tures: some few people have been witty against God, that taught them to speak before they knew to spell a syllable; but either they are monsters in their manners, or mad in their understandings, or ever find themselves confuted by a thunder or a plague, by danger or death.

But the devil hath infinitely prevailed in a thing that is almost as senseless and ignorant as atheism, and that is idolatry; not only making God after man's image, but in the likeness of a calf, of a cat, of a serpent; making men such fools as to worship a quartan ague, fire and water, onions and sheep. This is the skill man learned, and the philosophy that he is taught, by believing the devil. What wisdom can there be in any man, that calls good evil, and evil good; to say fire is cold, and the sun black; that fornication can make a man happy, or drunkenness can make him wise? And this is the state of a sinner, of every one that delights in iniquity; he cannot be pleased with it if he thinks it evil; he cannot endure it, without believing this proposition, That there is in drunkenness or lust pleasure enough, good enough, to make him amends for the intolerable pains of damnation. But then if we consider on what nonsense principles the state of an evil life relies, we must in reason be impatient, and with scorn and indignation drive away the fool; such as are-sense is to be preferred before reason, interest before religion, a lust before heaven, moments before eternity, money above God himself; that a man's felicity consists in that which a beast enjoys; that a little in present, uncertain, fallible possession, is better than the certain state of infinite glories hereafter what child, what fool, can think things more weak and more unreasonable? And yet if men do not go on these grounds, on what account do they sin? Sin hath no wiser reasons for itself than these: μῶρος ἔχει πυραύστου μόρον : the same argument that a fly hath to enter into a candle, the same argument a fool hath that enters into sin; it looks prettily, but rewards the eye, as burning basins do, with intolerable circles of reflected fire. Such are the principles of a sinner's philosophy. And no wiser are his hopes; all his hopes that he hath are, that he shall have time to repent of that which he chooses greedily; that he whom he every day provokes will save him, whether he will or no;

that he can, in an instant, or in a day, make amends for all the evils of forty years; or else, that he shall be saved whether he does or no; that heaven is to be had for a sigh, or a short prayer, and yet hell shall not be consequent to the affections, and labors, and hellish services of a whole life; he goes on and cares not, he hopes without a promise, and refuses to believe all the threatenings of God; but believes he shall have a mercy for which he never had a revelation. If this be knowlege or wisdom, then there is no such thing as folly, no such disease as madness.

But then consider, that there are some sins whose very formality is a lie. Superstition could not be in the world, if men did believe God to be good and wise, free and merciful, not a tyrant, not an unreasonable exactor: no man would dare do in private, what he fears to do in public, if he did know that God sees him there, and will bring that work of darkness into light. But he is so foolish as to think, that if he sees nothing, nothing sees him; for if men did perceive God to be present, and yet do wickedly, it is worse with them than I have yet spoke of; and they believe another lie, that to be seen by man will bring more shame than to be discerned by God; or that the shame of a few men's talk is more intolerable than to be confounded before Christ, and his army of angels, and saints, and all the world. He that excuses a fault by telling a lie, believes it better to be guilty of two faults, than to be thought guilty of one; and every hypocrite thinks it not good to be holy, but to be accounted so is a fine thing; that is, that opinion is better than reality, and that there is in virtue nothing good but the fame of it. And the man that takes revenge, relies on this foolish proposition; that his evil that he hath already suffered grows less if another suffers the like; that his wound cannot smart, if by my hand he dies that gave it: e T μέλος γοερὸν γοεραῖς, the sad accents and doleful tunes are increased by the number of mourners, but the sorrow is not lessened.

I shall not need to thrust into this account the other evils of mankind that are the events of ignorance, but introduced by sin; such as are, our being moved by what we see strongly, and weakly by what we understand; that men are moved

rather by a fable than by a syllogism, by parables than by demonstrations, by examples than by precepts, by seeming things than by real, by shadows than by substances; that men judge of things by their first events, and measure the events by their own short lives, or shorter observations; that they are credulous to believe what they wish, and incredulous of what makes against them, measuring truth or falsehood by measures that cannot fit them, as foolishly as if they should judge of a color by the dimensions of a body, or feel music with the hand; they make general conclusions from particular instances, and take account of God's actions by the measures of a man. Men call that justice that is on their side, and all their own causes are right, and they are so always; they are so when they affirm them in their youth, and they are so when they deny them in their old age; and they are confident in all their changes; and their first error, which they now see, does not make them modest in the proposition which they now maintain; for they do not understand that what was, may be so again: So foolish and ignorant was I (said David), and as it were a beast before thee.' Ambition is folly, and temerity is ignorance, and confidence never goes without it, and impudence is worse, and zeal or contention is madness, and prating is want of wisdom, and lust destroys it, and makes a man of a weak spirit, and a cheap reasoning; and there are in the catalogue of sins very many, which are directly kinds, and parts, and appendages of ignorance; such as are, blindness of mind, affected ignorance, and wilful; neglect of hearing the word of God, resolved ineredulity, forgetfulness of holy things, lying and believing a lie; this is the fruit of sin, this is the knowlege that the devil promised to our first parents as the rewards of disobedience; and although they sinned as weakly and fondly, ppovýμaros Tò πpìv otepη¤évres, on as slight grounds, and trifling a temptation, and as easy a deception, as many of us since, yet the causes of our ignorance are increased by the multiplication of our sins; and if it was so bad in the green tree, it is much worse in the dry; and no man is so very a fool as the sinner, and none are wise but the servants of God,

