9 
 
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 V 
 
SELECTIONS FROM THE WORKS 
 
 OF TAYLOR LATIMER HALL MILTON 
 BARROW SOUTH BROWN FULLER AND BACON 
 BY BASIL MONTAGU ESQ. M.A. 
 
 FIFTH EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM PICKERING 
 
 1839 
 
Whittingbam, Tooks Coui't, Chancery Lane 
 
TO 
 
 MY DAILY COMPANION 
 
 MY' OWN FAMILIAR FRIEND 
 
 :R GEORGE ROSE 
 
 THESE SELECTIONS ARE 
 
 INSCRIBED 
 
 B. M. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 Engaged in the completion of a laborious digest of a 
 small section of the Laws of England, I have passed 
 some of my hours of recreation amidst the works of a 
 few favourite authors, to which, from my residence in the 
 University, I have had easy access. From these works 
 this Selection is made. It is published partly with the 
 conviction that every lesson of such teachers of truth has 
 a tendency to meliorate our general taste, and our taste 
 for moral beauty ; but chiefly with the hope that I may 
 induce some of my contemporaries, not accustomed to 
 this train of reading, to extend their researches to these 
 repositories of science. I please myself with thinking 
 that this little volume will contain the slip for use, and 
 part of the root for growth/^ 
 
 I subjoin in this preface an extract containing some 
 account of Bishop Taylor, from the sermon preached at 
 his funeral by his successor, George Rust, bishop of 
 Dromore : 
 
 " He was born at Cambridge, and brought up in the 
 free-school there, and was ripe for the university before 
 custom would allow of his admittance; but by that * 
 time he was thirteen years old, he was entered into Caius 
 College ; and as soon as he was graduate, he was chosen 
 fellow. 
 
 " He was a man long before he was of age ; and knew 
 little more of the state of childhood than its innocency 
 and pleasantness. From the university, by that time he 
 was master of arts, he removed to London, and became 
 public lecturer in the church of St. Paul's; where he 
 preached to the admiration and astonishment of his au- 
 ditory ; and by his florid and youthful beauty, and sweet 
 and pleasant air, and sublime and raised discourses, he 
 made his hearers take him for some young angel, newly 
 descended from the visions of glory. The fame of this 
 new star, that outshone all the rest of the firmament, 
 quickly came to the notice of the great archbishop [Laud] 
 
vi 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 of Canterbury, who would needs have him preach before 
 him; which he performed not less to his wonder than 
 satisfaction. His discourse was beyond exception and 
 beyond imitation : yet the wise prelate thought him too 
 young ; but the great youth humbly begged his grace to 
 pardon that fault, and promised, if he lived, he would 
 mend it. However, the grand patron of learning and 
 ingenuity thought it for the advantage of the world, that 
 such mighty parts should be afforded better opportunities 
 of study and improvement, than a course of constant 
 preaching would allow of ; and to that purpose he placed 
 him in his own college of All Souls in Oxford ; where 
 love and admiration still waited upon him : which, so 
 long as there is any spark of ingenuity in the breasts of 
 men, must needs be the inseparable attendants of so ex- 
 traordinary a worth and sweetness. He had not been 
 long here, before my lord of Canterbury bestowed upon 
 him the rectory of Uphingham in Rutlandshire, and soon 
 after preferred him to be chaplain to king Charles the 
 Martyr, of blessed and immortal memory. 
 
 "This great man had no sooner launched into the worlds 
 but a fearful tempest arose, and a barbarous and unna- 
 tural war disturbed a long and uninterrupted peace and 
 tranquillity, and brought all things into disorder and con- 
 fusion ; but his religion taught him to be loyal, and en- 
 gaged him on his prince's side, whose cause and quarrel 
 he always owned and maintained with a great courage and 
 constancy ; till at last, he and his little fortune were ship- 
 wrecked in that great hurricane that overturned both church 
 and state. This fatal storm cast him ashore in a private 
 corner of the world, and a tender providence shrouded 
 him vmder her wings, and the prophet was fed in the 
 wilderness; and his great worthiness procured him friends, 
 that supplied him with bread and necessaries. In this 
 solitude he began to write those excellent discourses, 
 which are enough of themselves to furnish a library, and 
 will be famous to all succeeding generations for their 
 greatness of wit, and profoundness of judgment, and 
 richness of fancy, and clearness of expression, and co- 
 piousness of invention, and general usefulness to all the 
 purposes of a Christian : and by these he soon got a great 
 reputation among all persons of judgment and indiffer- 
 ency, and his name will grow greater still, as the world 
 grows better and wiser. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 vii 
 
 ^' When he had spent some years in this retirement, it 
 pleased God to visit his family with sickness, and to take 
 to himself the dear pledges of his favour, three sons of 
 great hopes and expectations, within the space of two or 
 three months : and though he had learned a quiet sub- 
 mission unto the divine will, yet the affliction touched 
 him so sensibly, that it made him desirous to leave the 
 country; and going to London, he there met my lord 
 Conway, a person of great honour and generosity ; who 
 making him a kind proffer, the good man embraced it, 
 and that brought him over into Ireland, and settled him 
 at Portmore, a place made for study and contemplation, 
 v^hich he therefore dearly loved ; and here he wrote his 
 Cases of Conscience, a book that is able alone to give its 
 author immortality. 
 
 " By this time the wheel of providence brought about 
 the king's happy restoration, and there began a new 
 world, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
 waters, and out of a confused chaos brought forth beauty 
 and order, and all the three nations were inspired with 
 a new life, and became drunk with an excess of joy ! 
 Among the rest, this loyal subject went over to congra- 
 tulate the prince and people^s happiness, and bear a part 
 in the universal triumph. 
 
 " It was not long ere his sacred majesty began the 
 settlement of the church, and the great doctor Jeremy 
 Taylor was resolved upon for the bishoprick of Down and 
 Connor; and, not long after, Dromore was added to it : 
 and it was but reasonable that the king and church should 
 consider their champion, and reward the pains and suf- 
 ferings he underwent in the defence of their cause and 
 honour. With what care and faithfulness he discharged 
 his office, we are all his witnesses ; what good rules and 
 directions he gave his clergy, and how he taught us the 
 practice of them by his own example. Upon his coming 
 over bishop, he was made a privy- counsellor; and the 
 University of Dublin gave him their testimony, by recom- 
 mending him for their vice-chancellor ; which honourable 
 office he kept to his dying day. 
 
 " Nature had befriended him much in his constitution, 
 for he was a person of a most sweet and obliging humour, 
 of great candour and ingenuity ; and there was so much 
 of salt and fineness of wit, and prettiness of address in 
 bis familiar discourses as made his conversation have all 
 
viii 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 the pleasantness of a comedy, and all the usefulness of a 
 sermon. His soul was made up of harmony ; and he 
 never spake but he charmed his hearer, not only with the 
 clearness of his reason, but all his words, and his very 
 tone and cadencies were strangely musical. 
 
 " But, that which did most of all captivate and en- 
 ravish, was the gaiety and richness of his fancy : for he 
 had much in him of that natural enthusiasm that inspires 
 all great poets and orators ; and there was a generous fer- 
 ment in his blood and spirits, that set his fancy bravely 
 to work, and made it swell, and teem, and become preg- 
 nant to such degrees of luxuriancy, as nothing but the 
 greatness of his wit and judgment could have kept it 
 within due bounds and measures. 
 
 And indeed it was a rare mixture, and a single in- 
 stance, hardly to be found in an age ; for the great trier 
 of wits has told us, that there is a peculiar and several 
 complexion required for wit, and judgment, and fancy ; 
 and yet you might have found all these in this great per- 
 sonage, in their eminency and perfection. But that which 
 made his wit and judgment so considerable, was the 
 largeness and freedom of his spirit, for truth is plain and 
 easy to a mind disentangled from superstition and pre- 
 judice; he was one of the EjcXtfcrifcot, a sort of brave 
 philosophers that Laertius speaks of, that did not addict 
 themselves to any particular sect, but ingeniously sought 
 for Truth among all the wrangling schools; and they 
 found her miserably torn and rent to pieces, and parcelled 
 into rags, by the several contending parties, and so dis- 
 figured and misshapen, that it was hard to know her; 
 but they made a shift to gather up her scattered limbs, 
 which, as soon as they came together, by a strange sym- 
 pathy and connaturalness, presently united into a lovely 
 and beautiful body. This was the spirit of this great 
 man : he weighed men's reasons, and not their names, 
 and was not scared with the ugly visors men usually put 
 upon persons they hate, and opinions they dislike ; not 
 affrighted with the anathemas and execrations of an in- 
 fallible chair, which he looked upon only as bugbears to 
 terrify weak and childish minds. He considered that it 
 is not likely any one party should wholly engross truth 
 to themselves; that obedience is the only way to true 
 knowledge ; that God always, and only, teaches docible 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ix 
 
 and ingenuous minds, that are willing to hear, and ready 
 to obey according to their light ; that it is impossible a 
 pure, humbled, resigned, godlike soul should be kept out 
 of heaven, whatever mistakes it might be subject to in this 
 state of mortality ; that the design of heaven is not to fill 
 men's heads, and feed their curiosities, but to better their 
 hearts, and mend their lives. Such considerations as 
 these made him impartial in his disquisitions, and gave a 
 due allowance to the reasons of his adversary, and con- 
 tended for truth, and not for victory. 
 
 " And now you will easily believe that an ordinary di- 
 ligence would be able to make great improvements upon 
 such a stock of parts and endowments. But to these ad- 
 vantages of nature, and excellency of his spirit, he added 
 an indefatigable industry, and God gave a plentiful bene- 
 diction ; for there were very few kinds of learning but he 
 was a great master in them. He was a rare humanist, 
 and hugely versed in all the polite parts of learning : and 
 had thoroughly concocted all the ancient i^oralists, Greek 
 and Roman, poets and orators ; and was not unacquainted 
 with the refined wits of the later ages, whether French or 
 Italian, 
 
 " But he had not only the accomplishments of a gen- 
 tleman, but so universal were his parts, that they were 
 proportioned to everything ; and though his spirit and 
 humour were made up of smoothness and gentleness, yet 
 he could bear with the harshness and roughness of the 
 schools, and was not unseen in their subtleties and spi- 
 hosities, and upon occasion could make them serve his 
 purpose. 
 
 " His skill was great, both in the civil and canon law, 
 and casuistical divinity ; and he was a rare conductor of 
 souls, and knew how to counsel and to advise; to solve 
 jdifficulties, and determine cases, and quiet consciences. 
 He understood what the several parties in Christendom 
 have to say for themselves, and could plead their cause 
 to better advantage than any advocate of their tribe ; and 
 when he had done, he could confute them too ; and show, 
 that better arguments than ever they could produce for 
 themselves, would afford no sufficient ground for their 
 fond opinions. 
 
 " It would be too great a task to pursue his accomplish- 
 ments through the various kinds of literature : I shall 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 content myself to add only his great acquaintance with 
 the fathers and ecclesiastical writers, and the doctors of 
 the first and purest ages both of the Greek and Latin 
 church; which he has made use of against the Ro- 
 manists, to vindicate the church of England from the 
 challenge of innovation, and prove her to be truly ancient, 
 catholic, and apostolical. 
 
 But religion and virtue is the crown of all other ac- 
 complishments ; and it was the glory of this great man, 
 to be thought a christian, and whatever you added to it, 
 he looked upon as a term of diminution ; and yet he was 
 a zealous son of the church of England ; but that was be- 
 cause he judged her (and with great reason) a church the 
 most purely christian of any in the world . In his younger 
 years he met with some assaults from popery ; and the 
 high pretensions of their religious orders were very ac- 
 commodate to his devotional temper : but he was always 
 so much master of himself, that he would never be go- 
 verned by any thing but reason, and the evidence of 
 truth, which engaged him in the study of those contro- 
 versies; and to how good purpose, the world is by this 
 time a sufficient witness. 
 
 He was a person of great humility ; and, notwith- 
 standing his stupendous parts, and learning, and emi- 
 nency of place, he had nothing in him of pride and hu- 
 mour, but was courteous and affable, and of easy access, 
 and would lend a ready ear to the complaints, yea to the 
 impertinencies, of the meanest persons. His humility 
 was coupled with an extraordinary piety ; and I believe, 
 he spent the greatest part of his time in heaven; his 
 solemn hours of prayer took up a considerable portion of 
 his life ; and, we are not to doubt, but he had learned of 
 St. Paul to pray coritinually ; and that occasional ejacula- 
 tions, and frequent aspirations and emigrations of his soul 
 after God, made up the best part of his devotions. But 
 he was not only a good man God-ward, but he was come 
 to the top of St. Peter's gradation, and to all his other 
 virtues added a large and diffusive charity; and whoever 
 compares his plentiful incomes with the inconsiderable 
 estate he left at his death, will be easily convinced that 
 charity was steward for a great proportion of his revenue. 
 But the hungry that he fed, and the naked that he clothed, 
 and the distressed that he supplied, and the fatherless that 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 xi 
 
 he provided for ; the poor children that he put to appren- 
 tice, and brought up at school, and maintained at the uni- 
 versity, will now sound a trumpet to that charity which 
 he dispersed with his right hand, but would not suffer his 
 left hand to have any knowledge of it." 
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 The motives by which I was induced to publish these 
 Selections are explained in the annexed Preface to the 
 first edition of this work. — It was prepared in the retire- 
 ment of the University, as a relaxation from severe studies, 
 and to cherish the taste and genius that blessed the sweet 
 charities of private life by which I was then surrounded. 
 
 But pleasures are like poppies spread. 
 You seize the flower, its bloom is shed : 
 Or like the snow-fall in the river, 
 A moment white— then melts for ever. 
 
 This second edition is published with the ardent hope 
 that it may, in some sort, contribute to teach affliction 
 how to direct its sorrows, and to turn its grief into virtues 
 and advantages : that it may speak peace " when our eye- 
 lids are loosed with sickness, and our bread is dipped in 
 tears, and all the daughters of music are brought low — 
 that, from the labours of these philosophers, prosperity 
 may remember that a man is what he knows ; that of 
 created beings the most excellent are those who are intel- 
 ligent, and who steadily employ their gift of reason for 
 the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.'^ 
 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION * 
 
 The first edition of these Selections was published in the 
 year 1805 ; the second in 1807. They have been for 
 some years out of print; — but my engagements during 
 the last twenty years have been so incessant, that, with 
 every anxiety to assist in extending to others the blessings 
 with which the works of these holy men abound, I have 
 only occasionally, and not without difficulty, been able 
 to appropriate a few moments to this labour of love. I 
 trust that it will not have been in vain. "The delivery 
 of knowledge is as of fair bodies of trees ; if you mean 
 to use the shoot, as the builder doth, it is no matter for 
 the roots; but if you mean it to grow, as the planter 
 doth, look you well that the slip has part of the root.^^f 
 I please myself with thinking that some of these Selec- 
 tions cannot but give immediate delight: and often, in 
 my solitary walks through this noble city, more quiet to 
 me than the retirement of academic bowers, I shall in- 
 dulge the hope that this volume may, perchance, be 
 opened by some young man who, at his entrance into 
 life, is meditating upon that " suavissima vita indies 
 sentire se fieri meliorem.'' May this little spark of holy 
 fire direct him to the place where the star appears, and 
 point to the very house where the babe lies. In the 
 works of these ancient writers, which as so many lights 
 shine before us, he will find what is better than rubies 
 and gold, yea, than fine gold. He will learn not to be 
 misled by the transient pleasures of life ; but to seek for 
 permanent happiness, where it can alone be found, in 
 knowledge, in piety, and in charity. 
 
 * Published in 1829. t Lord Bacon. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Action and Contemplation 313 
 
 Active Virtue 296 
 
 Adam in Paradise 159 
 
 Adversity 124 
 
 Ambition 100 
 
 Anger 43, 165 
 
 Bacon, Lord 308 
 
 Barrow, Dr 216 
 
 Bee and the Spider 233 
 
 Body and Mind, Connection between 317 
 
 Brown, Sir Thomas 274 
 
 Cause and Effect 139 
 
 Charity 234, 280 
 
 Christianity , 31 
 
 Christian Censure 85 
 
 Christian 238 
 
 Church Patron ag:e 141 
 
 Comforting the Disconsolate 96 
 
 Company 259 
 
 Concord and Discord 236 
 
 Connection between Error and Truth 295 
 
 Contemplation and Action 142 
 
 Content 81 
 
 Coversation..i 90 
 
 Covetousness 85, 171 
 
 Danger of Prosperity 39 
 
 David 196 
 
 Day of Judgment 57 
 
 Death 5 
 
 Deformity 277 
 
 Destruction of the Crusaders 245 
 
 Dress « 146 
 
 Duty of Thanksgiving 230 
 
 Education 2, 291 
 
 Effect of Example 224 
 
 England and London 301 
 
 Eye of Conscience 177 
 
xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Fancy 26o 
 
 Fear , 76, 167 
 
 FJattery 95 
 
 Foolish Jesting 93 
 
 Friendship and General Benevolence 64 
 
 Fuller, Dr 241 
 
 Glory of the Clergy 180 
 
 Goodness of Nature 315 
 
 Goodness of the Almighty 14 
 
 Good Wife 247 
 
 Good Parent 248 
 
 Good Sea Captain 250 
 
 Golden Calf 51 
 
 Government 305, 324 
 
 Government and Revolutions 105, 108, 109 
 
 Gratitude and Ingratitude 168 
 
 Hall, Bishop 181 
 
 Happiness 290 
 
 Happy Man 185 
 
 Hasty Judgment 136 
 
 Hatred 165 
 
 Honouring God 221 
 
 Hope 19 
 
 Hospital 87 
 
 How a Day should be spent 208 
 
 Human Perfection 159 
 
 Human Resolutions 54 
 
 Humility 88 
 
 Hypocrite 193 
 
 Idle Curiosity ,127 
 
 Ignorance and Intelligence 182 
 
 Immoderate Grief 9 
 
 Immortality 289 
 
 Impatience 8^1 
 
 Intemperance... 114, 116 
 
 Invisible World 286 
 
 Jesting 254 
 
 Joy 166 
 
 Knowledge a Source of Delight 216 
 
 Knowledge avoids Misery to which Ignorance is exposed 220 
 
 Knowledge of Good and Evil 173 
 
 Latimer, Bishop 136 
 
 Libels 300 
 
CONTENTS. XT 
 
 Page 
 
 Liberty 298 
 
 Libraries 309 
 
 Licensers of the Press 300 
 
 Logical and Mathematical Parts of Mind 312 
 
 Love 164 
 
 Lover of Truth 323 
 
 Lukewarm ness and Zeal 16 
 
 Lust 83 
 
 Marriage 20, 304 
 
 Memory 260 
 
 Mercy , 133 
 
 Method and Arrangement 316 
 
 Miscellaneous 241, 272 
 
 Miseries of Man's Life 125 
 
 Milton 291 
 
 Nature and Art 279 
 
 Old Age 215 
 
 Order of attaining Objects 182 
 
 Paradise Lost 307 
 
 Passion and Reason 43 
 
 Passions 165 
 
 Patent and Latent Vice 309 
 
 Perfection in General 159 
 
 Perfection of Understanding 159 
 
 Perfection of the Will 163 
 
 Philosophizing and Theorizing 310 
 
 Piety 226 
 
 Pleasure 152 
 
 Pleasures of the World 1 13 
 
 Pleasures of Understanding 54 
 
 Pleasure, Sensual and Intellectual 153 
 
 Pleasure of Amusement 156 
 
 Pleasure of Great Place 155 
 
 Pleasure of Knowledge 322 
 
 Pleasure of Power 320 
 
 Pleasure of Meditation 158 
 
 Pleasures of Piety 228 
 
 Pleasure of Religion 158 
 
 Pleasure of Study and Contemplation 204 
 
 Poet's Morning 306 
 
 Power of Prayer 14 
 
 Practical Understanding 162 
 
 Prayer 1 
 
 Presence of God 55 
 
xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Pride 283 
 
 Progress of Religious Sentiment 97 
 
 Progress of Sin 48 
 
 Prosperity of Fools 179 
 
 Prostitute 43 
 
 Protestant and Catholic 274 
 
 Queen Elizabeth 317 
 
 Rash Judgment 282 
 
 Real and Apparent Happiness 121, 181 
 
 Reason and Discretion 3 
 
 Reform 302 
 
 Religion of Mahomet 243 
 
 Religious Persecution , 148, 245 
 
 Resurrection of Sinners 57 
 
 Return of Kindness 120 
 
 Sacrament 118 
 
 Self Deception 172 
 
 Sensuality 178 
 
 Shepherds 144 
 
 Sickness 46 
 
 Sinful Pleasure 84 
 
 Skeleton 243 
 
 Slander 95 
 
 Sorrow 166 
 
 South, Dr 152 
 
 Speculative Understanding 160 
 
 Student 276 
 
 Superstition 123 
 
 Talking foolishly 92 
 
 Taylor, Bishop 1 
 
 Temperance 112 
 
 Toleration 18 
 
 Travelling 257 
 
 True and Mock Religion 37 
 
 Universities 308 
 
 Utility 318 
 
 Vice in Power 177 
 
 Virtuous Mind 51 
 
 Wisdom selects True Pleasures 218 
 
 Wisdom in its own Conceit 243 
 
 Wit 231 
 
SELECTIONS. 
 
 SECTION I. 
 BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 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. 
 
 Epistle Dedicatory to Taylors Life of Christ. 
 
 ON PRAYER. 
 
 Prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness 
 of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the 
 seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the 
 cairn of our tempest ; prayer is the issue of a quiet 
 mind, of untroubled thoughts, it is the daughter 
 of charity, and the sister of meekness ; and he 
 that prays to God with an angry, that is, with a 
 troubled and discomposed spirit, is like him that 
 retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his 
 closet in the out quarters of an army. Anger is 
 a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and 
 therefore is contrary to that attention, which pre- 
 sents our prayei's in a right line to God. For so 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 S^ELECTIONS 
 
 have I 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 unconstant, descending more at 
 every breath of the tempest, than it could re- 
 cover 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 musick and motion 
 from an angel, as he passed sometimes through 
 the air about his ministries here below : so is the 
 prayer of a good man, &c.* 
 
 Prayers are but the body of the bird ; desires 
 are its angeFs wings. f 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 Otherwise do fathers, and otherwise do mo- 
 thers handle their children. These soften them 
 with kisses and imperfect noises, with the pap 
 and breast-milk of soft endearments ; they res- 
 cue them from tutors, and snatch them from dis- 
 cipline ; they desire to keep them fat and warm, 
 and their feet dry, and their bellies full ; and then 
 the children govern, and cry, and prove fools and 
 
 * The Return of Prayers, Serm. v. p. 33. 
 t Worthy Communicant, sec. 4. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 3 
 
 troublesome, so long as the feminine republic does 
 endure. But fathers, because they design to have 
 their children wise and valiant, apt for counsel or 
 for arms, send them to severe governments, and 
 tie them to study, to hard labour, and afflictive 
 contingencies. They rejoice when the bold boy 
 strikes a lion with his hunting spear, and shrinks 
 not when the beast comes to affright his early 
 courage. Softness is for slaves and beasts, for 
 minstrels and useless persons, for such who can- 
 not ascend higher than the state of a fair ox, or a 
 servant entertained for vainer offices ; but the man 
 that designs his son for nobler employments, — to 
 honours and to triumphs, to consular dignities, 
 and presidencies of councils, loves to see him 
 pale w^ith study, or panting with labour, hardened 
 with sufferings, or eminent by dangers.* 
 
 AGE OF REASON AND DISCRETION. 
 
 We must not think that the life of a man be- 
 gins when he can feed himself or walk alone, 
 when he can 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 a^ge at fourteen, some at one- 
 and-twenty, some never ; but all men late enough ; 
 
 * Holy Dying, ch. iii. 
 
4 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and 
 insensibly. But as when the sun approaching 
 towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a 
 little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of 
 darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up 
 the lark to mattins, and by and by gilds the fringes 
 of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrust- 
 ing out his golden horns like those which decked 
 the brows of Moses when he was forced to wear 
 a veil because himself had seen the face of God ; 
 and still, w^hile a man tells the story, the sun gets 
 up higher, till he shows 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 reflections 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 consumption, 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 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 5 
 
 soul, a soul at least furnished with what is neces- 
 sary towards his well-being. 
 
 And now let us consider what that thing is 
 which we call years of discretion. The young- man 
 is passed his tutors, and arrived at the bondage 
 of a caitiff spirit ; he is 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 show 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 wal- 
 lowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appe- 
 tite. And by this time the young man hath con- 
 tracted vicious habits, and is a beast in manners, 
 and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the 
 beginning of his life : he is a fool in his under- 
 standing, and that is a sad death, &c.t 
 
 ON DEATH. 
 
 I SHALL entertain you in a charnel-house, and 
 carry your meditation awhile into the chambers of 
 death, where you shall find the rooms dressed up 
 w^ith melancholick arts, and fit to converse with 
 your most retired thoughts, w^hich begin with a sigh, 
 
 t Holy Dying, ch. i. 
 
6 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and proceed in deep consideration, and end in a 
 holy resolution. It is necessary to present these 
 bundles of cypress 4 
 
 The autumn with its fruits provides disorders 
 for us, and the winter's cold turns them into sharp 
 diseases, and the spring* brings flowers to strew 
 our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and 
 brambles to bind upon our graves. f 
 
 It is a mighty change that is made by the 
 death of every person, and it is visible to us who 
 are alive. Reckon but from the spritefulness of 
 youth and the fair cheeks and the full eyes of 
 childhood, from the vigorousness and strong 
 flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty to the 
 hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsome- 
 ness and horror of a three days burial, and we 
 shall perceive the distance to be very great and 
 very strange. But so I have seen a rose newly 
 springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first 
 it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew 
 of heaA^en, as a lamb's fleece : but when a ruder 
 breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and 
 dismantled its too youthful and unripe retire- 
 ments, it began to put on darkness, and to decline 
 to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age ; it 
 bowed the head, and broke its stalk ; and at night, 
 having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, 
 it fell, &c. 
 
 X Dedication to Holy Dying, 
 
 t Holy Dying. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 7 
 
 The wild fellow in Petronius that escaped upon 
 a broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as 
 he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore, 
 espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of 
 waves, t ballasted with sand in the folds of his 
 garment, and carried by his civil enemy the sea 
 towards the shore to find a grave : and it cast him 
 into some sad thoughts : that peradventure this 
 man's wife in some part of the continent, safe and 
 warm, looks next month for the good man's re- 
 turn ; or it may be his son knows nothing of the 
 tempest ; or his father thinks of that affectionate 
 kiss which still is w^arm upon the good old man's 
 cheek ever since he took a kind farewell, and he 
 weeps with joy to think how blessed he shall be 
 when his beloved boy returns into the circle of 
 his father's arms. These are the thoughts of 
 mortals, this the end and sum of all their designs : 
 a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea 
 and a broken cable, a hard rock and a rough 
 wind, dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole 
 family, and they that shall weep loudest for the 
 accident are not yet entered into the storm, and 
 yet have suffered shipwreck. Then looking upon 
 the carcass, he knew it, and found it to be the 
 master of the ship, who the day before cast up 
 the accounts of his patrimony and his trade, and 
 named the day when he thought to be at home. 
 See how the man swims who was so angry two 
 
 t Like a common-weed, 
 
 The sea-swell took her hair. 
 
 KEATS. 
 
8 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 days since ; his passions are becalmed with the 
 storm, his accounts cast up, his cares at an end, 
 his voyage done, and his gains are the strange 
 events of death. 
 
 Of all the evils of the world which are re- 
 proached with an evil character, death is the 
 most innocent of its accusation. f 
 
 t To the same effect Bishop Taylor says, in another part 
 of his Holy Dying, — ' Take away but the pomps of death, 
 the disguises, and solemn bug-bears, and the actings by 
 candlelight, and proper and phantastick ceremonies, the 
 minstrels and the noise-makers, the women and the weepers, 
 the swoonings and the shriekings, the nurses and the physi- 
 cians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred and the 
 watches, and then to die is easy, ready, and quitted from its 
 troublesome circumstances. It is the same harmless thing 
 that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, 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.' 
 And in an essay ascribed (erroneously,) I think, to Lord 
 Bacon, he says, ' I have often thought of death, and I find 
 it the least of all evils.* But in the same essay the author 
 says, * Death arrives gracious only to such as sit in darkness, 
 or lie heavy burthened with grief and irons ; to the poor 
 Christian that sits bound in the galley ; to despairful widows, 
 pensive prisoners, and deposed kings : to them whose fortune 
 runs back, and whose spirits mutiny ; unto such death is a 
 redeemer, and the grave a place for retiredness and rest. 
 These wait upon the shore of death, and waft unto him to 
 draw^ near, wishing above all others to see his star, that they 
 might be led to his place, wooing the remorseless sisters to 
 wind down the watch of their life, and to break them off 
 before the hour.* 
 
 One of the sweetest of our modern poets says, — 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 9 
 
 IMMODERATE GRIEF. 
 
 Solemn and appointed mournings are good ex- 
 pressions of our dearness to the departed soul, 
 and of his worth, and our value of him ; and it 
 hath its praise in nature, and in manners, and 
 
 And hark ! the nightingale begins its song, 
 * Most musical, most melancholy' bird ! 
 A melancholy bird? Oh, idle thought ! 
 In nature there is nothing melancholy. 
 
 So sings the sweet poet. Are these the mere fancies of 
 the brain, illusions of the imagination, or does philosophy 
 echo what the poet sings ? Let us try this by seeing whether 
 in death, which is as natural as life, there is not something 
 melancholy ? Is there nothing melancholy in a death-bed ; 
 in the agony and last contentions of the soul ; the reluc- 
 tancies and unwillingnesses of the body ; the forehead washed 
 with a new baptism, besmeared with a cold sweat, tenacious 
 and clammy, apt to make it cleave to the roof of the coffin ; 
 the nose cold and undiscerning ; the eyes dim as a sullied 
 mirror ; the feet cold ; the hands stiff? How many of us 
 have contemplated with admiration the graceful motion of 
 the female form; the eye sparkling with intelligence; th^ 
 countenance enlivened by wit, or animated or soothed by 
 feeling 1 Is there nothing sad in the consciousness that in a 
 few short years, perhaps in the next moment, sensation and 
 motion will cease ; the body lose its warmth, the eyes their 
 lustre, and the lips and cheeks become livid ? Is there 
 nothing melancholy in the consciousness that these are but 
 preludes to other changes I Will the poet still say. 
 
 Oh, idle thought ! 
 In nature there is nothing melancholy "? 
 
 And will philosophy echo what the poet sings ? 
 
10 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 public customs. Something is to be given to cus- 
 tom, something to fame, to nature, and to civili- 
 ties, and to the honour of the deceased friends ; 
 for that man is esteemed to die miserable, for 
 whom no friend or relative sheds a tear, or pays 
 
 It certainly is true that this is no new song of the poets. 
 Bacon (whether truly or not is the question) says,— Know- 
 ledge mitigates the fear of death ; for, if a man be deeply 
 imbued with the contemplation of mortality and the cor- 
 ruptible nature of all things, he will easily concur with Epic- 
 tetus, who went forth one day, and saw a woman weeping for 
 her pitcher of earth that was broken ; and went forth the next 
 day, and saw a woman weeping for her son that was dead ; 
 and therefore said, * Heri vidi fragilem frangi ; hodie vidi 
 mortalem mori/ And therefore Virgil did excellently and 
 profoundly couple the knowledge of causes and the conquest 
 of all fears as concomitant : 
 
 Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
 Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 
 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari ! 
 
 If any of my readers is desirous to discover the portion of 
 truth and of error which these opinions of poets and philoso- 
 phers contain, it is necessary to proceed with caution, and 
 separately to examine the different causes which compose the 
 painful associations with which death is accompanied : con- 
 sisting, as it does, of a complication of terrors, aiding each 
 other, and becoming formidable by their united operation, let 
 him read Tucker's valuable Essay on Death, in vol. vii. of his 
 admirable work on the Light of Nature ; and let him remem- 
 ber that Lord Bacon, in his Doctrine of all the Motions in 
 Nature, says, ' The political motion is that by which the 
 parts of a body are restrained from their own immediate appe- 
 tites or tendencies, to unite in such a state as may preserve 
 the existence of the whole body. Thus the spirit, which 
 exists in all living bodies, keeps all the parts in due subjec- 
 tion ; when it escapes, the body decomposes, or the similar 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 11 
 
 a solemn sigh. Some showers sprinkled upon my 
 grave would do well and comely. 
 
 But that which is to he faulted in this parti- 
 cular is, when the g-rief is immoderate and un- 
 reasonable : and Paula Romana deserved to have 
 felt the weight of St. Hierom's severe reproof, 
 
 parts unite — as metals rust, fluids turn sour : and in animals, 
 when the spirit which held the parts together escapes, all 
 things are dissolved and return to their own natures or prin- 
 ciples : the oily parts to themselves, the aqueous to them- 
 selves, &;c. upon which necessarily ensues that confusion of 
 parts, observable in putrefaction.' So true it is, that in na- 
 ture all is beauty ! that notwithstanding our partial views, 
 and distressing associations, the forms of death, misshapen as 
 we suppose them, are but the tendencies to union in similar 
 natures. 
 
 In this spirit was the inscription written which is now on 
 the monument of Lord Bacon. He died in the year 1626 ; 
 and, according to his wish, is buried in the same grave with 
 his mother. Near to him lies his faithful secretary ; and 
 although only a few letters of his name, scarcely legible, 
 can now be traced, he will ever be remembered for his 
 affectionate attachment to his master and friend. Upon the 
 monument which he raised to Lord Bacon, who appears, 
 sitting in deep but tranquil thought, he has inscribed this 
 epitaph : — 
 
 FRANCISCUS BACON BARD DE VERULAM S: ALBA^'I VIC^^^* 
 SEU NOTORIBUS TITULIS 
 SCIENTIARUM LUMEN, FACUNDI^ LEX 
 SIC SEDEBAT : 
 QUI POSTQUAM OMNIA NATURALIS SAPIENT!^ 
 ET CIVILIS ARCANA EVOLVISSET 
 NATURiE DECRETUM EXPLEVIT 
 COMPOSITA SOLVANTUR. 
 
 Is not decomposition, in the sight of omniscience, as beau- 
 tiful as union ? 
 
12 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 when at the death of every of her children she 
 almost wept herself into her grave.* 
 
 And it hath been observed, that those greater 
 and stormy passions do so spend the whole stock 
 of grief, that they presently admit a comfort and 
 contrary affection ; while a sorrow that is even 
 and temperate goes on to its period with expec- 
 tation and the distances of a just time. The 
 Ephesian woman that the soldier told of in Petro- 
 nius was the talk of all the town, and the rarest 
 example of a dear affection to her husband. She 
 descended with the corpse into the vault, and 
 there being attended with her maiden, resolved to 
 weep to death, or die with famine or a distem- 
 pered sorrow : from which resolution, nor his nor 
 her friends, nor the reverence of the principal 
 citizens, who used the intreaties of their charity 
 
 * Ought we in our grief for the loss of each other, to 
 murmur at the order of nature, at the dispensations of Pro- 
 vidence, or ought we to remember that — 
 
 They are not lost 
 
 Who leave their parents for the calm of heaven. 
 
 I know well 
 
 That they who love their friends most tenderly 
 Still bear their loss the best. There is in love 
 A consecrated power, that seems to wake 
 Only at the touch of death from its repose. 
 In the profoundest depths of thinking souls, 
 Superior to the outward signs of grief. 
 Sighing or tears, — when these have past away, 
 It rises calm and beautiful, like the moon. 
 Saddening the solemn night, yet with that sadness 
 Mingling the breath of undisturbed peace. 
 
 CITY OF THE PLAGUE. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 13 
 
 and their power, could persuade' her. But a soldier 
 that watched seven dead bodies hanging* upon 
 trees just over against this monument, crept in, 
 and a while stared upon the silent and comely 
 disorders of the sorrow : and having let the won- 
 der awhile breathe out at each other's eyes, at last 
 he fetched his supper and a bottle of wine, with 
 purpose to eat and drink, and still to feed him- 
 self with that sad prettiness. His pity and first 
 draught of wine made him bold and curious to 
 try if the maid would drink ; who, having many 
 hours since felt her resolution faint as her wearied 
 body, took his kindness, and the light returned 
 into her eyes, and danced like boys in a festival : 
 and fearing lest the pertinaciousness of her mis- 
 tress' sorrows should cause her evil to revert, or 
 her shame to approach, assayed whether she would 
 endure to hear an argument to persuade her to 
 drink and live. The violent passion had laid all 
 her spirits in wildness and dissolution, and the 
 maid found them willing to be gathered into order 
 at the arrest of any new object, being weary of the 
 first, of which like leeches they had sucked their 
 fill till they fell down and burst. The weeping 
 woman took her cordial, and was not angry with 
 her maid, and heard the soldier talk. And he 
 was so pleased with the change, that he, who at 
 first loved the silence of the sorrow, was more in 
 love with the musick of her returning voice, espe- 
 cially which himself had strung and put in tune : 
 and the man began to talk amorously, and the 
 woman's weak head and heart were soon possessed 
 
14 SELECTIONS 
 
 with a little wine, and grew gay, and talked, and 
 fell in love ; and that very night, in the morning 
 of her passion, in the grave of her husband, in 
 the pomps of mourning, and in her funeral gar- 
 ments, married her new and stranger guest.* 
 
 THE POWER OF PRAYER. 
 
 Prayer can obtain every thing, it can open the 
 windows of heaven, and shut the gates of hell ; it 
 can put a holy constraint upon God, and detain 
 an angel till he leave a blessing ; it can open the 
 treasures of rain, and soften the iron ribs of rocks, 
 till they melt into tears and a flowing river : prayer 
 can unclasp the girdles of the north, saying to a 
 mountain of ice. Be thou removed hence, and 
 cast into the bottom of the sea ; it can arrest the 
 sun in the midst of his course, and send the swift- 
 winged winds upon our errand ; and all those 
 strange things, and secret decrees, and unrevealed 
 transactions which are above the clouds, and far 
 beyond the regions of the stars, shall combine in 
 ministry and advantages for the praying man.f 
 
 ON THE GOODNESS OF THE ALMIGHTY. 
 
 As the sun sends forth a benign and gentle in- 
 fluence on the seed of plants, that it may invite 
 forth the active and plastick power from its recess 
 
 * Holy Dying. 
 
 t Worthy Communicant. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 15 
 
 and secrecy, that by rising into the tallness and 
 dimensions of a tree it may still receive a greater 
 and more refreshing influence from its foster 
 father, the prince of all the bodies of light ; and 
 in all these emanations the sun itself receives no 
 advantage but the honour of doing benefits : so 
 doth the Almighty father of all the creatures ; he 
 at first sends forth his blessings upon us, that we 
 by using them aright should make ourselves ca- 
 pable of greater; while the giving glory to God, 
 and doing homage to him, are nothing for his 
 advantage, but only for ours ; our duties towards 
 him being like vapours ascending from the earth, 
 not at all to refresh the region of the clouds, but 
 to return back in a fruitful and refreshing shower ; 
 and God created us, not that we can increase his 
 felicity, but that he might have a subject recep- 
 tive of felicity from him. 
 
 Does not God send his angels to keep thee in 
 all thy ways ? are not they ministering spirits sent 
 forth to wait upon thee as thy guard ? art not 
 thou kept from drowning, from fracture of bones, 
 from madness, from deformities, by the riches of 
 the divine goodness ? Tell the joints of thy body, 
 doest thou want a finger? and if thou doest not 
 understand how great a blessing that is, do but 
 remember how ill thou canst spare the use of it 
 when thou hast but a thorn in it. The very pri- 
 vative blessings, the blessings of immunity, safe- 
 guard, and integrity which we all enjoy, deserve 
 a thanksgiving of a w^hole life. If God should 
 send a cancer upon thy face, or a wolf into thy 
 
16 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 breast, if he should spread a crust of leprosy upon 
 thy skin, what wouldest thou give to be but as now 
 thou art?* 
 
 LUKEWARMNESS AND ZEAL. 
 
 He that is warm to-day and cold to-morrow, 
 zealous in his resolution and weary in his prac- 
 tices, fierce in the beginning", and slack and easy 
 in his progress, hath not yet w^ell chosen what 
 side he will be of. For religion cannot change, 
 though we do ; and, if w^e do, we have left God ; 
 and whither he can go that goes from God, his 
 own sorrows will soon enough instruct him. This 
 fire must never go out ; but it must be like the 
 fire of heaven ; it must shine like the stars, though 
 sometimes covered with a cloud, or obscured by 
 a greater light ; yet they dwell for ever in their 
 orbs, and walk in their circles, and observe their 
 circumstances ; but go not out by day nor night, 
 and set not when kings die, nor are extinguished 
 when nations change their government. So must 
 the zeal of a Christian be, a constant incentive 
 of his duty; and though sometimes his hand is 
 drawn back by violence or need, and his prayers 
 shortened by the importunity of business, and 
 some parts omitted by necessities and just com- 
 pliances ; yet still the fire is kept alive, it burns 
 w-ithin when the light breaks not forth, and is 
 eternal as the orb of fire, or the embers of the 
 altar of incense. 
 
 * Mercy of the Divine Judgments. Serm. xii. p. 286. 8. 95. 
 
I'ROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 17 
 
 In every action of religion God expects such a 
 warmth, and a holy fire to go along, that it may 
 be able to enkindle the wood upon the altar, and 
 consume the sacrifice ; but God hates an indif- 
 ferent spirit. Earnestness and vivacity ; quick- 
 ness and delight, perfect choice of the service, 
 and a delight in the prosecution, is all that the 
 spirit of a man can yield towards his religion : 
 the outward work is the effect of the body; but 
 if a man does it heartily and with all his mind, 
 then religion hath wings, and moves upon w^heels 
 of fire. 
 
 However it be very easy to have our thoughts 
 wander, yet it is our indifferency and lukewarm- 
 ness that makes it so natural ; and you may ob- 
 serve it, that so long as the light shines bright, 
 and the fires of devotion and desires flame out, so 
 long the mind of a man stands close to the altar 
 and waits upon the sacrifice ; but as the fires die 
 and desires decay, so the mind steals away and 
 walks abroad, to see the little images of beauty 
 and pleasure which it beholds in the falling stars 
 and little glowworms of the world. The river 
 that runs slow and creeps by the banks, and beg-s 
 leave of every turf to let it pass, is drawn into 
 little hollo wnesses, and spends itself in smaller 
 portions, and dies with diversion ; but when it 
 runs with vigorousness and a full stream, and 
 breaks down every obstacle, making it even as its 
 own brow, it stays not to be tempted with little 
 avocations, and to creep into holes, but runs into 
 the sea through full and useful channels : so is 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 a man's prayer ; if it moves upon the feet of an 
 abated appetite, it wanders into the society of 
 every trifling accident, and stays at the corners of 
 the fancy, and talks with every object it meets, 
 and cannot arrive at heaven ; but when it is car- 
 ried upon the wings of passion and strong desires, 
 a swift motion and a hungry appetite, it passes 
 on through all the intermedial regions of clouds, 
 and stays not till it dwells at the foot of the 
 throne, where Mercy sits, and thence sends holy 
 showers of refreshments.* 
 
 TOLERATION. 
 
 Any zeal is proper for religion, but the zeal of 
 the sword and the zeal of anger ; this is the bit- 
 terness of zeal, and it is a certain temptation to 
 every man against his duty; for if the sword 
 turns preacher, and dictates propositions by em- 
 pire instead of arguments, and engraves them in 
 mens hearts with a poniard, that it shall be 
 death to believe what I innocently and ignorantly 
 am persuaded of, it must needs be unsafe to try 
 the spirits, to try all things, to make inquiry ; 
 and yet, without this hberty, no man can justify 
 himself before God or man, nor confidently say 
 that his religion is best. This is inordination of 
 zeal ; for Christ, by reproving St, Peter drawing 
 his sword even in the cause of Christ, for his 
 sacred and yet injured person, teaches us not to 
 
 * On Lukewarmness and Fear. Serm. xii. part 2. 
 
