newton-hall, county of Caermarthen. He appears to have been twice imprisoned by the dominant party, but treated with no marked severity.

'In the great storm,' he says, ' which dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces, I had been cast on the coast of Wales, and, in a little boat, thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in England, in a far greater, I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the storm followed me with so impetuous violence, that it broke a cable, and I lost my anchor, and here again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the gentleness of an element that could neither distinguish things nor persons: and, but that He that stilleth the raging of the sea, and the noise of his waves, and the madness of his people, had provided a plank for me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of content or study; but I know not whether I have been more preserved by the courtesies of my friends, or the gentleness and mercies of a noble enemy.'

This fine passage is in the dedication to Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, a discourse published in 1647, shewing the Unreasonableness of prescribing to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of persecuting Differing Opinions. By 'prophesying,' he means preaching or expounding. The work has been justly described as 'perhaps, of all Taylor's writings, that which shews him furthest in advance of the age in which he lived, and of the ecclesiastical system in which he had been reared as the first distinct and avowed defence of toleration which had been ventured on in England, perhaps in Christendom.' He builds the right of private judgment upon the difficulty of expounding Scripture-the insufficiency and uncertainty of tradition -the fallibility of councils, the pope, ecclesiastical writers, and the church as a body, as arbiters of controverted points--and the consequent necessity of letting every man choose his own guide or judge of the meaning of Scripture for himself; since, says he, 'any man may be better trusted for himself, than any man can be for another-for in this case his own interest is most concerned, and ability is not so necessary as honesty, which certainly every man will best preserve in his own case, and to himself-and if he does not, it's he that must smart for it; and it is not required of us not to be in error, but that we endeavour to avoid it.' Milton, in his scheme of toleration, excludes all Roman Catholics-a trait of the persecuting character of his times; and Jeremy Taylor, to establish some standard of truth, and prevent anarchy, as he alleges, proposes the confession of the Apostles' Creed as the test of orthodoxy and the condition of union among Christians. The principles he advocates go to destroy this limitation, and are applicable to universal toleration, which he dared hardly then avow, even if he had entertained such a desire or conviction. The style of his masterly Discourse' is more argumentative and less ornate than that of his sermons and devotional treatises; but his enlightened zeal often breaks forth in striking condemnation of those who are curiously busy about trifles and impertinences, while they reject those glorious precepts of Christianity and holy life which are the glories of our religion, and would enable us to gain a happy eternity. He closes the work in the second edition

with the following interesting and instructive apologue, which he had found, he says, in the Jews' books:

'When Abraham sat at his tent-door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stopping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, sit down; but observing that the old man ate and asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven. The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God; at which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was. He replied: "I thrust him away because he did not worship thee." God answered him: "I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me; and couldst thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble?" again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched him back instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.'

In Wales, Jeremy Taylor was married to Mrs Joanna Bridges, said to have been a natural daughter of Charles I. and mistress of an estate in the county of Caermarthen. He was thus relieved from the irksome duties of a schoolmaster; but the fines and sequestrations imposed by the Parliamentary party on the property of the royalists, are supposed to have dilapidated his wife's fortune. It is known that he received a pension from the patriotic and excellent John Evelyn, and the literary labours of Taylor were never relaxed. Soon after the publication of the Liberty of Prophesying, he wrote in his Welsh retreat an Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy; and in 1650, The Life of Christ, or the Great Exemplar, a valuable and highly popular work. These were followed by his treatises of Holy Living and Holy Dying, Twentyseven Sermons for the Summer Half-year, and other minor productions. He wrote also an excellent little manual of devotion, entitled the Golden Grove, so called after the mansion of his neighbour and patron the Earl of Carbery, in whose family he had spent many of his happiest leisure hours. In the preface to this work, Taylor had reflected on the ruling powers in church and state, for which he was, for a short time, committed to prison in Chepstow Castle. He next completed his Course of Sermons for the Year, and published some controversial tracts on the doctrine of Original Sin, respecting which his opinions were rather latitudinarian, inclining to the Pelagian heresy. He was attacked both by High Churchmen and Calvinists, but defended himself with warmth and spirit-the only instance in which his bland and benevolent disposition was betrayed into anything approaching to personal asperity. He went to London in 1657, and officiated in a private congregation of Episcopalians, till an offer was made him by the Earl of Conway to accompany him to Ireland, and act as lecturer in a church at Lisburn. Thither he accordingly repaired in 1658, fixing his residence at Portmore, on the banks of Lough Neagh, about eight miles