Μοῦνοι Χαλδαῖοι σοφίαν λάχον, ἠδ ̓ ἄρ ̓ Ἑβραῖοι,
Αὐτογένεθλον ἄνακτα σεβαζόμενοι Θεὸν ἁγνῶς.

"The wise Chaldees and the wiser Hebrews, which worship God chastely and purely, they only have a right to be called wise;" all that do not so are fools and ignorants, neither knowing what it is to be happy, nor how to purchase it; ignorant of the noblest end, and of the competent means towards it: they neither know God nor themselves, and no ignorance is greater than this, or more pernicious. What man is there in the world that thinks himself covetous or proud? and yet millions there are who, like Harpaste, think that the house is dark, but not themselves. Virtue makes our desires temperate and regular, it observes our actions, condemns our faults, mortifies our lusts, watches all our dangers and temptations: but sin makes our desires infinite, and we would have we cannot tell what we strive that we may forget our faults; we labor that we may neither remember nor consider; we justify our errors, and call them innocent, and that which is our shame we miscall honor; and our whole life hath in it so many weak discourses and trifling propositions, that the whole world of sinners is like the hospital of the insensati, madness and folly possess the greater part of mankind. What greater madness is there than to spend the price of a whole farm in contention for three sheaves of corn? and yet tantum pectora cæcæ Noctis habent, this is the wisdom of such as as are contentious, and love their own will more than their happiness, their humor more than their peace.

Furor est post omnia perdere naulum.*

Men lose their reason, and their religion, and themselves at last, for want of understanding; and all the wit and discourses by which sin creeps in, are but φροντίδων βουλεύματα, γλώσσης τε κόμποι,† "frauds of the tongue, and consultations of care :" but in the whole circle of sins there is not one wise proposition, by which a man may conduct his affairs, or himself become instructed to felicity. This is the first natural fruit of sin: it makes a man a fool, and this hurt sin does to the understanding, and this is shame enough to that in which men are most apt to glory.

*Juv. viii. 97.

+ Hecub. 630.

2. Sin naturally makes a man weak; that is, unapt to do noble things: by which I do not understand a natural disability for it is equally ready for a man to will good as evil, and as much in the power of his hands to be lifted up in prayer to God, as against his brother in a quarrel; and between a virtuous object and his faculties there is a more apt proportion, than between his spirit and a vice; and every act of grace does more please the mind than an act of sin does delight the sense; and every crime does greater violence to the better part of man, than mortification does to the lower; and oftentimes a duty consists in a negative, as, not to be drunk, not to swear, and it is not to be understood that a man hath naturally no power not to do; if there be a natural disability, it is to action, not to rest or ceasing: and therefore in this case we cannot reasonably nor justly accuse our nature, but we have reason to blame our manners, which have introduced on us a moral disability, that is, not that the faculty is impotent and disabled, but that the whole man is; for the will in many cases desires to do good, and the understanding is convinced and consents, and the hand can obey, and the passions can be directed, and be instrumental to God's service: but because they are not used to it, the will finds a difficulty to do them so much violence, and the understanding consents to their lower reasonings, and the desires of the lower man do will stronger; and then the whole man cannot do the duty that is expected. There is a law in the members, and he that gave that law is a tyrant, and the subjects of that law are slaves, and oftentimes their ear is bored; and they love their fetters, and desire to continue that bondage for ever; the law is the law of sin, the devil is the tyrant, custom is the sanction or the firmament of the law; and every vicious man is a slave, and chooses the vilest master, and the basest of services, and the most contemptible rewards. Lex enim peccati est violentia consuetudinis, qua trahitur et tenetur animus etiam invitus, eo merito quo in eam volens illabitur, said St. Austin: "The law of sin is the violence of custom, which keeps a man's mind against his mind, because he entered willingly," and gave up his own interest; which he ought to have secured for his own felicity, and for his service who gave for it an invaluable price and indeed in questions