FROxM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 19 
 
 use the sword, though in the cause of God, or for 
 God himself. 
 
 When Abraham sat at his tent door, according 
 to his custom, waiting* to entertain strangers, he 
 espied an old man, stooping and leaning on his 
 staff, weary with age and travail, coming towards 
 him, who was a hundred years of age. He 
 received him kindly, washed his feet, provided 
 supper, caused him to sit down; but observing 
 that the old man eat, and prayed not, nor begged 
 for a blessing on his meat, he 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 stran- 
 ger 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 not tKou endure him 
 one night?* 
 
 ON HOPE. 
 
 Hope is like the wing of an angel soaring up to 
 heaven, and bears our prayers to the throne of 
 God. 
 
 - * Liberty of Prophesying. 
 
20 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 THE HOPES OF MAN. 
 
 As a worm creepeth with her belly on the 
 ground, with her portion and share of Adam's 
 curse, lifts up its head to partake a little of the 
 blessings of the air, and opens the junctures of 
 her imperfect body, and curls her little rings into 
 knots and combinations, drawing up her tail to a 
 neighbourhood of the head's pleasure and motion ; 
 but still it must return to abide the fate of its own 
 nature, and dwell and sleep upon the dust: so 
 are the hopes of a mortal man ; he opens his eyes 
 and looks upon fine things at distance, and shuts 
 them again with weakness, because they are too 
 glorious to behold ; and the man rejoices because 
 he hopes fine things are staying for him ; but his 
 heart aches, because he knows there are a thou- 
 sand ways to fail and miss of those glories ; and 
 though he hopes, yet he enjoys not; he longs, 
 but he possesses not, and must be content with 
 his portion of dust; and being a worm and no 
 man^ must die down in this portion, before he can 
 receive the end of his hopes, the salvation of his 
 soul in the resurrection of the dead.* 
 
 ON MARRIAGE. 
 
 from sermon, t entitled * the marriage 
 ring/ 
 
 1 . Marriage compared with single life. 
 
 Funeral Sermon on the Archbishop of Armagh, 
 t Sermon xvii. p. 122. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 21 
 
 2. Marriage considered by itself, 
 
 1st. As it relates equally to husband and wife. 
 1. Caution requisite in marrying: — 2. They 
 ought, when newly married, to avoid offend- 
 ing each other: — 3. They should be careful 
 to avoid little vexations : — 4. They should 
 abstain from those things from which they 
 are respectively averse : — 5. They should 
 avoid nice distinctions of mine and thine. 
 
 2dly. As it relates to the husband and wife 
 separately ; and, \st, To the husband, — Na- 
 ture of his power; — His love ; — He should 
 set a good example to his wife ; — His chas- 
 tity should be unspotted. 2dly, To the wife, 
 — Obedience; — Compliance. 
 
 MARRIAGE COMPARED WITH SINGLE LIFE. 
 
 Marriage is a school and exercise of virtue ; 
 and though marriage hath cares, yet the single 
 life hath desires, which are more troublesome and 
 more dangerous, and often end in sin ; while the 
 cares are but instances of duty, and exercises of 
 piety; and therefore if single life hath more pri- 
 vacy of devotion, yet marriage hath more neces- 
 sities and more variety of it, and is an exercise 
 of more graces. 
 
 Marriage is the proper scene of piety and 
 patience, of the duty of parents and the charity 
 of relations ; here kindness is spread abroad, and 
 love is united and made firm as a centre ; mar- 
 riage is the nursery of heaven. The virgin sends 
 
22 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 prayers to God ; but she carries but one soul to 
 him : but the state of marriage fills up the num- 
 bers of the elect, and hath in it the labour of 
 love, and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing 
 of society, and the union of hands and hearts. It 
 hath in it less of beauty, but more of safety than 
 the single life ; it hath more care, but less danger ; 
 it is more merry, and more sad ; is fuller of sor- 
 rows, and fuller of joys : it lies under more bur- 
 dens, but is supported by all the strengths of love 
 and charity, and those burdens are delightful. 
 
 Marriage is the mother of the world, and pre- 
 serves kingdoms, and fills cities, and churches, 
 and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the 
 heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweet- 
 ness ; but sits alone, and is confined and dies in 
 singularity ; but marriage, like the useful bee, 
 builds a house and gathers sweetness from every 
 flower, and labours and unites into societies and 
 republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the 
 world with delicacies, and obeys their king, and 
 keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and pro- 
 motes the interest of mankind, and is that state of 
 good things to which God hath designed the present 
 constitution of the world. 
 
 CAUTION REQUISITE IN MARRYING. 
 
 TiiEY 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 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 23 
 
 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 remembeVs the objection that is in 
 his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys, and 
 the pedlars, 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 moun- 
 tains, 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 un- 
 happy chance of many men, finding many incon- 
 veniences 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. 
 
 As the Indian women enter into folly for the 
 price of an elephant, and think their crime war- 
 
24 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 rantable, so do men and women change their 
 liberty for a rich fortune (like Eriphile the Argive ; 
 she preferred gold before a good man), and show 
 themselves to be less than money, by overvaluing 
 that to all the content and wise felicity of their 
 lives; and when they have counted the money 
 and their sorrows together, how willingly would 
 they buy, with the loss of all that money, modesty, 
 or sweet nature to their relative ! 
 
 As very a fool is he that chooses for beauty 
 principally : — Cui sunt eruditi oculi et stulta 
 mens," (as one said,) whose eyes are witty and 
 their souls sensual : it is an ill band of affections 
 to tie two hearts together by a little thread of red 
 and white : and they can love no longer but until 
 the next ague comes ; and they are fond of each 
 other but at the chance of fancy, or the small- 
 pox, or child-bearing, or care, or time, or any 
 thing that can destroy a pretty flower. 
 
 THEY OUGHT, WHEN NEWLY MARRIED, TO 
 AVOID OFFENDING EACH OTHER. 
 
 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 in- 
 fant 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 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 25 
 
 heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can en- 
 dure 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 ; watch- 
 ful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive 
 and careful, and apt to take alarm at every un- 
 kind word. After the^hearts of the man and the 
 wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual con- 
 fidence and experience, longer than artifice and 
 pretence can last, there are a great many remem- 
 brances, and some things present that dash all 
 little unkindnesses in pieces. 
 
 THEY SHOULD CAREFULLY AVOID LITTLE 
 VEXATIONS. 
 
 Let man and wife be careful to stifle little things, 
 that as fast as they spring they be cut down and 
 trod upon ; for if they be suffered to grow by 
 numbers, they make the spirit peevish, and the 
 society troublesome, and the affections loose and 
 easy by an habitual aversation. Some men are 
 more vexed with a fly than with a wwnd ; and 
 when the gnats disturb our sleep, and the reason 
 is disquieted, but not perfectly awakened, it is 
 often seen that he is fuller of trouble than if, in 
 the day-light of his reason, he were to contest 
 with a potent enemy. In the frequent little acci- 
 dents of a family, a man's reason cannot always 
 be aw^ake ; and, when the discourses are imperfect, 
 and a trifling trouble makes him yet more restless, 
 he is soon betrayed to the violence of passion. 
 
26 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 THEY SHOULD ABSTAIN FROM THOSE THINGS FROM 
 WHICH THEY ARE RESPECTIVELY AVERSE. 
 
 Let them be sure to abstain from all those things 
 which, by experience and observation, they find 
 to be contrary to each other. They that govern 
 elephants never appear before them in white. 
 
 they SHOULD AVOID NICE DISTINCTIONS OF 
 MINE AND THINE. 
 
 Let the husband and wife infinitely avoid a 
 curious distinction of mine and thine ; for this 
 hath caused all the laws, and all the suits, and all 
 the wars in the world. Let them who have but 
 one person, have also but one interest. As the 
 earth, the mother of all creatures here below, 
 sends up all its vapours and proper emissions at 
 the command of the sun, and yet requires them 
 again to refresh her own needs, and they are 
 deposited between them both in the bosom of a 
 cloud, as a common receptacle, that they may cool 
 his flames, and yet descend to make her fruitful : 
 so are the proprieties of a wife to be disposed 
 of by her lord ; and yet all are for her provisions, 
 it being a part of his need to refresh and supply 
 hers ; and it serves the interest of both while it 
 serves the necessities of either. 
 
 These are the duties of them both, which have 
 common regards and equal necessities and obli- 
 gations; and indeed there is scarce any matter 
 of duty but it concerns them both alike, and is 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 27 
 
 only distinguished by names, and hath its variety 
 by circumstances and little accidents ; and what 
 in one is called love, in the other is called re- 
 verence ; and what in the wife is obedience, the 
 same in the man is duty. He provides and she 
 dispenses ; he gives commandments and she rules 
 by them ; he rules her by authority, and she 
 rules him by love ; she ought by all means to 
 please him, and he must by no means displease 
 her. For as the heart is set in the midst of the 
 body, and though it strikes to one side by the 
 prerogative of nature, yet those throbs and con- 
 stant motions are felt on the other side also, and 
 the influence is equal to both : so it is in conjugal 
 duties, some motions are to the one side more than 
 to the other ; but the interest is on both, and the 
 duty is equal in the several instances. 
 
 THE DUTY AND POWER OF THE MAN. 
 
 The next inquiry is more particular, and con- 
 siders the power and duty of the man : * Let 
 every one of you so love his wife even as himself.* 
 Thou art to be a father and a mother to her, and 
 a brother ; and great reason, unless the state of 
 marriage should be no better, than the condition of 
 an orphan. For she that is bound to leave father, 
 and mother, and brother for thee, either is miser- 
 able like a poor fatherless child, or else ought to 
 find all these, and more, in thee. 
 
28 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 HIS LOVE. 
 
 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 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. No man can tell 
 but he that loves his children how many dehcious 
 accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty 
 conversation of those dear pledges : their child- 
 ishness, 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 ;t 
 
 t Gentle Shepherd, Scene 2. 
 I shall ha'e delight 
 To hear their little plaints, and keep them right. 
 
 Can greater pleasure be 
 Than see sic wee tots toolying at your knee ; 
 When a' they ettle at — their greatest wish, 
 Is to be made of, and obtain a kiss 1 
 
 See also Burns^ Cotter^ Saturday Night, where the chil- 
 dren are so beautifully described : — 
 
 At length his lonely cot appears in view. 
 
 Beneath the shelter of an aged tree ; 
 Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher thro' 
 
 To meet their dad, wi' flichterin noise an' glee. 
 His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonnily, 
 
 His clean hearth-stane, his thriftie wifies smile, 
 The lisping infant prattling on his knee. 
 
 Does a' his weary carking cares beguile. 
 An' makes him quite forget his labour an' his toil. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 29 
 
 but he that loves not his wife and children feeds 
 a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows ; 
 and blessing itself cannot make him happy: so 
 that all the commandments of God enjoining* a 
 man to love his wife, are nothing but so many 
 necessities and capacities of joy. She that is 
 loved is safe, and he that loves is joyful. 
 
 HE SHOULD SET A GOOD EXAMPLE TO HIS WIFE. 
 
 Ulysses was a prudent man, and a wary counsel- 
 lor, sober and severe ; and he efformed his wife into 
 such imagery as he desired ; and she was chaste as 
 the snows upon the mountains : diligent as the 
 fatal sisters ; always busy and always faithful, she 
 had a lazy tongue, and a busy hand. 
 
 HIS CHASTITY SHOULD BE UNSPOTTED. 
 
 Above all the instances of love, let him preserve 
 towards her an inviolable faith and an unspotted 
 chastity, for this is the ' Marriage Ring it ties 
 two hearts by an eternal band ; it is like the che- 
 rubim's flaming sword, set for the guard of para- 
 dise ; for he that passes into that garden, now 
 that it is immured by Christ and the church, en- 
 ters into the shades of death. 
 
 Now, in this grace, it is fit that the w^isdom 
 and severity of the man should hold forth a pure 
 taper, that his wife may, by seeing the beauties 
 and transparency of that crystal, dress her mind 
 and her body by the light of so pure reflections. 
 
30 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 These are the little lines of a mans duty, which, 
 like threads of light from the body of the sun, do 
 clearly describe all the regions of his proper ob- 
 ligations. Now, concerning the woman s duty, 
 although it consists in doing whatsoever her hus- 
 band commands, and so receives measures from 
 the rules of his government ; yet there are also 
 some lines of life depicted upon her hands, by 
 which she may read and know how to proportion, 
 out her duty to her husband : — 
 
 OBEDIENCE. 
 
 The wife can be no ways happy unless she be 
 governed by a prudent lord, whose commands are 
 sober counsels, w^hose authority is paternal, whose 
 orders are provisions, and whose sentences are 
 charity. 
 
 COMPLIANCE. 
 
 To partake secretly, and in her heart, of all his 
 joys and sorrows, to believe him comely and fair, 
 though the sun hath drawn a cypress over him, 
 (for as marriages are not to be contracted by the 
 hands and eyes, but with reason and the heart ; 
 so are these judgments to be made by the mind, 
 not by the sight :) and diamonds cannot make 
 the woman virtuous, nor him to value her who 
 sees her put them off then, when chastity and 
 modesty are her brightest ornaments. Indeed 
 the outward ornament is fit to take fools; but 
 they are not worth the taking. But she that hath 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 31 
 
 a wise husband, must entice him to an eternal 
 dearness, by the veil of modesty, and the grave 
 robes of chastity, the ornament of meekness, and 
 the jewels of faith and charity ; her brightness 
 must be purity, and she must shine round about 
 with sweetnesses and friendship, and she shall be 
 pleasant while she lives, and desired when she 
 dies. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Remember the days of darkness, for they are 
 many ; the joys of the bridal chamber are quickly 
 past, and the remaining portion of the state is a 
 dull progress, without variety of joys, but not 
 without the change of sorrows ; but that portion 
 that shall enter into the grave must be eternal. 
 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 show it and take it away again; it will 
 make the wine bitter, but wholesome. 
 
 ON CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 Jesus entered into the world with all the circum- 
 stances of poverty* He had a star to illustrate 
 his birth ; but a stable for his bedchamber, and a 
 manger for his cradle. The angels sang hymns 
 when he was born; but he was cold, and cried, 
 uneasy and unprovided. 
 
 All that Christ came for was, or was mingled 
 
32 SELECTIONS 
 
 with sufferings : for all those little joys which 
 God sent, either to recreate his person, or to 
 illustrate his office, were abated or attended with 
 afflictions ; God being more careful to establish 
 in him the covenant of sufferings, than to re- 
 fresh his sorrows. Presently after the angels had 
 finished their hallelujahs, he was forced to fly to 
 save his life, and the air became full of shrieks of 
 the desolate mothers of Bethlehem for their dying- 
 babes. God had no sooner made him illustrious 
 with a voice from heaven, and the descent of the 
 Holy Ghost upon him in the waters of baptism, 
 but he was delivered over to be tempted and 
 assaulted by the devil in the wilderness. His 
 transfiguration was a bright ray of glory; but 
 then also he entered into a cloud, and was told a 
 sad story what he was to suffer at Jerusalem. 
 And upon Palm Sunday, when he rode trium- 
 phantly into Jerusalem, and was adorned with 
 the acclamations of a king and a god, he wet the 
 palms with his tears, sweeter than the drops of 
 manna, or the little pearls of heaven that de- 
 scended upon mount Hermon ; weeping in the 
 midst of this triumph over obstinate, perishing, 
 and malicious Jerusalem. 
 
 They that had overcome the world could not 
 strangle Christianity. But so have I seen the sun 
 with a litte ray of distant light challenge all the 
 power of darkness, and without violence and noise 
 climbing up the hill, hath made night so to retire, 
 that its memory was lost in the joys and spright- 
 fulness of the morning : and Christianity without 
 
I'ROxM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 33 
 
 violence or armies, without resistance and self- 
 preservation, without strength or human eloquence, 
 without challenging of privileges or fighting against 
 tyranny, without alteration of government and 
 scandal of princes, with its humility and meekness, 
 with toleration and patience, with obedience and 
 charity, with praying and dying, did insensibly 
 turn the world into christian, and persecution into 
 victory.]: 
 
 I have often seen young and unskilful persons 
 
 i The following Extract in from the 9th of Sherlock's Dis- 
 courses, Go to your Natural Religion : lay before her Ma- 
 homet and his disciples arrayed in armour and in blood, 
 riding in triumph over the spoils of thousands and tens of 
 thousands who fell by his victorious swoid : shew her the 
 cities which he set in flames, the countries which he ravaged 
 and destroyed, and the miserable distress of all the inhabi- 
 tants of the earth. When she has viewed him in this scene, 
 carry her into his retirements : shew her the prophet's cham- 
 ber, his concubines and wives ; let her see his adultery, and 
 hear him allege revelation and his divine commission to jus- 
 tify his lust and his oppression. When she is tired with this 
 prospect, then shew her the blessed Jesus, humble and meek, 
 doing good to all the sons of men, patiently instructing both 
 the ignorant and the perverse : let her see him in his most 
 retired privacies : let her follow him to the mount, and hear 
 his devotions and supplications to God : carry her to his 
 table to view his poor fare, and hear his heavenly discourse : 
 let her see him injured, but not provoked : let her attend him 
 to the tribunal, and consider the patience with which he en- 
 dured the scoffs and reproaches of his enemies : lead her to 
 the cross, and let her view him in the agony of death, and 
 hear his last prayer for his persecutors : Father, forgive 
 them, for they know not what they do I" 
 
 When Natural Eeligion has viewed both, ask. Which is 
 the prophet of God ? 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 sitting" in a little boat, when every little wave 
 sporting about the sides of the vessel, and every 
 motion and dancing of the barge seemed a dan- 
 ger, and made them cling fast upon their fellows ; 
 and yet all the while they -were as safe as if they 
 sate under a tree, while a gentle wind shaked the 
 leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade. 
 And the unskilful, unexperienced christian shrieks 
 out when ever his vessel shakes, thinking it always 
 a danger, that the watery pavement is not stable 
 and resident like a rock ; and yet all his danger 
 is in himself, none at all from without ; for he is 
 indeed moving upon the waters, but fastened to a 
 rock ; faith is his foundation, and hope is his 
 anchor, and death is his arbour, and Christ is his 
 pilot, and heaven is his country ; and all the evils 
 of poverty, or affronts of tribunals and evil judges, 
 of fears and sadder apprehensions, are but like 
 the loud wind blowing from the right point, they 
 make a noise and drive faster to the harbour : 
 and if we do not leave the ship, and leap into 
 ,the sea; quit the interest of religion, and run to 
 the securities of the world ; cut our cables, and 
 dissolve our hopes ; grow impatient, and hug a 
 wave, and die in its embraces ; we are as safe at 
 sea, safer in the storm which God sends us, than in 
 a calm when we are befriended with the world. f 
 
 Presently it came to pass that men were no 
 longer ashamed of the cross, but it was worn upon 
 
 t The Failh and Patience of the Saints ; Serm. ix. and xL 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 35 
 
 breasts, printed in the air,! drawn upon fore- 
 heads, carried upon banners, put upon crowns 
 
 X Bacon, in his New Atlantis, says : — 
 About twenty years after the ascension of our Saviour it 
 '* came to pass, that there was seen by the people of Ren- 
 
 fusa, a city upon the eastern coast of our island, within 
 
 night, the night was cloudy and calm, as it might be some 
 **mile into the sea, a great pillar of light; not sharp, but in 
 
 form of a column or cylinder rising from the sea, a great 
 
 way up towards heaven : and on the top of it was seen a 
 "large cross of light, more bright and resplendent than the 
 
 body of the pillar. Upon which so strange a spectacle, 
 *'the people of the city gathered apace together upon the 
 " sands to wonder ; and so after put themselves into a num- 
 
 ber of small boats, to go nearer to this marvellous sight. 
 " But when the boats were come within about sixty yards of 
 
 the pillar, they found themselves all bound, and could go 
 •* no further, yet so as they might move to go about, but 
 
 might not approach nearer : so as the boats stood all as in 
 
 a theatre, beholding this hght as a heavenly sign. It so 
 " fell out, that there was in one of the boats one of the wise 
 " men of the society of Solomon's house, which house or 
 *• college, my good brethren, is the very eye of this kingdom : 
 "who having 'awhile attentively and devoutly viewed and 
 " contemplated this pillar and cross, fell down upon his face ; 
 " and then raised himself upon his knees, and lifting up his 
 " hands to heaven, made his prayers. 
 
 " When he had made his prayer, he presently found the 
 "boat he was in moveable and unbound; whereas all the 
 " rest remained still fast ; and taking that for an assurance 
 " of leave to approach, he caused the boat to be softly and 
 "with silence rowed tovi^ards the pillar. But ere he came 
 " near it, the pillar and cross of light brake up, and cast itself 
 " abroad, as it were into a firmament of many stars; which 
 "also vanished soon after ; and there was nothing left to be 
 " seen but a small ark or chest of cedar, dry. and not wet at 
 " all with water, though it swam. And in the fore-end of it, 
 " which was towards him, grew a small green branch af 
 " palm." 
 