The Age of Reason and Discretion. when he can feed himself or walk alone, when he can We must not think that the life of a man begins fight or beget his like, for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow; but he is first a man when he comes to a certain steady use of reason, according to his proportion; and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the his golden horns like those which decked the brows of cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shews a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason and his life. He first begins to perceive himself, to see or taste, making little reflec tions upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty: but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not because he needs them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and little images of things are laid before him, like a cock-boat to a whale, only to play withal: but, before a man comes to be wise, he is half dead with gouts and consumptions, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a worn-out body. So that, if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, he is long before his soul be dressed; and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well-being.

from Lisburn. Two years appear to have been spent in this happy retirement, when, in 1660, Taylor made a visit to London, to publish his Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience in all her General Measures, the most elaborate, but the least successful, of all his works. His journey, however, was made at an auspicious period. The Commonwealth was on the eve of dissolution in the weak hands of Richard Cromwell, and the hopes of the cavaliers were fanned by the artifice and ingenuity of Monk. Jeremy Taylor signed the declaration of the loyal-him slowly and insensibly. But, as when the sun ists of London on the 24th of April; on the 29th of May, Charles II. entered London in triumphal procession, to ascend the throne; and in August following, our author was appointed bishop of Down and Connor. The Restoration exalted many a worthless parasite, and disappointed many a deserving loyalist; let us be thankful that it was the cause of the mitre descending on the head of at least one pure and pious churchman! Taylor was afterwards made chancellor of the university of Dublin, and a member of the Irish privy-council. The see of Dromore was also annexed to his other bishopric, 'on account of his virtue, wisdom, and industry.' These well-bestowed honours he enjoyed only about six years. The duties of his episcopal function were discharged with zeal, mingled with charity, though he was denounced and persecuted by a body of fierce Presbyterians. The few sermons which we possess delivered by him in Ireland are truly apostolic, both in spirit and language. He died at Lisburn, of a fever, on the 13th of August 1667, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. A finer pattern of a Christian divine never perhaps existed. His learning dignified the high station he at last attained; his gentleness and courtesy shed a grace over his whole conduct and demeanour; while his commanding genius and energy in the cause of truth and virtue, render him worthy of everlasting affection and veneration. We have alluded to the general character and style of Jeremy Taylor's works. A late eminent scholar, Dr Parr, has eulogised his controversial writings: Fraught as they are,' he says, 'with guileless ardour, with peerless eloquence, and with the richest stores of knowledge-historical, classical, scholastic, and theological-they may be considered as irrefragable proofs of his pure, affectionate, and dutiful attachment to the reformed church of England.' His uncontroversial writings, however, form the noblest monument to His peculiar tenets may be differently judged of by different sects. He was perhaps too prone to speculations in matters of doctrine, and he was certainly no blinded devoted adherent of the church. His mind loved to expatiate on the higher things of time, death, and eternity, which concern men of all parties, and to draw from the divine revelation its hopes, terrors, and injunctions-in his hands, irresistible as the flaming sword as a means of purifying the human mind, and fitting it for a more exalted destiny. 'Theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we shall first see, and then love; but here on earth, we must first love, and love will open our eyes as well as hearts; and we shall then see, and perceive, and

his memory.

understand.'*

Our

* Via Intelligentiæ, a sermon preached by Jeremy Taylor to the university of Dublin.

And now let us consider what that thing is which his tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caitiff spirit; we call years of discretion. The young man is passed he has run from discipline, and is let loose to passion. The man by this time hath wit enough to choose his vice, to act his lust, to court his mistress, to talk confidently, and ignorantly, and perpetually; to despise his betters, to deny nothing to his appetite, to do things that, when he is indeed a man, he must for ever be ashamed of: for this is all the discretion that most men shew in the first stage of their manhood; they can discern good from evil; and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good, and wallowing in the evils of the young man hath contracted vicious habits, and is folly and an unbridled appetite. And by this time a beast in manners, and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life; he is a fool in his understanding, and that is a sad death.