36 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 imperial — presently it came to pass that the reli- 
 gion of the despised Jesus did infinitely prevail : 
 a religion that tau2:ht men to be meek and hum- 
 ble, apt to receive injuries^ but unapt to do any; 
 a religion that gave countenance to the poor and 
 pitiful, in a time when riches were adored, and 
 ambition and pleasure had possessed the heart of 
 all mankind : a religion that would change the 
 face of things, and the hearts of men, and break 
 vile habits into gentleness and counsel. That 
 such a religion, in such a time, by the sermons 
 and conduct of fishermen, men of mean breeding 
 and illiberal arts, should so speedily triumph over 
 the philosophy of the world, and the arguments 
 of the subtle, and the sermons of the eloquent ; 
 the power of princes and the interests of states, 
 the inclinations of nature and the blindness of 
 zeal, the force of custom and the solicitation of 
 passions, the pleasures of sin and the busy arts 
 of the devil ; that is against wit and power, su- 
 perstition and wilfulness, fame and money, nature 
 and empire, which are all the causes in this world 
 that can make a thing' impossible ; this, this is to 
 be ascribed to the power of God, and is the 
 great demonstration of the resurrection of Jesus. 
 Every thing was an argument for it, and im- 
 proved it : no objection could hinder it, no ene- 
 mies destroy it, whatsoever was for them, it 
 made the religion to increase ; whatsoever was 
 against them, made it to increase ; sun-shine and 
 storms, fair weather or foul, it was all one as to 
 the event of things : for they were instruments in 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 37 
 
 the hands of God, who could make what himself 
 should choose to be the product of any cause ; so 
 that if the christians had peace, they went abroad 
 and brought in converts ; if they had no peace, 
 but persecution, the converts came in to them. 
 In prosperity they allured and enticed the world 
 by the beauty of holiness ; in affliction and trouble 
 they amazed all men with the splendour of their 
 innocence and the glories of their patience ; and 
 quickly it was that the world became disciple to 
 the g'lorious Nazarene, and men could no longer 
 doubt of the resurrection of Jesus, when it became 
 so demonstrated by the certainty of them that saw 
 it, and the courage of them that died for it, and 
 the multitude of them that believed it ; who by 
 their sermons and their actions, by their public 
 offices and discourses, by festivals and eucharists, 
 by arguments of experience and sense, by reason 
 and religion, by persuading rational men, and 
 establishing believing christians, by their living 
 in the obedience of Jesus, and dying for the tes- 
 timony of Jesus, have greatly advanced his king- 
 dom, and his powder, and his glory, into which he 
 entered after his resurrection from the dead.f 
 
 OF TRUE AND OF MOCK RELIGION. 
 
 I HAVE seen a female religion that wholly dwelt 
 upon the face and tongue ; that like a wanton and 
 
 t Sermon preached at the Funeral of the Lord Primate. 
 
38 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 an undressed tree spends all its juice in suckers 
 and irregular branches, in leaves and gum, and 
 after all such goodly oiitsides you should never 
 eat an apple, or be delighted with the beauties, or 
 the perfumes of a hopeful blossom. But the 
 religion of this excellent lady was of another con- 
 stitution ; it took root downward in humility, and 
 brought forth fruit upward in the substantial graces 
 of a christian, in charity and justice, in chastity 
 and modesty, in fair friendships and sweetness 
 of society : she had not very much of the forms 
 and outsides of godliness, but she was hugely 
 careful for the power of it, for the moral, essential, 
 and useful parts : such which would make her be, 
 not seem to be, religious. 
 
 In all her religion, and in all her actions of 
 relation towards God, she had a strange evenness 
 and untroubled passage, sliding toward her ocean 
 of God and of infinity with a certain and silent 
 motion. So have I seen a river deep and smooth 
 passing wnth a still foot and a sober face, and 
 paying to the Fiscus, the great exchequer of the 
 sea, the prince of all the w^atery bodies, a tribute 
 large and full : and hard by it a little brook skip- 
 ping and making a noise upon its unequal and 
 neighbour bottom ; and after all its talking and 
 bragged motion, it payed to its common audit no 
 more than the revenues of a little cloud, or a con- 
 temptible vessel : so have I sometimes compared 
 the issues of her religion to the solemnities and 
 famed outsides of another's piety. It dwelt upon 
 her spirit, and was incorporated with the peri- 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 •39 
 
 odical work of every day : she did not believe that 
 religion was intended to minister to fame and re- 
 putation, but to pardon of sins, to the pleasure of 
 God, and the salvation of souls. For religion is 
 like the breath of heaven ; if it goes abroad into 
 the open air, it scatters and dissolves. 
 
 THE DANGER OF PROSPERITY. 
 
 As long as the waters of persecutions are upon 
 the earth, so long we dwell in the ark ; but where 
 the land is dry, the dove itself will be tempted to 
 a wandering course of life, and never to return to 
 the house of her safety. f 
 
 Many are not able to suffer and endure pros- 
 perity ; it is like the light of the sun to a weak 
 eye, — glorious indeed in itself, but not propor- 
 tioned to such an instrument.! 
 
 In the tomb of Terentia certain lamps burned 
 under ground many ages together ; but as soon 
 as ever they were brought into the air, and saw 
 a bigger light, they went out, never to be re- 
 enkindled. So long as we are in the retirements 
 of sorrow, of want, of fear, of sickness, or of any 
 sad accident, we are burning and shining lamps : 
 
 f The Faith and Patience of the Saints ; Serm. x. 272. 
 
 ;}: The Mercy of the Divine Judgments ; Serm. xii. 290. 
 We are as safe at sea, safer in the storm which God 
 sends us, than in a calm when we are befriended with the 
 w6r]d." 
 
40 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 but when God comes with his avo^r], with his 
 forbearance, and lifts us up from the gates of death, 
 and carries us abroad into the open air, that we 
 converse with prosperity and temptation, we go 
 out in darkness ; and we cannot be preserved in 
 heat and light, but by still dwelling in the regions 
 of sorrow, f 
 
 If God suffers men to go on in sins, and 
 punishes them not, it is not a mercy, it is not a 
 forbearance ; it is a hardening them, a consigning 
 them to ruin and reprobation : and themselves 
 give the best argument to prove it ; for they con- 
 tinue in their sin, they multiply their iniquity, and 
 every day grow more enemy to God ; and that is 
 no mercy that increases their hostility and enmity 
 with God. A prosperous iniquity is the most un- 
 prosperous condition in the whole world. When 
 he slew them, they sought him and turned them 
 early, and enquired after God ; but as long as 
 they prevailed upon their enemies, they forgat 
 that God was their strength, and the high God 
 was their redeemer. It was well observed by the 
 Persian ambassador of old ; when he was telling 
 the king a sad story of the overthrow of all his 
 army by the Athenians, he adds this of his own ; 
 that the day before the fight, the young Persian 
 gallants, being confident they should destroy their 
 enemies, were drinking drunk, and railing at the 
 timorousness and fears of religion, and against all 
 their gods, saying, there were no such things. 
 
 t The Mercy of the Divine Judgments, Serm. xii. 292. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 41 
 
 and that all things came by chance and industry, 
 nothing by the providence of the supreme power. 
 But the next day, when they had fought unpros- 
 porously, and, flying from their enemies, who were 
 eager in their pursuit, they came to the river Stry- 
 mon, which w^as so frozen that their boats could 
 not launch, and yet it began to thaw, so that they 
 feared the ice would not bear them ; then you 
 should see the bold gallants, that the day before 
 said there was no God, most timorously and su- 
 perstitiously fall upon their faces, and beg of 
 God that the river Strymon might bear them over 
 from their enemies. What wisdom and philoso- 
 phy, and perpetual experience, and revelation, 
 and promises, and blessings cannot do, a mighty 
 fear can ; it can allay the confidences of bold lust 
 and imperious sin, and soften our spirit into the 
 lovvness of a child, our revenge into charity of 
 prayers, our impudence into the blushings of a 
 chidden girl ; and therefore God hath taken a 
 course proportionable : for he is not so unmerci- 
 fully merciful as to give milk to an infirm lust, 
 and hatch the egg to the bigness of a cockatrice. 
 And therefore observe how it is that God's mercy 
 prevails over all his works ; it is even then when 
 nothing can be discerned but his judgments, for 
 as when a famine had been in Israel in the days 
 of Ahab for three years and a half, when the 
 angry prophet Elijah met the king, and presently 
 a great wind arose, and the dust blew into the 
 eyes of them that walked abroad, and the face of 
 the heavens was black and all tempest, yet then 
 
42 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 the prophet was most gentle, and God began to 
 forgive, and the heavens were more beautiful than 
 when the sun puts on the brightest ornaments of a 
 bridegroom, going from his chambers of the east. 
 So it is in the economy of the divine mercy : when 
 God makes our faces black, and the winds blow 
 so loud till the cordage cracks, and our gay for- 
 tunes split, and our houses are dressed with 
 cypress and hew, and the mourners go about the 
 streets, this is nothing but the pompa miseri- 
 cordice, this is the funeral of our sins, dressed in- 
 deed with emblems of mourning, and proclaimed 
 with sad accents of death ; but the sight is refresh- 
 ing, as the beauties of the field which God had 
 blessed, and the sounds are healthful as the noise 
 of a physician. f 
 
 The caresses of a pleasant fortune are apt to 
 swell into extravagances of spirit, and burst into 
 the dissolution of manners ; and unmixt 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. 
 
 t The Mercy of the Divine Judgments ; Serm. xii. pages 
 286, 288, 295. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 43 
 
 ON PASSION AND REASON. 
 
 Truth enters into the heart of man when it is 
 empty, and clean, and still; but when the mind 
 is shaken with passion as with a storm, you can 
 never hear the voice of the charmer though he 
 charm ever so wisely : and you will very hardly 
 sheathe a sword when it is held by a loose and a 
 paralytic arm.f 
 
 THE PROSTITUTE. 
 
 They pay their souls down for the bread they 
 eat, buying this day's meal with the price of the 
 last night's sin.J 
 
 ON ANGER. 
 
 In contentions be always passive, never active 
 upon the defensive, not the assaulting part ; and 
 then also give a gentle answer, receiving the fu- 
 ries and indiscretions of the other like a stone 
 into a bed of moss and soft compliance and you 
 
 t Sermon preached to the University of Dublin. 
 X Holy Dying, ch. i. 
 
 § When Sir Matthew Hale dismissed the jury because he 
 was convinced that it had been illegally selected, to favour 
 the Protector, Cromwell was highly displeased with him, 
 and at his return from the circuit, he told him in anger he 
 was not fit to be a judge, to which all the answer he made 
 was, that it was very true." 
 
 Abou Hanifah fut le chef des Hanifites. Ce Socrate 
 
44 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 shall find it sit down quietly : whereas anger and 
 violence make the contention loud and long, and 
 injurious to both the parties. 
 
 Consider that anger is a professed enemy to 
 counsel; it is a direct storm, in which no man 
 can be heard to speak or call from without: for 
 if you counsel gently, you are despised ; if you 
 urge it and be vehement, you provoke it more. 
 Be careful therefore to lay up before-hand a great 
 stock of reason and prudent consideration, that 
 like a besieged town, you may be provided for, 
 and be defensible from within, since you are not 
 likely to be relieved from without. Anger is not 
 to be suppressed but by something that is as in- 
 ward as itself and more habitual. To which 
 purpose add, that of all passions it endeavours 
 most to make reason useless : that it is a uni- 
 versal poison, of an infinite object ; for no man 
 was ever so amorous as to love a toad, none so 
 envious as to repine at the condition of the mise- 
 rable, no man so timorous as to fear a dead bee ; 
 but anger is troubled at every thing, and every 
 man, and every accident, and therefore unless it 
 be suppressed, it will make a man's condition 
 restless. If it proceeds from a great cause, it 
 
 Musulman donnoit a sa secte des lecons et des exemples. 
 Un brutal lui ayant donne un sou^et ce Mahometan repon- 
 dit ces paroles dignes d' un Chretien : " si j' etois vindicatif, 
 je vous rendrois outrage pour outrage ; si j' etois un d61ateur 
 je vous accuserois devant le Calife : mais j' aime mieux de- 
 mander a Dieu, qu'au jour du jugement il me fasse entrer au 
 ciel avec vous." 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 45 
 
 turns to fury ; if from a small cause, it is peevish- 
 ness ; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous. 
 It makes a man's body monstrous, deformed, and 
 contemptible, the voice horrid, the eyes cruel, the 
 face pale or fiery, the gait fierce, the speech 
 clamorous and loud. It is neither manly nor 
 ingenuous. It proceeds from softness of spirit 
 and pusillanimity ; which makes that women are 
 more angry than men, sick persons more than 
 healthful, old men more than young, unprosperous 
 and calamitous people than the blessed and for- 
 tunate.* It is a passion fitter for flies and in- 
 sects than for persons professing nobleness and 
 bounty. It is troublesome not only to those that 
 suffer it, but to them that behold it ; there being 
 no greater incivility of entertainment than for 
 the cook's fault, or the negligence of the servants, 
 to be cruel, or outrageous, or unpleasant in the 
 presence of the guests. It makes marriage to be 
 a necessary and unavoidable trouble ; friendships, 
 and societies, and familiarities to be intolerable. 
 It multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes 
 the levities of wine to run into madness. It 
 makes innocent jesting to be the beginning of 
 tragedies. It turns friendship into hatred : it 
 makes a man lose himself and his reason and his 
 argument in disputation. It turns the desires of 
 knowledge into an itch of wrangling. It adds in- 
 solency to power. It turns justice into cruelty, 
 and judgment into oppression. It changes dis- 
 
 * See Bacon's Essay on Anger. 
 
46 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 cipline into tediousness and hatred of liberal insti- 
 tution. It makes a prosperous man to be envied, 
 and the unfortunate to be unpitied. It is a confluence 
 of all the irregular passions : there is in it envy 
 and sorrow, fear and scorn, pride and prejudice, 
 rashness and inconsideration, rejoicing in evil and 
 a desire to inflict it, self-love, impatience, and 
 curiosity. And lastly, though it be very trouble- 
 some to others, yet it is most troublesome to him 
 that hath it. 
 
 Only observe that such an anger alone is cri- 
 minal which is against charity to myself or my 
 neighbour ; but anger against sin i^ a holy zeal, 
 and an effect of love to God and my brother, for 
 whose interest I am passionate, like a concerned 
 person : and, if I take care that my anger makes 
 no reflection of scorn or cruelty upon the offender, 
 or of pride and violence, or transportation to my- 
 self, anger becomes charity and duty.* And when 
 one commended Charilaus, the king of Sparta, for 
 a gentle, a good, and a meek prince, his colleague 
 said well, How can he be good, who is not an 
 enemy even to vicious persons V'f 
 
 ON SICKNESS. 
 
 At the first address and presence of sickness 
 stand still and arrest thy spirit, that it may 
 without amazement or affrio^ht consider that this 
 
 * Hooker's Anger is said to have been like a vial of clear 
 water, vi^hich, v^^hen shook, beads at the top, but instantly, 
 subsides, without any soil or sediment of uncharitableness, 
 
 t Holy Living, chap. iv. sect. 8. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 47 
 
 was that thou looked st for, and wert always cer- 
 tain should happen, and that now thou art to 
 enter into the actions of a new religion, the ag-ony 
 of a strange constitution: but at no hand suffer 
 thy spirits to be dispersed with fear, or wildness 
 of thought, but stay their looseness and .dispersion 
 by a serious consideration of the present and fu- 
 ture employment. For so doth the Libyan lion,* 
 spying the fierce huntsman, he first beats himself 
 with the strokes of his tail, and curls up his spirits, 
 making them strong with, union and recollection ; 
 till, being struck with a Mauritanian spear, he 
 rushes forth into his defence and noblest conten- 
 tion ; and either scapes into the secrets of his own 
 dwelling, or else dies the bravest of the forest. 
 
 In sickness the soul begins to dress herself for 
 immortality. And first, she unties the strings of 
 vanity that made her upper garment cleave to the 
 world and sit uneasy. First she puts off the light 
 and fantastic summer-robe of lust and wanton ap- 
 petite. 
 
 Next to this, the soul by the help of sickness 
 knocks off. the fetters of pride, and vainer com- 
 placencies. Then she drawls the curtains, and 
 stops the light from coming in, and takes the 
 pictures down, those fantastic images of self-love, 
 and gay remembrances of vain opinion, and po- 
 pular noises. Then the spirit stoops into the 
 sobrieties of humble thoughts, and feels corrup- 
 tion chiding the forwardness of fancy and allay- 
 ing the vapours of conceit and factious opinions. 
 
 * See Theocritus, Idyll. 25, line 230» 
 
48 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 . Next to these, as the soul is still undressing, 
 she shakes off the roughness of her great and 
 little angers and animosities, and receives the oil 
 of mercies and smooth forgiveness, fair interpre- 
 tations and gentle answers, designs of reconcile- 
 ment and christian atonement, in their places^ 
 
 The temptations of this state, such I mean 
 which are proper to it, are little and inconsidera- 
 ble ; the man is apt to chide a servant too bitterly, 
 and to be discontented with his nurse, or not sa- 
 tisfied with his physician, and he rests uneasily, 
 and (poor man!) nothing can please him: and 
 indeed these little undecencies must be cured and 
 stopped, lest they run into an inconvenience. But 
 sickness is in this particular a little image of the 
 state of blessed souls, or of Adam's early morn- 
 ing in paradise, free from the troubles of lust, 
 and violences of anger, and the intricacies of 
 ambition, or the restlessness of covetousness. For 
 though a man may carry all these along with him 
 into his sickness, yet there he will not find them ; 
 and in despite of all his own malice, his soul shall 
 find some rest from labouring in the galleys and 
 baser captivity of sin.* 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF SIN. 
 
 I HAVE seen the little purls of a spring sweat 
 through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the 
 stubborn pavetnent, till it hath made it fit for the 
 
 * Holy Dying, ch. iv. sect. 1. and ch. iii. sect. 6. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 49 
 
 impression of a child's foot ; and it was despised, 
 like the descending pearls of a misty morning-, 
 till it had opened its way and made a stream large 
 enoug-h to carry away the ruins of the undermined 
 strand, and to invade the neighbouring 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 be- 
 ginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not 
 in it so much philosophy as to think any thing 
 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 past 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 fantastic apprehensions of the present. 
 When the Israelites fancied the sapidness and relish 
 of the flesh-pots, 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, 
 
 E 
 
50 SELECTIONS 
 
 Admoaitaeque tument gustato sanguine fauces : 
 Fervet, et a trepido vix abstinet ira magistro. 
 
 He scarce abstains from eating those hands that 
 brought him discipline and food. So is the na- 
 ture of a man made tame and gentle by the grace 
 of God, and reduced to reason, and kept in awe 
 by religion and laws, and by an awful virtue is 
 taught to forget those alluring and sottish relishes 
 of sin; but if he diverts from his path, and 
 snatches handfuls from the w^anton vineyards, and 
 remembers the lasciviousness of his unwholesome 
 food that pleased his childish palate ; then he grows 
 sick again, and hungry after unwholesome diet, 
 and longs for the apples of Sodom. 
 
 The Pannonian bears, when they have clasped 
 a dart in the region of their liver, wheel them- 
 selves upon the wound, and with anger and ma- 
 licious 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.* 
 
 * Of Growth in Sin j Serm. xvii. part 2. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 51 
 
 THE GOLDEN CALF. 
 
 Formidable is the state of an intemperate 
 man, whose sin beg-ins with sensuality and g-rows 
 up in folly and weak discourses, and is fed by 
 violence, and applauded by fools and parasites, 
 full bellies and empty heads, servants and flat- 
 tei-ers, whose hands are full of flesh and blood, 
 and their hearts empty of pity and natural com- 
 passion ; where religion cannot inhabit, and the 
 love of God must needs be a stranger ; whose talk 
 is Joud and trifling, injurious and impertinent, and 
 whose employment is the same with the work of 
 the sheep or the calf, always to eat.f 
 
 THE VIRTUOUS MIND. 
 
 If I shall describe a living man, a man that hath 
 that life that distinguishes him from a fowl or a 
 bird, that which gives him a capacity next to 
 angels ; we shall find that even a good man lives 
 not long, because it is long before he is born to 
 this life, and longer yet before he hath a man's 
 growth. HeJ that can look upon death, and 
 see its face with the same countenance with which 
 he hears its story ; that can endure all the labours 
 
 t Sermons xv. and xvi. 
 
 t Seneca, De Vita Beata, cap. 20. 
 
52 SELECTIONS 
 
 of his life with his soul supporting* his body ; that 
 can equally despise riches when he hath them, 
 and when he hath them not ; that is not sadder if 
 they lie in his neighbour's trunks, nor more brag 
 if they shine round about his own walls ; he that 
 is neither moved with good fortune coming to 
 him, nor going from him ; that can look upon 
 another man's lands evenly and pleasedly as if 
 they were his own, and yet look upon his own and 
 use them too, just as if they were another man's ; 
 that neither spends his goods prodigally, and like 
 a fool, nor yet keeps them avariciously and like 
 a wretch ; that weighs not benefits by weight and 
 number, but by the mind and circumstances of 
 him that gives them ; that never thinks his cha- 
 rity expensive if a worthy person be the receiver ; 
 he that does nothing for opinion's sake, but every 
 thing for conscience, being as curious of his 
 thoughts as of his actings in markets and the- 
 atres, and is as much in awe of himself as of a 
 whole assembly : he that knows God looks on, 
 and contrives his secret affairs as in the presence 
 of God and his holy angels ; that eats and drinks 
 because he needs it, not that he may serve a lust 
 or load his belly ; he that is bountiful and cheer- 
 ful to his friends, and charitable and apt to forgive 
 his enemies ; that loves his country and obeys his 
 prince, and desires and endeavours nothing more 
 than that they may do honour to God this per- 
 son may reckon his life to be the life of a man, 
 and compute his months, not by the course of the 
 3un, but the zodiac and circle of his virtues : be- 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 53 
 
 cause these are such things which fools and chil- 
 dren, and bird, and beasts, cannot have : these 
 are therefore the actions of life, because they are 
 the seeds of immortality. That day in which we 
 have done some excellent thing, we may as truly 
 reckon to be added to our life, as were the fifteen 
 years to the days of Hezekiah.* 
 
 * Holy Dying, ch. 1. 
 
 I add the following extract from the Epistles of Seneca : — 
 *' 1 have applied myself to liberal studies, though both the 
 poverty of my condition, and my own reason, might rather 
 have put me upon the making of my fortune. I have given 
 proof that all minds are capable of goodness ; and I have 
 illustrated the obscurity of my family by the eminency of my 
 virtue. I have preserved my faith in all extremities, and I 
 have ventured my life for it. I have never spoken one word 
 contrary to my conscience, and 1 have been more solicitous 
 for my friend, than for myself : I never made any base sub- 
 mission to any man ; and 1 have never done any thing un- 
 worthy of a resolute and of an honest man. My mind is 
 raised so much above all dangers, that I have mastered all 
 hazards ; and I bless myself in the providence which gave me 
 that experiment of my virtue : for it was not fit, methought, 
 that so great glory should come cheap. Nay, I did not so 
 much as deliberate, whether good faith should suffer for me, 
 or I for it. I stood my ground without, laying violent hands 
 upon myself to escape the rage of the powerful ; though 
 under Caligula I saw cruelties, to such a degree, that to be 
 killed outright was accounted a mercy. And yet I persisted 
 in my honesty, to shew that I was ready to do more than die 
 for it. My mind was never corrupted with gifts ; and when 
 the humour of avarice was at the height, 1 never laid my hand 
 upon any unlawful gain ; I have been temperate in my diet ; 
 modest in my discourse ; courteous and affable to my infe- 
 riors and have ever paid a respect, and reverence to my 
 betters." 
 
54 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 HUMAN RESOLUTIONS.* 
 
 I HAVE seen a fair structure beg-un with art and 
 care, and raised to half its stature, and then it 
 stood still by the misfortune or negligence of the 
 owner ; and the rain descended and dwelt in its 
 joints, and supplanted the contexture of its pillars, 
 and, having stood awhile, like the antiquated tem- 
 ple of a deceased oracle, it fell into a hasty age, 
 and sunk upon its own knees, and so descended 
 into ruin : so is the imperfect, unfinished spirit of 
 man ; it lays the foundation of a holy resolution, 
 and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecu- 
 tion ! it raises up the walls, sacraments, and prayers, 
 reading, and holy ordinances ; and holy actions 
 begin with a slow motion, and the building stays, 
 and the spirit is w^eary, and the soul is naked and 
 exposed to temptation, and in the days of storm 
 takes in every thing that can do it mischief ; and it 
 is faint and sick, listless and tired, and it stands 
 till its own weight wearies the foundation, and then 
 declines to death and sad disorder. 
 
 PLEASURES OF UNDERSTANDING. f 
 
 It is not the eye that sees the beauties of the heaven, 
 nor the ear that hears the sweetness of music, or 
 
 * Sermon on Lukewarmness and Zeal; Serm. xiii. part 2. 
 t See note (I.) at the end. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 55 
 
 the glad tidings of a prosperous accident, but the 
 soul that perceives all the relishes of sensual and 
 intellectual perfections ; and the more noble and 
 excellent the soul is, the greater and more savory 
 are its perceptions. And if a child beholds the 
 rich ermine, or the diamonds of a starry night, or 
 the order of the world, or hears the discourses of 
 an apostle, he makes no reflex acts upon himself. 
 
 It is a great disreputation to the understanding 
 of a man, to be so cozened and deceived, as to 
 choose money before a moral virtue ; to please 
 that which is common to him and beasts, rather 
 than that part which is a communication of the 
 divine nature ; to see him run after a bubble which 
 himself hath made, and the sun hath particoloured, 
 and to despise a treasure which is offered to him to 
 call him off from pursuing that emptiness and no- 
 thing. But so does every vicious person, feeds 
 upon husks, and loaths manna.* 
 
 ON THE PRESENCE OF GOD. 
 
 God is every where present by his power. He 
 rolls the orbs of heaven with his hand, he fixes 
 the earth with his foot, he guides all the creatures 
 with his eye, and refreshes them with his influence : 
 he makes the powers of hell to shake with his 
 
 * Holy Living, chap. i. sec. 3. 
 
56 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 terrors, and binds the devils with his word, and 
 throws them out with his command, and sends the 
 angels on embassies with his decrees : he hardens 
 the joints of infants, and confirms the bones when 
 they are fashioned beneath secretly in the earth. 
 He it is that assists at the numerous productions of 
 fishes, and there is not one hollowness in the bot- 
 tom of the sea, but he shews himself to be lord of 
 it, by sustaining there the creatures that come to 
 dwell in it : and in the wildei'ness the bittern and 
 the stork, the dragon and the satyr, the unicorn and 
 the elk, live upon his provisions, and revere his 
 power, and feel the force of his almightiness. 
 
 Let every thing you see represent to your spirit 
 the presence, the excellency, and the power of 
 God, and let your conversation with the creatures 
 lead you unto the Creator, for so shall your actions 
 be done more frequently with an actual eye to 
 God*s presence, by your often seeing him in the 
 glass of the creation. In the face of the sun you 
 may see God's beauty ; in the fire you may feel 
 his heat warming ; in the water his gentleness to 
 refresh you : it is the dew of heaven that makes your 
 field give you bread.* 
 
 * Holy Living, chap. i. § 3. See Psalra. — AVIiither shall 
 I go from thy presence, &c. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 57 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF SINNERS. 
 
 So have we seen a poor condemned criminal, the 
 weight of whose sorrows sitting heavily upon his 
 soul, hath benumbed him into a deep sleep till 
 he hath forgotten his groans, and laid aside his 
 deep sighings ; but on a sudden comes the mes- 
 senger of death, and unbinds the poppy garland, 
 scatters the heavy cloud that encircled his mise- 
 rable head, and makes him return to acts of life, 
 that he may quickly descend into death, and be 
 no more. So is every sinner that lies down in 
 shame, and makes his grave with the wicked ; he 
 shall indeed rise again, and be called upon by 
 the voice of the archangel ; but then he shall 
 descend into sorrows greater than the reason and 
 the patience of a man, weeping and shrieking 
 louder than the groans of the miserable children 
 in the valley of Hinnom.f 
 
 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 
 2 Cor. V. 10. 
 
 For we must all appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ, 
 that every one may receive the things done in his body, 
 according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." 
 
 Virtue and vice are so essentially distinguished, 
 and the distinction is so necessary to be observed 
 
 t Sermon preached at the funeral of the Lord Primate. 
 
58 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 in order to the well-being of men in private 
 and in societies, that to divide them in them- 
 selves, and to separate them by sufficient notices, 
 and to distinguish them by rewards, hath been 
 designed by all laws, by the sayings of wise men, 
 by the order of things, by their proportions to 
 good or evil ; and the expectations of men have 
 been framed accordingly : that virtue may have a 
 proper seat in the will and in the affections, and 
 may become amiable by its own excellency and its 
 apparent blessing ; and that vice may be as natural 
 an enemy to a man as a wolf to the lamb, and as 
 darkness to light ; destructive of its being, and a 
 contradiction of its nature. But it is not enough 
 that all the world hath armed itself against vice, 
 and, by all that is wise and sober among men, 
 hath taken the part of virtue adorning it with 
 glorious appellatives, encouraging it by rewards, 
 entertaining it with sweetness, and commanding 
 it by edicts, fortifying it with defensatives, and 
 twining with it in all artificial compliances : all this 
 is short of man's necessity ; for this will in all 
 modest men secure their actions in theatres and 
 high ways, in markets and churches, before the 
 eye of judges, and in the society of witnesses : but 
 the actions of closets and chambers, the designs 
 and thoughts of men, their discourses in dark 
 places, and the actions of retirements and of the 
 night are left indifferent to virtue or to vice ; and 
 of these, as man can take no cognizance, so he 
 can make no coercitive ; and therefore above one- 
 half of human actions is by the laws of man left 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 59 
 
 unregarded and unprovided for. And besides this, 
 there are some men who are bigger than laws, and 
 some are bigger than judges, and some judges 
 have lessened themselves by fear and cowardice, 
 by bribery and flattery, by iniquity and compliance : 
 and where they have not, yet they have notices 
 but of few causes : and there are some sins so 
 popular and universal, that to punish them is either 
 impossible or intolerable ; and to question such 
 would betray the weakness of the public rods and 
 axes, and represent the sinner to be stronger than 
 the power that is appointed to be his bridle. And 
 after all this we find sinners so prosperous that 
 they escape, so potent that they fear not ; and sin 
 is made safe when it grows great — 
 
 Facere omnia saeve 
 
 Non impune licet, nisi dum facis 
 
 and innocence is oppressed, and the poor cries, 
 and he hath no helper ; and he is oppressed, and 
 he wants a patron. And for these and many other 
 concurrent causes, if you reckon all the causes 
 that come before all the judicatories of the world, 
 though the litigious are too many, and the matters 
 of instance are intricate and numerous, yet the per- 
 sonal and criminal are so few, that of two thousand 
 sins that cry aloud to God for vengeance, scarce 
 two are noted by the public eye, and chastised by 
 the hand of justice. It must follow from hence, 
 that it is but reasonable for the interest of virtue, 
 and the necessities of the w^orld, that the private 
 should be judged, and virtue should be tied upon 
 
60 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 the spirit, and the poor should be relieved, and the 
 oppressed should appeal, and the noise of widows I 
 should be heard, and the saints should stand 
 upright, and the cause that was ill judged should 
 be judged over again, and tyrants should be called 
 to account, and our thoughts should be examined, j 
 and our secret actions viewed on all sides, and ; 
 the infinite number of sins which escape here \ 
 should not escape finally. And therefore God j 
 hath so ordained it, that there shall be a day of 
 doom, wherein all that are let alone by men shall 
 be questioned by God, and every word, and every 
 action shall receive its just recompense of reward. 
 " For we must all appear before the judgment- 
 seat of Christ, that every one may receive the 
 things done in his body, according to that he hath 
 done, whether it be good or bad." 
 
 At the day of judgment every man's fear shall 
 be increased by his neighbour's shrieks, and the 
 amazement that all the world shall be in, shall 
 unite as the sparks of a raging furnace into a 
 globe of fire, and roll upon its own principle, and 
 increase by direct appearances, and intolerable 
 reflections. He that stands in a churchyard in 
 the time of a great plague, and hears the passing- 
 bell perpetually telling the sad stories of death, 
 and sees crowds of infected bodies pressing to 
 their graves, and others sick and tremulous, and 
 death dressed up in all the images of sorrow 
 round about him, is not supported in his spirit 
 by the variety of his sorrow : and at doomsday, 
 when the terrors are universal, besides that it is 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 61 
 
 in itself so much greater, because it can affright 
 the whole world, it is also made greater by com- 
 munication and a sorrowful influence ; grief being 
 then strongly infectious, when there is no variety 
 of state but an entire kingdom of fear ; and amaze- 
 ment is the king of all our passions, and all the 
 world its subjects ; and that shriek must needs be 
 terrible, when millions of men and women at the 
 same instant shall fearfully cry out, and the noise 
 shall mingle with the trumpet of the archangel, 
 with the thunders of the dying and groaning hea- 
 vens, and the crack of the dissolving world, when 
 the whole fabric of nature shall shake into dissolu- 
 tion and eternal ashes. But this general conside- 
 ration may be heightened with four or five circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Consider what an infinite multitude of angels and 
 men and women shall then appear. 
 
 In this great multitude we shall meet all those, 
 who by their example and their holy precepts have, 
 like tapers, enkindled with a beam of the sun of 
 righteousness, enlightened us, and taught us to 
 walk in the paths of justice. 
 
 There shall appear the men of Capernaum, and 
 the queen of the south, and the men of Berea, 
 and the first-fruits of the christian church, and the 
 holy martyrs, and shall proclaim to all the world, 
 that it was not impossible to do the work of grace 
 in the midst of all our weaknesses, and accidental 
 disadvantages: and that the obedience of faith, and 
 the labour of love, and the contentions of chastity, 
 and the severities of temperance and self-denial, 
 
62 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 are not such insuperable mountains, but that an 
 honest and sober person may perform them in ac- 
 ceptable degrees if he have but a ready ear, and a 
 willing mind, and an honest heart. 
 
 There men shall meet the partners of their sins, 
 and them that drank the round when they crowned 
 their heads with folly and forgetfulness, and their 
 cups with wine and noises. There shall ye see 
 that poor perishing* soul, whom thou didst tempt 
 to adultery and wantonness, to drunkenness or per- 
 jury, to rebellion or an evil interest, by power or 
 craft, by witty discourses or deep dissembling, by 
 scandal or a snare, by evil example or pernicious 
 counsel, by malice or un wariness. 
 
 That soul that cries to those rocks to cover her, 
 if it had not been for thy perpetual temptations, 
 might have followed the lamb in a white robe ; 
 and that poor man, that is clothed with shame and 
 flames of fire, would have shined in glory, but that 
 thou didst force him to be partner of the baseness. 
 
 The majesty of the judge, and the terrors of the 
 judgment shall be spoken aloud by the immediate 
 forerunning accidents, which shall be so great vio- 
 lences to the old constitutions of nature, that it 
 shall break her very bones, and disorder her till she 
 be destroyed. 
 
 The sea (they say) shall rise fifteen cubits above 
 the highest mountains, and thence descend into 
 hollowness and a prodigious drought ; and when 
 they are reduced again to their usual proportions, 
 then all the beasts and creeping things, the mon- 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 sters and the usual inhabitants of the sea shall be 
 gathered together, and make fearful noises to dis- 
 tract mankind : the birds shall mourn and change 
 their songs into thrones and sad accents : rivers 
 of fire shall rise from the east to west, and the 
 stars shall be rent into threads of light, and scatter 
 like the beards of comets; then shall be fearful 
 earthquakes, and the rocks shall rend in pieces, 
 the trees shall distil blood, and the mountains and 
 fairest structures shall return into their primitive 
 dust ; the wild beasts shall leave their dens, and 
 come into the companies of men, so that you shall 
 hardly tell how to call them, herds of men, or con- 
 gregations of beasts ; then shall the graves open, 
 and give up their dead, and those which are ahve 
 in nature and dead in fear, shall be forced from 
 the rocks whither they went to hide them, and 
 from caverns of the earth, where they would fain 
 have been concealed; because their retirements 
 are dismantled, and their rocks are broken into 
 wider ruptures, and admit a strange light into their 
 secret bowels ; and the men being forced abroad 
 into the theatre of mighty horrors, shall run up 
 and down distracted, and at their wits end. 
 
 " The earth shall tremble, and the powers of 
 the heavens shall be shaken, the sun shall be 
 turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, 
 the rocks shall rend, and the elements shall melt 
 with fervent heat. The heavens shall be rolled up 
 like a parchment, the earth shall be burned with 
 fire, the hills shall be like wax, for there shall go 
 
64 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 a fire before him, and a mighty tempest shall be 
 stirred round about him."* 
 
 ON FRIENDSHIP AND GENERAL 
 BENEVOLENCE. 
 
 In a Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and Measures of 
 Friendship, with rules of conducting it : in a Letter to the 
 most ingenious and excellent Mrs. Catharine Philips, in- 
 quiring, * how far a dear and perfect friendship is authorized 
 by the principles of Christianity.' 
 
 The word friend is of a large signification ; and 
 means all relations and societies, and whatsoever 
 is not enemy. But by friendships, I suppose you 
 mean the greatest love, and the greatest useful- 
 ness, and the most open communication, and the 
 noblest sufferings, and the most exemplar faithful- 
 ness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest coun- 
 sel, and the greatest union of minds, of which brave 
 men and women are capable. 
 
 Christian charity is friendship to all the world ; 
 and when friendships were the noblest things in 
 the wwld, charity was little, like the sun drawn 
 in at a chink, or his beams drawn into the centre 
 of a burning-glass ; but christian charity is friend- 
 ship expanded like the face of the sun when it 
 mounts above the eastern hills : and I was strangely 
 
 * From Sermon entitled Christ's Advent to Judgment 
 "which is the first in his Collection of Sermons. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 65 
 
 pleased when I saw something of this in Cicero ; 
 for I have been so pushed at by herds and flocks 
 of people that follow any body that whistles to 
 them, or drives them to pasture, that I am grown 
 afraid of any truth that seems chargeable with 
 singularity; but therefore I say, glad I was when 
 I saw^ Lselius in Cicero discourse thus : ^' Amicitia 
 ex infinitate generis humani quam conciliavit ipsa 
 natura, contracta res est, et adducta in angustum; 
 ut omnis charitas, aut inter duos, aut inter paucos 
 jungeretur." Nature hath made friendships and 
 societies, relations and endearments; and by some- 
 thins: or other we relate to all the world : there is 
 enough in every man that is willing to make him 
 become our friend ; but when men contract friend- 
 ships, they inclose the commons ; and what nature 
 intended should be every man's, we make proper 
 to two or three. Friendship is like rivers, and the 
 strand of seas, and the air, — common to all the 
 world ; but tyrants, and evil customs, wars and want 
 of love have made them proper and peculiar. But 
 when Christianity came to renew our nature, and 
 to restore our laws, and to increase her privileges, 
 and to make her aptness to become religion, then 
 it w^as declared that our friendships were to be as 
 universal as our conversation ; that is, actual to all 
 with whom we converse, and potentially extended 
 unto those with whom we did not. For he who 
 was to treat his enemies with forgiveness and 
 prayers, and love and beneficence, was indeed^ to 
 have no enemies, and to have all friends. 
 
 So that to your question, ' how far a dear and 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 perfect friendship is authorised by the principles 
 of Christianity,' the answer is ready and easy : It 
 is warranted to extend to all mankind ; and the 
 more we love, the better we are ; and the greater 
 our friendships are, the dearer we are to God. 
 Let them be as dear, and let them be as perfect, 
 and let them be as many as you can ; there is no 
 danger in it; only where the restraint begins, 
 there begins our imperfection. It is not ill that 
 you entertain brave friendships and worthy socie- 
 ties : it were well if you could love and if you 
 could benefit all mankind ; for I conceive that is 
 the sum of all friendship. 
 
 I confess this is not to be expected of us in 
 this world; but, as all our graces here are but 
 imperfect, that is, at the best they are but ten- 
 dencies to glory, so our friendships are imperfect 
 too, and but beginnings of a celestial friendship by 
 which we shall love every one as much as they can 
 be loved. But then so we must here in our pro- 
 portion ; and indeed that is it that can make the dif- 
 ference; we must be friends to all, that is, apt to 
 do good, loving them really, and doing to them all 
 the benefits which we can, and which they are ca- 
 pable of. The friendship is equal to all the world, 
 and of itself hath no difference; but is differenced 
 only by accidents, and by the capacity or incapacity 
 of them that receive it. 
 
 For thus the sun is the eye of the world ; and 
 he is indifferent to the Negro, or the cold Russian, 
 to them that dwell under the line, and them that 
 stand near the tropics, the scalded Indian, or the 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 67 
 
 poor boy that shakes at the foot of the Riphean hills. 
 But the fluxures of the heaven and the earth, the 
 conveniency of abode, and the approaches to the 
 north or south respectively chang-e the emanations 
 of his beams ; not that they do not pass always from 
 him, but that they are not equally received below, 
 but by periods and changes, by little inlets and re- 
 flections, they receive what they can. And some 
 have only a dark day and a long' night from- him, 
 snows and white cattle, a miserable life, and a per- 
 petual harvest of catarrhs and consumptions, apo- 
 plexies and dead palsies. But some have splendid 
 fires and aromatick spices, rich wines and well di- 
 gested fruits, great wit and great courage ; because 
 they dwell in his eye, and look in his face, and are 
 the courtiers of the sun, and wait upon him in his 
 chambers of the east. Just so is it in friendships ; 
 some are worthy, and some are necessary ; some 
 dwell hard by and are fitted for converse ; nature 
 joins some to us, and religion combines us with 
 others ; society and accidents, parity of fortune, 
 and equal dispositions do actuate our friendships : 
 which of themselves and in their prime disposition 
 are prepared for all mankind according as any one 
 can receive them. We see this best exemplified by- 
 two instances and expressions of friendship and 
 charity : viz. alms and prayers ; every one that 
 needs relief is equally the object of our charity ; but 
 though to all mankind in equal needs we ought to 
 be alike in charity, yet we signify this severally and 
 by limits and distinct measures : the poor man that 
 is near me, he whom I meet, he whom I love, he 
 
68 
 
 SELECTION'S 
 
 whom I fancy, he who did me benefit, he who 
 relates to my family, he rather than another ; 
 because my expressions, being finite and narrow, 
 and cannot extend to all in equal significations, 
 must be appropriate to those whose circumstances 
 best fit me : and yet even to all I give my alms, 
 to all the world that needs them ; I pray for all 
 mankind, I am grieved at every sad story I hear ; 
 I am troubled when I hear of a pretty bride mur- 
 dered in her bridechamber by an ambitious and 
 enraged rival ; I shed a tear when I am told that 
 a brave king w^as misunderstood, then slandered, 
 then imprisoned, and then put to death by evil 
 men : and I can never read the story of the Pari- 
 sian massacre, or the Sicilian vespers, but my blood 
 curdles, and I am disordered by two or three affec- 
 tions. A good man is a friend to all the world ; 
 and he is not truly charitable that does not wish 
 well, and do good to all mankind in what he can. 
 But though we must pray for all men, yet we say 
 special litanies for brave kings and lioly prelates, 
 and the wise guides of souls, for our brethren and 
 relations, our wives and children. 
 
 The effect of this consideration is, that the 
 universal friendship of which I speak, must be 
 limited, because we are so. In those things where 
 we stand next to immensity and infinity, as in good 
 wishes and prayers, and a readiness to benefit all 
 mankind, in these our friendships must not be limi- 
 ted ; but in other things which pass under our 
 hand and eye, our voices and our material ex- 
 changes ; our hands can reach no further but to 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 69 
 
 our arms' end, and our voices can but sound till the 
 next air be quiet, and therefore they can have in- 
 tercourse but within the sphere of their own acti- 
 vity ; our needs and our conversations are served by 
 a few, and they cannot reach at all ; where they 
 can, they must ; but where it is impossible, it can- 
 not be necessary.]: It must therefore follow, that 
 our friendships to mankind may admit variety as 
 does our conversation ; and as by nature we are 
 made sociable to all, so we are friendly: but as all 
 cannot actually be of our society, so neither can all 
 be admitted to a special, actual friendship. O.f 
 some intercourses all men are capable, but not 
 of all ; men can pray for one another, and ab- 
 stain from doing' injuries to all the world, and be 
 desirous to do all mankind good, and love all 
 men : now this friendship we must pay to all, 
 because we can ; but if we can do no more to 
 all, we must shew our readiness to do more good 
 to all, by actually doing more good to all them to 
 whom we can. 
 