The Pomp of Death.

Take away but the pomps of death, the disguises, and solemn bugbears, and the actings by candlelight, and proper and fantastic ceremonies, the minstrels, and the noise-makers, the women and the weepers, the swoonings and the shriekings, the nurses and the physicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred and the watches, and then to die is easy, ready, and quitted harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same or a maid-servant to-day; and at the same time in which you die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you, some wise men and many fools; and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die..

Marriage.

They that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity hath produced; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness. And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbours, he remembers the objection that lies in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys, and the pedlers, and the fruiterers, shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave, that he lived and died a poor wretched person.

The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took them in their stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles; and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or woman's peevishness.

Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation; every little thing can blast an infant blossom; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new weaned boy: but when by age and consolidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken: so are the early unions of an unfixed marriage; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence and experience, longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces...

There is nothing can please a man without love; and if a man be weary of the wise discourses of the apostles, and of the innocency of an even and a private fortune, or hates peace, or a fruitful year, he hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of Paradise; for nothing can sweeten felicity itself but love; but when a man dwells in love, then the breasts of his wife are pleasant as the droppings upon the Hill of Hermon; her eyes are fair as the light of heaven; she is a fountain sealed, and he can quench his thirst, and ease his cares, and lay his sorrows down upon her lap, and can retire home to his sanctuary and refectory, and his gardens of sweetness and chaste refreshments. No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society... It is fit that I should infuse a bunch of myrrh into the festival goblet, and, after the Egyptian manner, serve up a dead man's bones at a feast: I will only shew it, and take it away again; it will make the wine bitter, but wholesome.

But those married pairs that live as remembering that they must part again, and give an account how they treat themselves and each other, shall, at that day of their death, be admitted to glorious espousals; and when they shall live again, be married to their Lord, and partake of his glories, with Abraham and Joseph, St Peter and St Paul, and all the married saints. All those things that now please us shall pass from us, or we from them; but those things that concern the other life are permanent as the numbers of eternity. And although at the resurrection there shall be no relation of husband and wife, and no marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage of the Lamb, yet then shall be remembered how men and women passed through this state, which is a type of that; and from this sacramental union all holy pairs shall pass to the spiritual and eternal, where love shall be their portion, and joys shall crown their heads, and they shall lie in the bosom of Jesus, and in the heart of God, to eternal ages.

The Progress of Sin.

I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighbourand made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins ing gardens: but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon: but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.

He that hath passed many stages of a good life, to prevent his being tempted to a single sin, must be very careful that he never entertain his spirit with the remembrances of his past sin, nor amuse it with the When the fantastic apprehensions of the present. Israelites fancied the sapidness and relish of the fleshpots, they longed to taste and to return.

So when a Libyan tiger, drawn from his wilder foragings, is shut up and taught to eat civil meat, and suffer the authority of a man, he sits down tamely in his prison, and pays to his keeper fear and reverence for his meat; but if he chance to come again and taste a draught of warm blood, he presently leaps into his natural cruelty. He scarce abstains from eating those hands that brought him discipline and food. . . .

The Pannonian bears, when they have clasped a dart in the region of their liver, wheel themselves upon the wound, and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barb deeper, and cannot be quit from that fatal steel, but, in flying, bear along that which themselves make the instrument of a more hasty death: so is every vicious person struck with a deadly wound, and his own hands force it into the entertainments of the heart; and because it is painful to draw it forth by a sharp and salutary repentance, he still rolls and turns upon his wound, and carries his death in his bowels, where it first entered by choice, and then dwelt by love, and at last shall finish the tragedy by divine judgments and an unalterable decree.

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gems and counterfeit imagery; but when thou hast rifled and discomposed them with enjoying their false beauties, and that they begin to go off, then behold them in their nakedness and weariness. See what a sigh and sorrow, what naked unhandsome proportions and a filthy carcase they discover; and the next time they counterfeit, remember what you have already discovered, and be no more abused.

The Skylark.

For so I have seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below.

Useful Studies.