 A good man is the best friend, and therefore 
 soonest to be chosen, longer to be retained ; and 
 indeed never to be parted with, unless he cease 
 to be that for which he was chosen. 
 
 For the good man is a profitable, useful person, 
 
 t The evils arising from attempts to act, without limita- 
 tion, upon a system of general benevolence, are admirably 
 explained in the Tempest, act 2. scene 1- Had I planta- 
 tions of this Isle ; " — and in Joseph Andrews, book iii. c. 3. 
 
 This way of life," &c. 
 
70 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and that is the band of an effective friendship. For 
 I do not think that friendships are metaphysical no- 
 things, created for contemplation, or that men or 
 women should stare upon each other's faces, and 
 make dialogues of news and prettinesses, and look 
 babies in one another's eyes. Friendship is the 
 allay of our sorrows, the ease of our passions, the 
 discharge of our oppressions, the sanctuary to our 
 calamities, the counsellor of our doubts, the clarity 
 of our minds, the emission of our thoughts, the ex- 
 ercise and improvement of what we meditate. And 
 although I love my friend because he is worthy, yet 
 he is not worthy if he can do me no good : I do 
 not speak of accidental hinderances and misfortunes 
 by which the bravest man may become unable to 
 help his child ; but of the natural and artificial 
 capacities of the man. He only is fit to be chosen 
 for a friend, who can do those offices for which 
 friendship is excellent. For (mistake not) no man 
 can be loved for himself ; our perfections in this 
 world cannot reach so high ; it is well if we would 
 love God at that rate ; and I very much fear that 
 if God did us no good we might admire his beauties, 
 but we should have but a small proportion of love 
 towards him ; all his other greatnesses are objects 
 of fear and wonder, it is his goodness that makes 
 him lovely. And so it is in friendships. He only 
 is fit to be chosen for a friend who can give counsel, 
 or defend my cause, or guide me right, or relieve 
 my need, or can and will, when I need it, do me 
 good : only this I add, into the heaps of doing 
 good, I will reckon loving me, for it is a pleasure 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 71 
 
 to be beloved ; X but when his love signifies 
 nothing but kissing my cheek, or talking kindly, 
 and can go no further, it is a prostitution of the 
 bravery of friendship to spend it upon imperti- 
 nent people who are (it may be) loads to their 
 families, but can never ease my loads ; but my 
 friend is a worthy person when he can become to 
 me instead of God, a guide or a support, an eye 
 or a hand, a staff or a rule. 
 
 Can any wise or good man be angry if I say, I 
 chose this man to be my friend, because he is 
 able to give me counsel, to restrain my wander- 
 ings, to comfort me in my sorrows ; he is plea- 
 sant to me in private, and useful in public ; he 
 will make my joys double, and divide my grief be- 
 tween himself and me ? For what else should I 
 choose ? For being a fool, and useless ? for a 
 pretty face or a smooth chin ? I confess it is pos- 
 sible to be a friend to one that is ignorant, and 
 pitiable, handsome and good for nothing, that eats 
 well, and drinks deep, but he cannot be a friend to 
 
 X Sweet is the tear that from some Howard's eye 
 Drops on the cheek of One, he lifts from Earth ; 
 And He, that works me good with unmovM face, 
 Does it but half: he chills me while he aids, 
 My Benefactor, not my Brother Man ! 
 Yet even this, this cold Beneficence 
 Seizes my Praise, when I reflect on those, 
 The Sluggard Pity's vision-weaving Tribe ! 
 Who sigh for Wretchedness, yet shun the Wretched, 
 Nursing in some delicious solitude 
 Their slothful loves and dainty Sympathies ! 
 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
72 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 me ; and I love him with a fondness or a pity, btit 
 it cannot be a noble friendship. 
 
 But if you yet enquire, further, whether fancy 
 may be an ingredient in your choice ? I answer, 
 that fancy may minister to this as to all other 
 actions in which there is a liberty and variety. 
 And we shall find that there may be peculiarities 
 and little partialities, a friendship improperly so 
 called, entering' upon accounts of an innocent pas- 
 sion and a pleased fancy ; even our blessed Saviour 
 himself loved St. John and Lazarus by a special 
 love, which was signified by special treatments; 
 and of the young man that spake well and wisely 
 to Christ it is affirmed, Jesus loved him, that is, 
 he fancied the man, and his soul had a certain 
 cognation and similitude of temper and inclination. 
 For in all things where there is a latitude, every 
 faculty will endeavour to be pleased, and some- 
 times the meanest persons in a house have a fes- 
 tival : even sympathies and natural inclinations to 
 some persons, and a conformity of humours, and 
 proportionable loves, and the beauty of the face, 
 and a witty answer may first strike the flint and 
 kindle a spark, which if it falls upon tender and 
 compliant natures may grow into a flame ; but this 
 will never be maintained at the rate of friendship, 
 unless it be fed by pure materials, by worthinesses 
 which arei the food of friendship : where these are 
 not, men and w^omen may be pleased with one ano- 
 ther's company, and lie under the same roof, and 
 make themselves companions of equal prosperities, 
 and humour their friend ; but if you call this 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 73 
 
 friendship, you give a sacred name to humour or 
 fancy ; for there is a Platonic friendship, as well 
 as a Platonic love ; but they being the images of 
 more noble bodies, are but like tinsel dressings, 
 which will shew bravely by candle light, and do 
 excellently in a mask, but are not fit for conver- 
 sation and the material intercourses of our life. 
 These are the prettinesses of prosperity and good- 
 natured wit ; but when we speak of friendship, 
 which is the best thing in the world (for it is 
 love and beneficence, it is charity that is fitted for 
 society), we cannot suppose a brave pile should 
 be built up with nothing ; and they that build 
 castles in the air, and look upon friendship as upon 
 a fine romance, a thing that pleases the fancy, but 
 is good for nothing else, will do well when they 
 are asleep, or when they are come to Elysium ; 
 and for aught I know in the mean time may be as 
 much in love with Mandana in the Grand Cyrus, 
 as with the Infanta of Spain, or any of the most 
 perfect beauties and real excellencies of the world : 
 and by dreaming of perfect and abstracted friend- 
 ships, make them so immaterial that they perish 
 in the handling and become good for nothing. 
 
 But I know not whither I was going; I did 
 only mean to say that because friendship is that 
 by which the world is most blessed and receives 
 most good, it ought to be chosen amongst the 
 worthiest persons, that is, amongst those that can 
 do greatest benefit to each other. And though 
 in equal worthiness I may choose by my eye, or 
 ear, that is, into the consideration of the essen- 
 
74 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 tial, I may take in also the accidental and ex- 
 trinsic worthinesses ; yet I oug-ht to give every 
 one their just value : when the internal beauties 
 are equal, these shall help to weigh down the 
 scale, and I will love a worthy friend that can 
 delight me as well as profit me, rather than him 
 who cannot delight me at all, and profit me no 
 more : but yet I will not weigh the gayest flowers, 
 or the wings of butterflies, against wheat; but 
 when I am to choose wheat, I may take that 
 which looks the brightest. I had rather see 
 thyme and roses, marjorum and July flowers that 
 are fair and sweet and medicinal, than the pret- 
 tiest tulips that are good for nothing : and my 
 sheep and kine are better servants than race- 
 horses and greyhounds. And I shall rather fur- 
 nish my study with Plutarch and Cicero, with 
 Livy and Polybius, than with Cassandra and 
 Ibrahim Bassa ; and if I do give an hour to these 
 for divertisement or pleasure, yet I will dwell 
 with them that can instruct me, and make me 
 wise and eloquent, severe and useful to myself 
 and others. I end this with the saying of Laelius 
 in Cicero: Amicitia non debet consequi utilita- 
 tem, sed amicitiam utilitas.'' When I choose my 
 friend, I will not stay till I have received a kind- 
 ness : but I will choose such a one that can do me 
 many if I need them : but I mean such kindnesses 
 which make me wiser, and which make me better : 
 that is, I will, when I choose my friend, choose 
 him that is the bravest, the worthiest, and the 
 most excellent person ; and then your first question 
 
FROMT BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 75 
 
 is soon answered. To love such a person, and to 
 contract such friendships, is just so authorised by 
 the principles of Christianity, as it is warranted to 
 love wisdom and virtue, goodness and beneficence, 
 and all the impresses of God upon the spirits of 
 brave men. 
 
 He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend, 
 burns the golden thread that ties their hearts to- 
 gether. 
 
 If friendship be a charity in society, and is not 
 for contemplation and noise, but for material com- 
 forts and noble treatments and usages, this is no 
 perad venture, but that if I buy land I may eat the 
 fruits, and if I take a house I may dwell in it ; and 
 if I love a worthy person, I may please myself in 
 his society : and in this there is no exception, unless 
 the friendship be between persons of a different sex ; 
 for then not only the interest of their religion and 
 the care of their honour, but the worthiness of their 
 friendship requires that their intercourse be pru- 
 dent, and free from suspicion and reproach. And 
 if a friend is obliged to bear a calamity, so he se- 
 cure the honour of his friend, it will concern him to 
 conduct his intercourse in the lines of a virtuous 
 prudence, so that he shall rather lose much of 
 his own comfort than she anything of her honour ; 
 and in this case the noises of people are so to be 
 regarded that, next to innocence, they are the 
 principal. But when by caution and prudence, 
 and severe conduct, a friend hath done all that he 
 or she can to secure fame and honourable reports, 
 after this their noises are to be despised : they 
 
76 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 must not fright us from our friendships, nor from 
 her fairest intercourses.* 
 
 ON FEAR. 
 
 Fear is the duty we owe to God, as being the God 
 of power and justice, the great judge of heaven 
 and earth, the avenger of the cause of widows, the 
 patron of the poor, and the advocate of the op- 
 pressed, a mighty God and terrible. Fear is the 
 great bridle of intemperance, the modesty of the 
 
 * Polemical Discourses. 
 
 I venture to subjoin a few remarks upon, 1st, the advantages 
 of friendship, — 2dly, the duties. 
 
 As to the advantages^ see Bacon's admirable Essay on 
 Friendship, where they are stated to be, — Peace in the affec- 
 tions, — Counsel in judgment, — and Assistance when necessary ; 
 the heart; the head; the hand. 
 
 Upon peace in the affections, or the disburthening of grief 
 and the communication of joy, see the 2nd vol. of South's 
 Sermons, sermon 2, on John, chap. xv. ver. 15, in page 71, he 
 says — " The third privilege of friendship is a sympathy in 
 joy and grief. When a man shall have diffused his life, his 
 self, and his whole concernments so far, that he can weep 
 his sorrows with another's eyes! when he has another heart 
 besides his own, both to share, and to support his griefs, 
 and when, if his joys overflow, he can treasure up the over- 
 plus and redundancy of them in another breast ; so that he 
 ean (as it were) shake off the solitude of a single nature, by 
 dwelling in two bodies at once, and living by another's 
 breath ; this surely is the height, the very spirit and perfec- 
 tion of all human felicities. It is a true and happy obser- 
 vation of that great philosopher the Lord Verulam, that this 
 is the benefit of communication of our minds to others, that 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 77 
 
 spirit, and the restraint of gaieties and dissolutions ; 
 it is the girdle to the soul, and the handmaid to 
 repentance , the arrest of sin ; it preserves our ap- 
 prehensions of the Divine Majesty and hinders our 
 single actions from combining to sinful habits ; it 
 is the mother of consideration, and the nurse of 
 sober counsels. Fear is the guard of a man in 
 the days of prosperity, and it stands upon the 
 watch-towers and spies the approaching danger, 
 and gives warning to them that laugh loud, and 
 feast in the chambers of rejoicing, where a man 
 cannot consider by reason of the noises of wine, 
 
 sorrows by being communicated grow less, and joys greater. 
 And indeed, sorrow, like a stream, loses itself in many chan- 
 nels ; and joy, like a ray of the sun, reflects with a greater 
 ardour, and quickness, when it rebounds upon a man from the 
 breast of his friend." 
 
 Upon counsel in judgment, see also the same sermon, in 
 which he says 3 The fifth advantage of friendship is counsel 
 and advice. A man will sometimes need not only another 
 heart, but also another head besides his own. In solitude 
 there is not only discomfort, but weakness also. And that 
 saying of the wise man, Eccles. iv. 10. Woe to him that is 
 alone, is verified upon none so much, as upon the friendless 
 person : when a man shall be perplexed with knots and pro- 
 blems of business and contrary affairs ; where the determina- 
 tion is dubious, and both parts of the contrariety seem equally 
 weighty, so that which way soever the choice determines, a 
 man is sure to venture a great concern. How happy then is 
 it to fetch in aid from another person, whose judgment may 
 be greater than my own, and whose concernment is sure not 
 to be less ! There are some passages of a man s affairs that 
 would quite break a single understanding. So many intrica- 
 cies, so many labyrinths are there in them, that the succours 
 of reason fail, the very force and spirit of it being lost in an 
 
78 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and jest, and music ; and if Prudence takes it by 
 the hand and leads it on to duty, it is a state of 
 gTace,and a universal instrument to infant-religion, 
 and the only security of the less perfect persons ; 
 and in all senses is that homage we owe to God, 
 w^ho sends often to demand it, even then when he 
 speaks in thunder, or smites by a plague, or 
 awakens us by threatenings, or discomposes our 
 easiness by sad thoughts, and tender eyes and 
 fearful hearts, and trembling considerations. 
 
 Let the grounds of our actions be noble, begin- 
 ning upon reason, proceeding with prudence, mea- 
 
 actual intention scattered upon several clashing objects at 
 once ; in which case the interposal of a friend is like the sup- 
 ply of a fresh party to a besieged yielding city." In the con- 
 clusion of Bacon's Essay, he says: " After these two noble 
 fruits of friendship, (peace in the affections, and support of 
 the judgment), followeth the last fruit, which is like the pome- 
 granate, full of many kernels ; I mean, aid and bearing a 
 part in all actions and occasions. How many things are 
 there which a man cannot with any face, or comeliness, say 
 or do himself"? A man can scarce allege his own merits with 
 modesty,'' &c. 
 
 As to the duties offriendshipf some of them are 
 
 Secrecy, which is the chastity of friendship ; — 
 
 Patience, with infirmity ; — ** It endures all things." 
 
 Suspension of judgment ; — " It hopes all things." 
 
 Protection of children after his death. 
 
 As to patience ;" — " Do not think thou didst contract al- 
 liance with an angel, when thou didst take thy friend into thy 
 bosom ; he may be weak as well as thou art, and thou mayst 
 need pardon as well as he." 
 
 Supension of judgment : see South's sermon, where he says : 
 ' It is an imitation of the charities of heaven, which when 
 the creature lies prostrate in the weakness of sleep, and wea- 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 79 
 
 3ured by the common lines of men, and confident 
 upon the expectation of a usual Providence. Let 
 us proceed from causes to effects, from natural 
 means to ordinary events, and helieve felicity not 
 to be a chance but a choice ; and evil to be the 
 daughter of sin and the divine anger, not oi for- 
 tune and fancy. Let us fear God when we have 
 made him angry : and not be afraid of him when 
 we heartily and laboriously do our duty ; and then 
 fear shall be a duty, and a rare instrument of 
 many : in all other cases, it is superstition or folly, 
 it is sin or punishment, the ivy of religion, and 
 
 riness, spreads the covering night, and darkness over it, to 
 conceal it in that condition ; but as soon as our spirits are re- 
 freshed, and nature returns to its morning* vigour, God then 
 bids the sun rise, and the day shine upon us, both to advance 
 and to shew that activity. It is the ennobling office of the un- 
 derstanding, to correct the fallacious and mistaking reports of 
 sense, and to assure us that the staff in the water is straight, 
 though our eye would tell us it is crooked. So it is the excel- 
 lency of friendship to rectify, or at least to qualify the malig- 
 nity of those surmises, that would misrepresent a friend, and 
 traduce him in our thoughts. Am I told that my friend has 
 done me an injury, or that he has committed any undecent 
 action 1 why the first debt that I both owe to his friendship, 
 and that he may challenge from mine, is rather to question 
 the truth of the report, than presently to believe my friend un- 
 worthy. A friend will be sure to act the part of an advocate, 
 before he will assume that of a judge." 
 
 The last and most sacred duty of friendship is after we 
 have stood upon the planks round his grave. When my friend 
 is dead, I will not turn into his grave and be stifled with his 
 earth : but I will mourn for him, and perform his will, and 
 take care of his relatives, and do for him as if he were alive ; 
 and thus it is that friendships never die." 
 
80 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 the misery of an honest and a weak heart ; and it 
 is to be cured only by reason and good company, 
 a wise guide and a plain rule, a cheerful spirit and 
 a contented mind, by joy in God according to the 
 commandments, that is, a rejoicing evermore. 
 
 The illusions of a weak piety or an unskilful 
 confident soul, fancy to see mountains of difficulty, 
 but touch them and they seem like clouds riding 
 upon the wings of the w^ind, and put on shapes as 
 we please to dream. He that denies to give alms 
 for the fear of being poor, or to entertain a dis- 
 ciple for fear of being suspected of the party : he 
 that takes part of the intemperance because he 
 dares not displease the company, or in any sense 
 fears the fears of the world and not the fear of 
 God ; this man enters into his portion of fears 
 betimes, but it will not be finished to eternal ages. 
 To fear the censures of men when God is your 
 judge ; to fear their evil when God is your de- 
 fence ; to fear death when he is the entrance to 
 life and felicity, is unreasonable and pernicious. 
 But if you will turn your passion into duty, and 
 joy and security, fear to offend God, to enter 
 voluntarily into temptation : fear the alluring face 
 of lust, and the smooth entertainments of intem- 
 perance : fear the anger of God when you have 
 deserved it; and when you have recovered from 
 the snare, then infinitely fear to return into that 
 condition, in which whosoever dwells is the heir of 
 fear and eternal sorrow.* 
 
 * Sermon on Godly Fear; Serm. ix. part 3. 
 
TROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 81 
 
 IMPATIENCE. 
 
 I HAVE seen the rays of the sun or moon dash 
 upon a brazen vessel, whose Hps kissed the face 
 of those waters that lodged within its bosom ; but 
 being turned back and sent off, with its smooth 
 pretences or rougher waftings, it wandered about 
 the room and beat upon the roof, and still doubled 
 its heat and motion. So is sickness and a sorrow 
 entertained by an unquiet and discontented man. 
 
 Nothing is more unreasonable than to entangle 
 our spirits in wildness and amazement, like a par- 
 tridge fluttering in a net, which she breaks not, 
 though she breaks her wings. f 
 
 ON CONTENT. 
 
 Since all the evil in the world consists in the 
 disagreeing between the object and the appetite, 
 as when a man hath what he desires not, or de- 
 sires what he hath not, or desires amiss, he that 
 composes his spirit to the present accident hath 
 variety of instances for his virtue, but none to 
 trouble him, because his desires enlarge not be- 
 yond his present fortune : and a wise man is placed 
 in the variety of chances, like the nave or centre 
 of a wheel in the midst of all the circumvolutions 
 and changes of posture, without violence or change, 
 save that it turns gently in compliance with its 
 
 t Holy Dying, chap. 3. 
 G 
 
82 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 changed parts, and is indifferent which part is up^ 
 and which is down ; for there is some virtue or 
 other to be exercised whatever happens — either 
 patience or thanksgiving, love or fear, moderation 
 or humility, charity or contentedness. 
 
 It conduces much to our content, if we pass by 
 those things which happen to our trouble, and con- 
 sider that which is pleasing and prosperous ; that 
 by the representation of the better, the worse may 
 be blotted out. 
 
 It may be thou art entered into the cloud which 
 wdll bring a gentle shower to refresh thy sorrows. 
 
 I am fallen into the hands of publicans and 
 sequestrators, and they have taken all from me: 
 what now ? let me look about me. They have left 
 me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving 
 wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to 
 relieve me, and I can still discourse ; and, unless 
 I list, they have not taken away my merry coun- 
 tenance, and my cheerful spirit, and a good con- 
 science ; they still have left me the providence of 
 God, and all the promises of the gospel, and my 
 religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity 
 to them too : and still I sleep and digest, I eat 
 and drink, I read and meditate, I can walk in my 
 neighbour's pleasant fields, and see the varieties 
 of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which 
 God delights, that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the 
 whole creation, and in God himself.* 
 
 * Holy Living, ch. ii. § 6. 
 Yet nature's charms, the hills and woods, 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 83 
 
 If thy coarse robe trouble thee, remember the 
 swaddling-clothes of Jesus : if thy bed be uneasy, 
 yet it is not worse than his manger ; and it is no 
 sadness to have a thin table, if thou callest to mind 
 that the king of heaven and earth was fed with a 
 little breast-milk : and yet besides this he suffered 
 all the sorrows which we deserved. 
 
 If God should send a cancer upon thy face, or 
 a wolf into thy side — if he should spread a crust 
 of leprosy upon thy skin, w^hat wouldst thou give 
 to be but as now thou art ? 
 
 LUST. 
 
 Lust is a captivity of the reason, and an enraging 
 of the passions : it wakens every night and rages 
 every day ;• it desires passionately, and prosecutes 
 violently ; it hinders business, and distracts coun- 
 sel ; it brings jealousies, and enkindles wars ; it 
 
 The sweeping vales, and foaming floods, 
 Are free alike to all. burns. 
 
 I care not, Fortune, what you me deny, 
 
 You cannot rob me of free nature's grace, 
 You cannot shut the windows of the sky, 
 
 Through which Aurora shews her biight'ning face.. 
 You cannot bar my constant feet to trace 
 
 The woods and lawns by living stream at eve ; 
 Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, 
 And I their toys to the great children leave. 
 Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave. 
 
 THOMSON. 
 
84 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 sins against the body, and weakens the soul ;* 
 it defiles the temple, and drives the Holy Spirit 
 forth.f 
 
 ON SINFUL PLEASURE. 
 
 Look upon pleasures not upon that side that is 
 next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that 
 is, as they come towards you to be enjoyed, for 
 then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up 
 in tinsel and glass 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 naked- 
 ness and weariness. See what a sigh and sorrow, 
 what naked unhandsome proportions and a filthy 
 carcass they discover; and the next time they 
 counterfeit, remember what you have already dis- 
 covered, and be no more abused.]: 
 
 * I waive the quantum of the sin, 
 The hazard of concealing : 
 But, och ! it hardens all within, 
 
 And petrifies the feeling. burns. 
 
 t Sermon on the Flesh and the Spirit, Serm. xi. part 2. 
 $ Holy Living, ch. ii. § 1. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 85 
 
 COVETOUSNESS. 
 
 CovETOUSNESS swells the principal to no purpose, 
 and lessens the use to all purposes ; disturbing the 
 order of nature, and the designs of God; making- 
 money not to be the instrument of exchange or 
 charity, nor corn to feed himself or the poor, nor 
 wool to clothe himself or his brother, nor wine to 
 refresh the sadness of the afflicted, nor oil to make 
 his own countenance cheerful; but all these to 
 look upon, and to tell over, and to take accounts 
 by, and make himself considerable, and wondered 
 at by fools, that while he hves he may be called 
 rich, and when he dies may be accounted mise- 
 rable. It teaches men to be cruel and crafty, 
 industrious and evil, full of care and malice ; and, 
 after all this, it is for no good to itself, for it 
 dares not spend those heaps of treasure which it 
 snatched,* 
 
 CHRISTIAN CENSURE. 
 
 It was an exemplar of 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 hastening their shame, nor 
 provoking their spirit, nor making their remedy 
 desperate by using of them rudely, till there be no 
 
 * Holy Living, ch.iv. § 8. See South's sermon on Covet- 
 ousness, on Luke, chap. xii. verse 15, 
 
86 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 worse thing for them to fear if they should be dis- 
 solved into all licentiousness. For an open shame 
 is commonly protested unto when it is remediless, 
 and the person either despairs and sinks under 
 the burthen, or else grows impudent and tramples 
 upon it. But the gentleness of a modest and 
 charitable remedy preserves that Tvhich is virtue's 
 girdle — fear and blushing ; and the beginning of a 
 punishment chides them into the horror of remem- 
 brance and guilt, but preserves their meekness and 
 modesty, because they, not feeling the worst of 
 evils, dare not venture upon the worst of sins.* 
 
 Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are 
 spiritual restore such an one in the spirit of meekness ; con- 
 sidering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. 
 
 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of 
 Christ. Gal. chap. vi. 
 
 Then gently scan your brother man. 
 
 Still gentler sister woman ; 
 Tho' they may gang a kennin wrang. 
 
 To step aside is human ; 
 One point must still be greatly dark, 
 
 The moving why they do it : 
 And just as lamely can ye mark, 
 
 How far perhaps they rue it. 
 
 Who made the heart, *tis he alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us. 
 He knows each chord its various tone, 
 
 Each spring its various bias : 
 Then at the balance let's be mute. 
 
 We never can adjust it ; 
 What's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what's resisted » burns. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 87 
 
 THE HOSPITAL. 
 
 If you please in charity to visit an hospital, which 
 is indeed a map of the whole world, there you shall 
 see the effects of Adam's sin, and the ruins of 
 human nature; bodies laid up in heaps, like the 
 bones of a destroyed town, hominis precarii spi- 
 ritus et male haerentis, men whose souls seem to 
 be borrowed, and are kept there by art and the 
 force of medicine, w^hose miseries are so great 
 that few people have charity or humanity enough 
 to visit them, fewer have the heart to dress them, 
 and we pity them in civility or with a transient 
 prayer : but we do not feel their sorrows by the 
 mercies of a religious pity; and therefore we leave 
 their sorrows in many degrees unrelieved and un- 
 eased. So we contract by our unmercifulness a 
 guilt by which ourselves become liable to the same 
 calamities. Those many that need pity, and those 
 infinities of people that refuse to pity, are mise- 
 rable upon a several charge, but yet they almost 
 make up all mankind. Abel's blood had a voice, 
 and cried to God ; and humanity hath a voice, 
 and cries so loud to God that it pierces the clouds; 
 and so hath every sorrow and every sickness.* 
 
 * The thoughtless are averse from an interruption of their 
 joy ; reflection turns from wretchedness wliich it is unable to 
 relieve. Can we ask gaiety to exchange its light pleasures 
 for the gloom of a prison? the young tree to leave its flowers 
 and its sweetness, or the olive its good fruit 1 Can we invite 
 opulence, knowing none but self-created wants, to witness 
 
88 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ON HUMILITY. 
 
 The other appendage of her religion, which also 
 was a great ornament to all the parts of her life, 
 was a rare modesty and humility of spirit, a confi- 
 dent despising" and undervaluing of herself. For 
 though she had the greatest judgment, and the 
 greatest experience of things and persons that I 
 ever yet knew in a person of her youth, and sex, 
 and circumstances ; yet, as if she knew nothing 
 of it, she had the meanest opinion of herself; and 
 
 the squalid poverty of him who is bereft of fortune and dis- 
 owned by friends 1 The industrious shun him, for he has no 
 industry : the virtuous stand afar off, for he is convicted of 
 crime : and piety, fulfilling all other christian precepts, may 
 forget that he has a brother sick and in prison, and visit him 
 not. A, M. 
 
 To this general apathy our country affords one glorious 
 exception. Hearing the cry of the miserable," says How- 
 ard, " I devoted my time to their relief, and, in order to 
 
 procure it, I made it my business to collect materials, the 
 " authenticity of which could not be doubted. I hope not 
 " to be entirely deserted in the conflict: if I am the means 
 '* of exciting the attention of my countrymen to this impor- 
 " tant national concern, of alleviating the distress of pri- 
 
 soners : of procuring them cleanly and wholesome abodes : 
 
 of exterminating the gaol fever ; of introducing a habit of 
 ** industry ; of restraining the shocking debauchery and im- 
 " morality which prevail in our gaols and other prisons; if 
 " any of these beneficial consequences shall accrue, I shall 
 " be happy in the pleasing reflection, that I have not lived 
 
 without doing some good to my fellow creatures ; and I 
 " shall think myself abundantly repaid for all the pains I 
 
 have taken, the time I have spent, and the hazards I have 
 
 encountered." 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 89 
 
 like a fair taper, when she shined to all the room, 
 yet round about her own station she had cast a 
 shadow and a cloud, and she shined to every body 
 but herself.* 
 
 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 ob- 
 serves showers ; yet the valleys laugh and sing to 
 God in their refreshment without a witness. f 
 
 All the world, all that we are, and all that we 
 have, our bodies and our souls, our actions and 
 our sufferings, our conditions at home, our acci- 
 dents abroad, our many sins, and our seldom vir- 
 tues, are as so many arguments to make our souls 
 dwell low in the deep valleys of humility, t 
 
 * Sermon on the Death of Lady Carbery. 
 
 t Life of Christ. 
 
 X Holy Living j chap. 2, § iv. 
 
 Bishop Taylor, in his preface to Holy Dying, says— 
 I shall measure the success of my labours, not by popular 
 noises, or the sentences of curious persons, but by the ad- 
 vantage which good people may receive. My work here is 
 not to please the speculative part of men, but to minister to 
 practice, to preach to the weary, to comfort the sick, to assist 
 the penitent, to reprove the confident, to strengthen weak 
 hands and feeble knees, having scarce any other possibilities 
 left me of doing alms, or exercising that charity by which we 
 shall be judged at doomsday, it is enough for me to be an 
 
90 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ON CONVERSATION. 
 
 PROM SERMON* ENTITLED ' THE GOOD AND 
 EVIL TONGUE.' 
 
 The following is an Analysis of the Sermon. 
 
 I. General Observations. 
 
 II. The Vices of Conversation. 
 
 fl. Talking foolishly. 
 ,1 T^oiv;^.. I 2. Scurrility. 
 
 3. Revealing Secrets. 
 
 4. Common swearing. 
 S L.5. Contentious wrangling. 
 
 I 2. Slander. 
 L3. Flattery. 
 
 in. The Virtues of Conversation. 
 
 1. Instruction. 
 
 2. Comfort. 
 
 3. Reproof. 
 
 under-builder in the house of God, and I glory in the employ- 
 ment. I labour in the foundations ; and therefore the work 
 needs no apology for being plain, so it be strong and well 
 laid." And to the same eftect Locke in his Epistle to the 
 Reader prefixed to his Essay on the Understanding, says — 
 " The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without 
 master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the 
 sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the* admiration of 
 posterity. But every one must not hope to be a Boyle, or a 
 Sydenham ; and in an age that produces such masters, as 
 the great Huygenius, and the incomparable Mr. Newton, 
 with some others of that strain ; 'tis ambition enough to be 
 employed as an under -labourer in clearing ground a little, 
 
 * Sermon xxii. p. 161. 
 
 much, 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 91 
 
 GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 By the use of the tongue, God hath distinguished 
 us from beasts, and by the well or ill using it we 
 are distinguished from one another ; and therefore 
 though silence be innocent as death, harmless as a 
 rose's breath to a distant passenger, yet it is rather 
 the state of death than life. By voices and homi- 
 lies, by questions and answers, by narratives and 
 invectives, by counsel and reproof, by praises and 
 hymns, by prayers and glorifications, we serve 
 God's glory, and the necessities of men ; and by 
 the tongue our tables are made to differ from man- 
 gers, our cities from deserts, our churches from 
 herds of beasts, and flocks of sheep. 
 
 TALKING TOO MUCH. 
 
 I HAVE heard that all the noises and prating of the 
 pool, the croaking of frogs and toads, is hushed 
 
 and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to 
 knowledge." And to the same effect Dr. Rawley, speaking 
 of Lord Bacon, in the preface to the Sylva Sylvarum, says — 
 1 have heard his Lordship speak complainingly ; that his 
 Lordship (who thinketh he deserveth to be an architect in this 
 building), should be forced to be a workman and a labourer ; 
 and to dig the clay and burn the brick ; and more than that 
 (according to the hard condition of the Israelites at the latter 
 end) to gather the straw and stubble, over all the fields, to 
 burn the bricks withal. For he knoweth that unless he do it 
 nothing will be done ; men are so set to despise the means of 
 their own good." 
 
92 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon 
 them the light of a candle or torch. Every beam 
 of reason and ray of knowledge checks the disso- 
 lutions of the tongue. But, ut quisque contemp- 
 tissimus et maxime ludihrio est, ita solutissimce 
 linguae est, said Seneca : Every man as he is a 
 fool and contemptible, so his tongue is hanged 
 loose, being like a bell, in which there is nothing 
 but tongue and noise. 
 
 TALKING FOOLISHLY. 
 
 No prudence is a sufficient guard, or can always 
 stand in excubiis still watching, when a man is in 
 perpetual floods of talk ; for prudence attends after 
 the manner of an angel's ministry ; it is dispatched 
 on messages from God, and drives away enemies, 
 and places guards, and calls upon the man to 
 awake, and bids him send out spies and observers, 
 and then goes about his own ministries above : 
 but an angel does not sit by a man as a nurse by 
 the baby's cradle, watching every motion and the 
 lighting of a fly upon the child's lip : and so is 
 prudence ; it gives rules, and proportions out our 
 measures, and prescribes us cautions, and by ge- 
 neral influences orders our particulars : but he that 
 is given to talk cannot be secured by all this ; the 
 emissions of his tongue are beyond the g'eneral 
 figures and lines of rule ; and he can no more be 
 wise in every period of a long and running talk, 
 than a lutenist can deliberate and make every mo- 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 93 
 
 tion of his hand by the division of his notes to be 
 chosen and distinctly voluntary. 
 
 SCURRILITY, OR FOOLISH JESTING. 
 
 Plaisance, and joy, and a lively spirit, and a 
 pleasant, conversation, and the innocent caresses of 
 a charitable humanity, is not forbidden ; plenum 
 tamen suavitatis et gratice sermonem non esse in- 
 decorum, Saint Ambrose affirmed : and here in 
 my text our conversation is commanded to be such, 
 iva d(i) xapLv, that it may minister grace, that is, 
 favour, complacence, cheerfulness ; and be accep- 
 table and pleasant to the hearer : and so must be 
 our conversation; it must be as far from sullen- 
 ness as it ought to be from lightness, *and a cheer- 
 ful spirit is the best convoy for religion ; and, 
 though sadness does in some cases become a Chris- 
 tian, as being an index of a pious mind, of com- 
 passion, and a wise proper resentment of things, 
 yet it serves but one end, being useful in the only 
 instance of repentance ; and hath done its greatest 
 works, not when it weeps and sighs, but when it 
 hates and grows careful against sin. But cheer- 
 fulness and a festival spirit fills the soul full of har- 
 mony — it composes music for churches and hearts 
 — it makes and publishes glorifications of God — 
 it produces thankfulness and serves the end of 
 charity ; and, when the oil of gladness runs over, 
 it makes bright and tall emissions of light and holy 
 fires, reaching up to a cloud, and making joy round 
 
94 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 about ; and, therefore, since it is so innocent, and 
 may be so pious and full of holy advantage, what- 
 soever can innocently minister to this holy joy 
 does set forward the work of religion and charity. 
 And, indeed, charity itself, which is the vertical 
 top of all religion, is nothing else but a union of 
 joys concentrated in the heart, and reflected from 
 all the angles of our life and intercourse. It is a 
 rejoicing in God, a gladness in our neighbour's 
 good, a pleasure in doing good, a rejoicing with 
 him ; and without love we cannot have any joy at 
 all. It is this that makes children to be a plea- 
 sure, and friendship to be so noble and divine a 
 thing : and upon this account it is certain that all 
 that which innocently make a man cheerful does 
 also make him charitable; for grief, and age, and 
 sickness, and weariness, these are peevish and 
 troublesome ; but mirth and cheerfulness is con- 
 tent, and civil, and compliant, and communicative, 
 and loves to do good, and swells up to felicity only 
 upon the wings of charity. Upon this account 
 here is pleasure enough for a christian at present ; 
 and, if a facete discourse, and an amicable friendly 
 mirth can refresh the spirit, and take it off from 
 the vile temptation of peevish, despairing, uncom- 
 plying melancholy, it must needs be innocent and 
 commendable. And we may as well be refreshed 
 by a clean and a brisk discourse, as by the air of 
 Campanian wines ; and our faces and our heads 
 may as well be anointed and look pleasant with 
 wit and friendly intercourse, as with the fat of the 
 balsam-tree ; and such a conversation no wise man 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 95 
 
 ever did or ought to reprove. But when the jest 
 hath teeth and nails, biting- or scratching our bro- 
 ther — when it is loose and wanton — when it is un- 
 seasonable — and, much or many, when it serves 
 ill purposes, or spends better time, then it is the 
 drunkenness of the soul, and makes the spirit fly 
 away, seeking for a temple where the mirth and 
 the music is solemn and relio'ious. 
 
 OF SLANDER. 
 
 Tpiis crime is a conjugation of evils, and is pro- 
 ductive of infinite mischiefs : it undermines peace, 
 and saps the foundation of friendship : it destroys 
 families, and rends in pieces the very heart and 
 vital parts of charity : it makes an evil man party, 
 and witness, and judge, and executioner of the 
 innocent. 
 
 OF FLATTERY. 
 
 He that persuades an ugly deformed man that he 
 is handsome — a short man that he is tall — a bald 
 man that he hath a good head of hair — makes him 
 to become ridiculous and a fool, but does no other 
 mischief. But he that persuades his friend, that 
 is a goat in his manners, that he is a holy and a 
 chaste person, or that his looseness is a sign of a 
 quick spirit, or that it is not dangerous, but easily 
 pardonable, a trick of youth, a habit that old age 
 will lay aside, as a man pares his nails, — this man 
 hath given great advantage to his friend's mis- 
 
96 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 chief : he hath made it grow in all the dimensions 
 of the sin, till it grows intolerable, and perhaps 
 unpardonable. And, let it be considered, what a 
 fearful destruction and contradiction of friendship 
 or service it is, so to love myself and my little in- 
 terest, as to prefer it before the soul of him whom 
 I ought to love. 
 
 OF COMFORTING THE DISCONSOLATE. 
 
 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 wdth hea- 
 venly accents, and make the weary soul to listen 
 for light and ease, and, when he perceives that 
 there is such 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 at 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 breath of the north ; and 
 then the waters break from their enclosures, and 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 97 
 
 melt with joy, and run in useful channels; and 
 the flies do rise ag-ain from their little g-raves in 
 walls, and dance awhile in the air, to tell that 
 there is joy within, and that the great mother of 
 creatures will open the stock of her new refresh- 
 ment, become useful to mankind, and sing praises 
 to her Redeemer. So is the heart of a sorrow- 
 ful 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 returnino- • 
 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 thanks- 
 giving songs of relieved widows, of supported or- 
 phans, of rejoicing and comforted, and thankful 
 persons. 
 
 THE PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 
 
 The canes of Egypt, when they newly arise from 
 their bed of mud and slime of Nilus, start up into 
 an equal and continual length, and are interrupted 
 but with few knots, and are strong and beauteous 
 with great distances and intervals ; but when they 
 are grown to their full length they lessen into the 
 point of a pyramis, and multiply their knots and 
 joints, interrupting the fineness and smoothness of 
 its body. So are the steps and declensions of him 
 that does not grow in grace: at first when he 
 springs up from his impurity, by the waters of 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 baptism and repentance, he grows straight and 
 strong, and suffers but few interruptions of piety, 
 and his constant courses of religion are but rarely 
 intermitted, till they ascend up to a full age, or 
 towards the ends of their life ; then they are weak, 
 and their devotions often intermitted, and their 
 breaches are frequent, and they seek excuses, and 
 labour for dispensations, and love God and reli- 
 gion less and less, till their old age, instead of a 
 crown of their virtue and perseverance, ends in 
 levity and unprofitable courses ; light and useless 
 as the tufted feathers upon the cane, every wind 
 can play with it and abuse it, but no man can make 
 it useful. When, therefore, our piety interrupts 
 its greater and more solemn expressions, and upon 
 the return of the greater offices and bigger solem- 
 nities we find them to come upon our spirits like 
 the wave of a tide, which retired only because it 
 was natural so to do, and yet came farther upon 
 the strand at the next rolling; when every new 
 confession — every succeeding communion — every 
 time of separation, far more solemn and intense 
 prayer is better spent, and more affectionate, 
 leaving a greater relish upon the spirit, and pos- 
 sessing greater portions of our affections, our rea- 
 son, and our choice ; then we may give God 
 thanks, who hath given us more grace to use that 
 grace, and a blessing to endeavour our duty, and 
 a blessing upon our endeavour.*" 
 
 Every man hath his indiscretions and infirmi- 
 
 * Of Growth in Grace 3 serm. xiv. p. 305. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 99 
 
 ties, his arrests and sudden incursions, his neigh- 
 bourhoods and semblances of sin, his little vio- 
 lences to reason, and peevish melancholy, and 
 humorous fantastic discourses; unaptness to a de- 
 vout prayer, his fondness to judge favourably in 
 his own cases, little deceptions, and voluntary and 
 involuntary cozenages, ignorances and inadver- 
 tences, careless hours, and unwatchful seasons. 
 This happens more frequently in persons of an 
 infant-piety, when the virtue is not corroborated 
 by a long abode, and a confirmed resolution, and 
 an usual victory, and a triumphant grace; and 
 the longer we are accustomed to piety, the more 
 unfrequent will be the little breaches of folly, and 
 a returning to sin. But as the needle of a com- 
 pass, when it is directed to its beloved star, at the 
 first addresses waves on either side, and seems 
 indifferent in his courtship of the rising or de- 
 clining sun, and when it seems first determined 
 to the north, stands awhile trembling, as if it suf- 
 fered inconvenience in the first fruition of its de- 
 sires, and stands not still in full enjoyment till 
 after first a great variety of motion, and then an 
 undisturbed posture; so is the piety, and so is the 
 conversion of a man, wrought by degrees and se- 
 veral steps of imperfection ; and at first our choices 
 are wavering, convinced by the grace of God, and 
 yet not persuaded ; and then persuaded, but not 
 resolved ; and then resolved, but deferring to be- 
 gin; and then beginning, but, as all beginnings 
 are, in weakness and uncertainty ; and we fiy out 
 often into huge indiscretions, and look back to 
 
100 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 Sodom and long to return to Egypt : and when 
 the storm is quite over, we find little bubblings 
 and unevennesses upon the face of the waters, we 
 often Aveaken our own purposes by the returns of 
 sin : and we do not call ourselves conquerors, till 
 by the long* possession of virtues it is a strange 
 and unusual, and therefore an uneasy and unplea- 
 sant thing, to act a crime.* 
 
 AMBITION. 
 
 I HAVE read of a fair young German gentleman, 
 who living, often refused to be pictured, but put 
 off the importunity of his friends' desire by giving 
 way that after a few days' burial, they might send 
 a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause for 
 it, draw the image of his death unto the life. 
 They did so, and found his face half eaten, and 
 his midriff and back bone full of serpents ; and so 
 he stands pictured among his armed ancestors. 
 So does the fairest beauty change, and it will be 
 as bad with you and me ; and then, what servants 
 shall we have to wait upon us in the grave ? what 
 friends to visit us ? what officious people to cleanse 
 away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected 
 upon our faces from the sides of the weeping 
 vaults, which are the longest weepers for our fu- 
 neral. 
 
 St. Austin with his mother Monica was led one 
 
 * Of Growth of Sin part ii. serm xvii. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 101 
 
 day by a Roman Praetor to see the tomb of Csesar. 
 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 pit a hungry toad 
 feasting upon the remnant portion of flesh and 
 moisture : and so he dwelt in his house of dark- 
 ness.'' * 
 
 * See Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. v. chap. 9. where 
 there is an interesting enquiry upon the distinction between 
 the love of excelling and the love of excellence : v^^here, with 
 his usual ingenuity, he examines the question. 
 
 Nevertheless it w^ill probably be asked, vv^ould I then 
 extinguish every spark of vanity in the world 1 every thirst 
 of fame, of splendour, of magnificence, of show 1 every desire 
 of excelling or distinguishing one's self above the common 
 herd 1 what must become of the public services, of sciences, 
 arts, commerce, manufactures? the business of life must 
 stagnate. Nobody would spend his youth in fatigues and 
 dangers to qualify himself for a general or an admiral. No- 
 body would study, and toil, and struggle, and roar out liberty 
 to be a minister." 
 