Spend not your time in that which profits not; for your labour and your health, your time and your studies, are very valuable; and it is a thousand pities to see a diligent and hopeful person spend himself in gathering cockle-shells and little pebbles, in telling sands upon the shores, and making garlands of useless daisies.* Study that which is profitable, that which will make you useful to churches and commonwealths, that which will make you desirable and wise. Only I shall add this to you, that in learning there are variety of things as well as in religion: there is mint and cummin, and there are the weighty things of the law; so there are studies more and less useful, and everything that is useful will be required in its time: and I may in this also use the words of our blessed Saviour, 'These things ought you to look after, and not to leave the other unregarded.' But your great care is to be in the things of God and of religion, in holiness and true wisdom, remembering the saying of Origen, 'That the knowledge that arises from goodness is something that is more certain and more divine than all demonstration,' than all other learnings of the world.

Comforting the Afflicted.

Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting his praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. And what greater measure can we have, than that we should bring joy to our brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to heaven and round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay his eyelids close together than that thy tongue should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to listen for light and ease; and when he perceives that there is such

* Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said: 'I don't know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of Truth lay all undiscovered before me.'-Spence's Anecdotes.

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a thing in the world, and in the order of things, as comfort and joy, to begin to break out from the prison of his sorrows as the door of sighs and tears, and by little and little melt into showers and refreshment. This is glory to thy voice, and employment fit for the brightest angel. But so have I seen the sun kiss the frozen earth, which was bound up with the images of death, and the colder Obreath of the north; and then the waters break from their inclosures, and melt with joy, and run in useful channels; and the flies do rise again from their little graves in walls, and dance a while in the air, to tell that there is joy within, and that the great mother of creatures will open the stock of her new refreshment, become useful to mankind, and sing praises to her Redeemer. So is the heart of a sorrowful man under the discourses of a wise comforter; he breaks from the despairs of the grave, and the fetters and chains of sorrow; he blesses God, and he blesses thee, and he feels his life returning; for to be miserable is death, but nothing is life but to be comforted; and God is pleased with no music from below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of supported orphans, of rejoicing, and comforted, and thankful persons.

Real and Apparent Happiness.

If we should look under the skirt of the prosperous and prevailing tyrant, we should find, even in the days of his joys, such allays and abatements of his pleasure, as may serve to represent him presently miserable, besides his final infelicities. For I have seen a young and healthful person warm and ruddy under a poor and a thin garment, when at the same time an old rich person hath been cold and paralytic under a load of sables and the skins of foxes. It is the body that makes the clothes warm, not the clothes the body; and the spirit of a man makes felicity and content, not any spoils of a rich fortune, wrapt about a sickly and an uneasy soul. Apollodorus was a traitor and a tyrant, and the world wondered to see a bad man have so good a fortune, but knew not that he nourished scorpions in his breast, and that his liver and his heart were eaten up with spectres and images of death; his thoughts were full of interruptions, his dreams of illusions: his fancy was abused with real troubles and fantastic images, imagining that he saw the Scythians flaying him alive, his daughters like pillars of fire, dancing round about a caldron in which himself was boiling, and that his heart accused itself to be the cause of all these evils.

Does he not drink more sweetly that takes his beverage in an earthen vessel, than he that looks and searches into his golden chalices, for fear of poison, and looks pale at every sudden noise, and sleeps in armour, and trusts nobody, and does not trust God for his safety?

Can a man bind a thought with chains, or carry imaginations in the palm of his hand? can the beauty of the peacock's train, or the ostrich plume, be delicious to the palate and the throat? does the hand intermeddle with the joys of the heart? or darkness, that hides the naked, make him warm? does the body live, as does the spirit ? or can the body of Christ be like to common food? Indeed, the sun shines upon the good and bad; and the vines give wine to the drunkard, as well as to the sober man; pirates have fair winds and a calm sea, at the same time when the just and peaceful merchantman hath them. But although the things of this world are common to good and bad, yet sacraments and spiritual joys, the food of the soul and the blessing of Christ, are the peculiar right of saints.

Adversity.

All is well as long as the sun shines, and the fair breath of heaven gently wafts us to our own purposes. But if you will try the excellency and feel the work of faith, place the man in a persecution; let him ride

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