 If Tucker is right, and he generally is right, in his opi- 
 nions, the love of excelling, although the common motive of 
 action does not influence the noblest minds ; is only a tem- 
 porary motive, and generates bad passion : but the love of 
 excellence is a powerful motive : is a permanent motive, 
 and generates good feeling : is always ready to forward those 
 abilities which overpower its own. If Tucker's reasoning is 
 not satisfactory, let him consider the words of Lord Bacon. 
 
 We enter into a desire of knowledge sometimes from 
 a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; sometimes to 
 entertain our minds with variety and delight ; sometimes for 
 ornament and reputation ; sometimes to enable us to victory 
 of wit and contradiction, and most times for lucre and pro- 
 fession ; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of our 
 gift of reason, for the benefit and use of man: — as if there 
 
102 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 Virtue hath not half so much trouble in it, it 
 sleeps quietly without startings and affrighting 
 fancies, it looks cheerfully, smiles with much se- 
 renity, and though it laughs not often, yet it is 
 ever delightful in the apprehensions of some fa- 
 culty : it fears no man, nor no thing, nor is it 
 
 were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a 
 searching and restless spirit ; or a terrace for a wandering 
 and variable mind to walk up and down, with a fair pros- 
 pect; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise itself 
 upon ; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and con- 
 tention ; or a shop for profit or sale ; and not a rich store- 
 house for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's 
 estate." 
 
 " For our undertaking, we judge it of such a nature, that 
 it were highly unworthy to pollute it with any degree of am- 
 bition or affectation ; as it is an unavoidable decree with us 
 ever to retain our native candour and simplicity, and not at- 
 tempt a passage to truth under the conduct of vanity ; for 
 seeking real nature with all her fruits about her, we should 
 think it a betraying of our trust to infect such a subject either 
 with an ambitious, or ignorant, or any other faulty manner 
 of treating it." See Sidney Smith's sermon, vol. ii. page 129, 
 on Vanity. 
 
 In Whitaker's History of Craven, when examining the 
 tombs in the church of Skipton, he says : Here lies the 
 body of George Clifford, third Earl of Cumberland of that 
 family, and knight of the most noble order of the garter, who, 
 by right of inheritance from a long continued descent of an- 
 cestors, was Lord Veteripont, Baron Clifford, Westmorland, 
 and Vesey, Lord of the Honour of Skipton in Craven, and 
 Hereditary High Shirieve of Westmorland, and was the last 
 heir male of the Cliffords that rightfully enjoyed those an- 
 cient lands of inheritance in Westmorland and in Craven, 
 with the baronies and honours appertaining to them ; and 
 lefte but one legitimate child behinde him, his daughter and 
 sole heir, the lady Ann Clifford, now Countesse Dowager of 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 103 
 
 discomposed, and hath no concernments in the 
 great alterations of the world, and entertains death 
 like a friend, and reckons the issues of it as the 
 greatest of its hopes ; but ambition is full of dis- 
 tractions, it teems with stratagems, as Rebecca 
 with struggling twins, and is swelled with expec- 
 
 Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomei ie, who in memory of her 
 father, erected this monument in 1653." 
 
 The present church of Skipton is a spacious and respect- 
 able building, though of very different periods. Perhaps no 
 part of the original structure now remains; but from stone 
 seats, with pointed arches and cylindrical columns, now in 
 the south wall of the nave, may perhaps be referred to the 
 earlier part of the thirteenth century. Beneath the altar un- 
 usually elevated on that account, is the vault of the Cliftbrds, 
 the place of their interment from the dissolution of Bolton 
 Priory to the death of the last Earl of Cumberland; which, 
 after having been closed many years, I obtained permission 
 to examine, March 29, 1803; the original vault, intended 
 only for the first Earl and his second lady, had undergone 
 two enlargements ; and the bodies having been deposited in 
 chronological order, first, and immediately under his tomb, 
 lay Henry the first Earl ; whose lead coffin was much cor- 
 roded, and exhibited the skeleton of a short and very stout 
 man, with a long head of flaxen hair, gathered in a knot 
 behind the skull. The coffin had been closely fitted to the 
 body and proved him to have been very corpulent as well as 
 muscular. Next lay the remains of Margaret Percy, his 
 second Countess, whose coffin was still entire. She must 
 have been a slender and diminutive woman. The third was 
 * the lady Eleanor's grave,' whose coffin was decayed, and 
 exhibited the skeleton (as might be expected in a daughter of 
 Charles Brandon and a sister of Henry the Vlllth) of a tall 
 and large limbed female. At her right hand was Henry the 
 second earl, a very tall and rather slender man, whose thin 
 envelope of lead really resembled a winding sheet, and folded 
 like coarse drapery, over the limbs. The head was beaten to 
 
104 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 tation 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 
 
 the left side; something of the shape of the face might be 
 distinguished, and a long prominent nose was very con- 
 spicuous. Next lay Francis, Lord Clifford, a boy. At bis 
 right hand was his father George the third earl, whose lead 
 coffin precisely resembled the outer case of an Egyptian 
 mummy, with a rude face, and something female mammae 
 cast upon it; as were also the letters G. C. 1605. The 
 body was closely wrapped in ten folds of coarse cerecloth, 
 which being removed exhibited the face so entire (only 
 turned to copper colour) as plainly to resemble his portraits. 
 All his painters, however, had the complaisance to omit three 
 large warts upon the left cheek. The coffin of earl Francis, 
 who lay next to his brother, was of the modern shape, and 
 alone had an outer shell of wood, which was covered with 
 leather ; the soldering had decayed, and nothing appeared 
 but the ordinary skeleton of a tall man. This earl had never 
 been embalmed. Over him lay another coffin, much de- 
 cayed, which, I suspect, had contained the lady Anne Dacre 
 his mother. Last, lay Henry the fifth earl, in a coffin of the 
 same form with that of his "father. Lead not allowing of 
 absorption, or a narrow vault of much evaporation, a good 
 deal of moisture remained in the coffin, and some hair about 
 the skull. Both these coffins had been cut open. Room 
 might have been found for another slender lady ; but the 
 countess of Pembroke chose to be buried at Appleby ; partly, 
 perhaps, because her beloved mother was interred there, and 
 partly that she might not mingle her ashes with rivals and 
 enemies. 
 
 It is curious to contrast with these humiliating relics of 
 departed greatness, the pomp and heraldry, and the pride of 
 genealogy, which are displayed above. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 105 
 
 had intention, and falls under the inevitability of 
 such accidents which either could not be foreseen, 
 or not prevented. 
 
 ON GOVERNMENT AND REVOLUTIONS. 
 
 During the civil wars in this country, Bishop 
 Taylor retired into Wales, His dedication to 
 his work on the Liberty of Prophesying, in his 
 Polemical Discourses, begins as follows : — 
 
 In this great storm, which hath dashed the vessel 
 of the church all in pieces, I have been cast upon 
 the coast of Wales, and in a little boat thought 
 to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in 
 England in a greater 1 could not hope for. Here 
 I cast anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the 
 storm followed me with so much impetuous vio- 
 lence, 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 
 
 * The following extract is from an extremely interesting 
 volume, entitled " Peace and Contentment of Mind," by 
 Peter Du Moulin, D.D. Canon of Christ's Church, Canter- 
 bury, one of his majesty's chaplains. 
 
 Some years ago being cast by the storm upon a remote 
 coast, and judging that it would have been to no purpose for 
 me to quarrel with the tempest, I sat upon the shore to be- 
 hold it calmly ; taking no other interest in it, but that of my 
 sympathy with those friends whom I saw yet beaten by the 
 wind and the waves. And to that calmness my condition 
 
106 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 that he who 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. 'Ot yap /3ap/3a- 
 poi Trapuypv ov rrjy rv^^ovaav (piXavQpii)Triav yjfjiLy, 
 ava\pavT£Q yap irvpay TrpocreXajSoyro Trayrag i^fxag 
 hia Toy veroy roy ecpearrijJTa mt dia to \j/v')(og. 
 And now since I have come ashore, I have been 
 gathering a few sticks to warm me, a few books 
 to entertain my thoughts, and divert them from 
 the perpetual meditation of my private troubles, 
 and the public dyscrasy ; but those which I could 
 obtain were so few and so impertinent, and un- 
 useful to any great purposes, that I began to be 
 
 contributed very much, because former tempests had left me 
 little occasion to be much concerned in the present agitation, 
 or to fear much those which might come after. 
 
 ** There I found myself invited to husband that uncertain 
 interval of unexpected rest, to meditate by what means I 
 might possess every where, and in the very storm, the peace 
 and. contentment of my mind ; and to try whether I could be 
 so happy while I got peace for myself, to procure it unto 
 others. 
 
 '* ¥or that contemplation I made use of four books, the 
 half wild country where I found myself affording but few 
 more. The first and chief was the Holy Scripture, the me- 
 ditation whereof brings that peace which passeth all under- 
 standing. My second book was the great volume of Nature. 
 The third was the lessons of Divine Providence. The fourth 
 that which every one carrieth along with himself, and that is 
 man.-' 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 107 
 
 sad upon a new stock, and full of apprehension 
 that I should live unprofitably, and die obscurely 
 and be forgotten, and my bones thrown into some 
 common charnel-house, without any name or note 
 to distinguish me from those who only served their 
 generation by filling the number of citizens, and 
 who could pretend to no thanks or rewards from 
 the public beyond *'jus trium liberorum." While 
 I was troubled with these thoughts, and busy to 
 find an opportunity of doing some good in my 
 small proportion, still the cares of the public did 
 so intervene, that it was as impossible to separate 
 my design from relating to the present, as to ex- 
 empt myself from the participation of the common 
 calamity ; still half my thoughts was (in despite 
 of all my diversions and arts of avocation) fixed 
 upon and mingled with the present concernments ; 
 so that besides them I could not go. 
 
 In another part of his Polemical Discourses^ he 
 says : — 
 
 We have not only felt the evils of an intestine 
 war, but God hath smitten us in our spirit. But 
 I delight not to observe the correspondencies of 
 such sad accidents, which, as they may happen 
 upon divers causes, or may be forced violently by 
 the strength of fancy, or driven on by jealousy, 
 and the too fond opinings of troubled hearts and 
 afflicted spirits, so they do but help to vex the 
 offending part, and relieve the afflicted but with 
 a fantastic and groundless comfort ; I will there- 
 fore deny leave to my own affections to ease them- 
 
108 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 selves by complaining of others ; I shall only crave 
 leave that I may remember Jerusalem, and call to 
 mind the pleasures of the temple, the order of her 
 services, the beauty of her buildings, the sweetness 
 of her songs, the decency of her ministrations, the 
 assiduity and economy of her priests and Levites, 
 the daily sacrifice, and that eternal fire of devo- 
 tion that went not out by day nor by night ; these 
 were the pleasures of our peace ; and there is a 
 remanent felicity in the very memory of those 
 spiritual delights which we then enjoyed as ante- 
 pasts of heaven, and consignations to an immor- 
 tality of joys. And it may be so again when it 
 shall please God, who hath the hearts of all princes 
 in his hand, and turneth them as the rivers of 
 waters ; and when men will consider the invalu- 
 able loss that is consequent, and the danger of sin 
 that is appendant, to the destroying such forms of 
 discipline and devotion in which God was purely 
 worshipped, and the church was edified, and the 
 people instructed to great degrees of piety, know- 
 ledge, and devotion.* 
 
 BACON 
 
 ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 In Orpheus's theatre all beasts and birds assem- 
 bled, and, forgetting their several appetites, some 
 of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stood all 
 sociably together, listening unto the airs and ac- 
 
 * Polemical Discourses. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 109 
 
 cords of the harp ; the sound whereof no sooner 
 ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but 
 every beast returned to his own nature : wherein 
 is aptly described the nature and condition of men, 
 who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of 
 profit, of lust, of revenge ; which as long as they 
 give ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly 
 touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, of 
 sermons, of harangues, so long is society and peace 
 maintained ; but if these instruments be silent, or 
 sedition and tumult make them not audible, all 
 things dissolve into anarchy and confusion. * 
 
 We see it ever falleth out that the forbidden 
 writing is always thought to be certain sparks of 
 truth, that fly up into the faces of those that seek 
 to choke it, and tread it out ; whereas a book au- 
 thorised is thought to be but " temporis voces," 
 the language of the time, f 
 
 HOOKER 
 ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 He that goeth about to persuade a multitude that 
 they are not so well governed as they ought to be, 
 shall never want attentive and favourable hearers ; 
 because they know the manifold defects where- 
 unto every kind of regiment is subject. But the 
 secret lets and difficulties, which in public pro- 
 
 * Advancement of Learning, book i. 
 t Of Church Controversies. 
 
110 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ceedings are innumerable and inevitable, they 
 have not ordinarily the judgment to consider. 
 And because such as openly reprove supposed 
 disorders of state, are taken for principal friends 
 to the common benefit of all, and for men that 
 carry singular freedom of mind ; under this fair 
 and plausible colour, vy^hatsoever they utter pass- 
 eth for 2:ood and current. That which wanteth 
 in the weight of their speech is supplied by the 
 aptness of men*s minds to accept and believe it. 
 Whereas, on the other side, if we maintain things 
 that are established, we have not only to strive 
 with a number of heavy prejudices deeply rooted 
 in the hearts of men, w^ho think that herein we 
 serve the time and speak in favour of the present 
 state, because thereby w^e either hold or seek pre- 
 ferment : but also to bear such exceptions, as 
 minds so averted before-hand usually take against 
 that which they are loth should be poured into 
 them. * 
 
 The stateliness of houses, the goodliness of trees, 
 when w^e behold them, delighteth the eye : but 
 that foundation which beareth up the one, that 
 root which ministereth unto the other nourishment 
 and life, is in the bosom of the earth concealed : 
 and if there be occasion at any time to search into 
 it, such labour is then more necessary than plea- 
 sant, both to them which undertake it, and for the 
 lookers on. In like manner the use and benefit 
 of good laws, all that live under them may enjoy 
 
 * Ecclesiastical Polity, book i. sect. U 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 Ill 
 
 with delight and comfort, albeit the grounds and 
 first original causes from whence they have sprung, 
 be unknown, as to the greatest part of men they 
 are. 
 
 Since the time that God did first proclaim the 
 edicts of his law upon the world, heaven and earth 
 have hearkened unto his voice, and their labour 
 hath been to do his wdll. " He made a law for 
 the rain he gave his decree unto the sea, that 
 the waters should not pass his commandment.'' 
 Now if nature should intermit her course, and 
 leave, altogether, though it were for awhile, the 
 observation of her own laws, if those principal and 
 mother elements of the world, whereof all things 
 in this lower world are made, should lose the 
 qualities which now they have ; if the frame of 
 that heavenly arch erected over our heads, should 
 loosen and dissolve itself; if celestial spheres 
 should forget their wonted motions, and by ir- 
 regular volubility turn themselves any way as it 
 may happen ; if the prince of the lights of heaven, 
 which now, as a giant, doth run his unw^earied 
 course, should as it were through a languishing 
 faintness, begin to stand and to rest himself ; if 
 the moon should wander from her beaten w^ay, the 
 times and seasons of the year blend themselves by 
 disordered and confused mixture, the winds breathe 
 out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, the 
 earth be defeated of heavenly influence, the fruits 
 of the earth pine away, as children at the withered 
 breasts of their mother no longer able to yield 
 them relief ; what would become of man himself^ 
 
112 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 whom these things do now all serve ? See we not 
 plainly, that obedience of creatures unto the law 
 of nature is the stay of the whole world ?* 
 
 Of Law there can be no less acknowledged than 
 that her seat is in the bosom of God ; her voice 
 the harmony of the world ; all things in heaven 
 and earth do her homage ; the very least as feel- 
 ing her care, and the greatest as not exempted 
 from her power. Both angels and men, and crea- 
 tures of what condition soever, though each in 
 different sort and manner, yet all with uniform 
 consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace 
 and joy.f 
 
 ON TEMPERANCE. 
 
 FROM SERMON I ENTITLED ' THE HOUSE OF 
 FEASTING.' 
 
 * Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' 
 1 Cor. XV. 32. 
 
 1. Plenty, and the pleasures of the world are no 
 proper instruments of felicity. 
 
 2. Intemperance is a certain enemy to felicity. 
 1st. It is an enemy to health. 
 
 2ndly. Intemperance is an impure fountain of 
 
 vice, and a direct nurse of uncleanness. 
 3rdly. Intemperance is a destruction of wisdom. 
 
 * Ecclesiastical Polity, book i. sect. 3. 
 
 t Ibid, book i. sect. 16. t Sermon xv. and xvi. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 113. 
 
 4thly. Intemperance is a dishonour and disre- 
 putation to the person and the nature of the 
 man. 
 
 3. The rules and measures of temperance. 
 
 PLENTY AND THE PLEASURES OF THE WORLD ARE 
 NO PROPER INSTRUMENTS OF FELICITY. 
 
 He that cannot be satisfied with common provision, 
 hath a bigger need than he that can ; it is harder 
 and more contingent, and more difficult, and more 
 troublesome, for him to be satisfied. Epicurus said, 
 ' I feed sweetly upon bread and water, those sweet 
 and easy provisions of the body, and I defy the 
 pleasures of costly provisions.' And the man was 
 so confident that he had the advantage over wealthy 
 tables, that he thought himself happy as the im- 
 mortal gods ; for these provisions are easy, they 
 are to be gotten without amazing cares. No man 
 needs to flatter, if he can live as nature did intend ; 
 
 magna pars libertatis est bene moratus venter.*' 
 He need not swell his accounts, and intricate his 
 spirit with arts of subtilty and contrivance ; he can 
 be free from fears, and the chances of the world 
 cannot concern him. 
 
 All our trouble is from within us ; and if a dish 
 of lettuce, and a clear fountain can cool all my 
 heats, so that I shall have neither thirst nor pride, 
 lust nor revenge, envy nor ambition, I am lodged 
 in the bosom of felicity. 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 INTEMPERANCE IS AN ENEMY TO HEALTH. | 
 
 Health is the opportunity of wisdom, the fairest 
 scene of religion, the advantages of the glorifica- 
 tions of God, the charitable ministries to men. It 
 is a state of joy and thanksgiving, and in every 
 of its periods feels a pleasure from the blessed | 
 emanations of a merciful providence. The world 
 does not minister — does not feel a greater pleasure 
 than to be newly delivered from the racks of the 
 gratings of the stone, and the torments and con- 
 vulsions of a sharp cholic ; and no organs, no harp, 
 no lute, can sound out the praises of the Almighty 
 Father so sprightfully as the man that rises from | 
 his bed of sorrows, and considers what an excel- ' 
 lent difference he feels fi'om the groans and intoler- i 
 able accents of yesterday. f 
 
 When Cyrus had espied Astyages and his fel- 
 lows coming drunk from a banquet, loaden with 
 variety of follies and filthiness, their legs failing 
 
 t See the wretch that long has tost 
 On the thorny bed of pain, 
 At length regain his vigour lost, 
 And breathe and walk again. 
 The meanest flow'ret of the vale. 
 The simplest note that swells the gale, 
 The common sun, the air, the skies, 
 To him are opening paradise. gray. 
 Enfin, il y a des Plaisirs fondes sur des Peines. Lors- 
 qu'on a soufFert, la cessation ou la diminution de la douleur 
 est un plaisir, et souvent tres-vif. On peut les appeler 
 Plaisirs du Soulagement ou de la Delivrance. lis sont sus- 
 ceptibles de la meme variete que les peines. — BE nth am. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 115 
 
 them, their eyes red and staring, cozened with a 
 moist cloud, and abused by a doubled object, their 
 tongues full of sponges, and their heads no wiser, 
 he thought they were poisoned : and he had reason ; 
 for what malignant quality can be more venomous 
 and hurtful to a man than the effect of an intem- 
 perate goblet and a full stomach ? It poisons both 
 the soul and body. He that tempts me to drink 
 beyond my pleasure civilly invites me to a fever, 
 and to lay aside my reason, as the Persian women 
 did their garments and their modesty at the end of 
 feasts ; and all the question then will be, which is 
 the worst evil, to refuse your uncivil kindness, or 
 to suffer a violent head-ache, or to lay up heaps 
 big enough for an English surfeit. Creon, in the 
 tragedy, said well : — 
 
 * It is better for me to grieve thee, O stranger, 
 or to be affronted by thee, than to be tormented by 
 thy kindness the next day and the morrow after.' 
 
 A drunkard and a glutton feels the torments of 
 a restless night, although he hath not killed a man : 
 that is, just like murderers and persons of an affright- 
 ing conscience. So wakes the glutton, so broken 
 and sick and disorderly are the slumbers of the 
 drunkard : but for the honour of his banquet he 
 hath some ministers attending that he did not dream 
 of, and in the midst of his loud laughter, Pallor 
 et gense pendula3, oculorum ulcera, tremulse manus, 
 furiales somni, inquies nocturna," as Pliny reckons 
 them ; ' Paleness and hanging cheeks, ulcers of 
 the eyes, and trembling hands, dead or distracted 
 sleeps these speak aloud that to-day you eat and 
 
116 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 drink, that to-morrow you may die, and die for 
 ever. 
 
 It is reported concerning- Socrates, that when 
 Athens was destroyed by the plague, he, in the 
 midst of all the danger, escaped untouched by sick- 
 ness, because, by a spare and severe diet, he had 
 within him no tumult of disorderly humours, no 
 factions in his blood, no loads of moisture prepared 
 for charnel-houses, or the sickly hospitals ; but a 
 vigorous heat, and a well-proportioned radical 
 moisture; he had enough for health and study, 
 philosophy and religion, for the temples and the 
 academy ; but no superfluities to be spent in groans 
 and sickly nights. 
 
 Certain it is that no man ever repented that he 
 rose from the table sober, healthful, and with his 
 wits about him : but very many have repented that 
 they sat so long till their bellies swelled, and their 
 health, and their virtue, and their God is departed 
 from them. 
 
 INTEMPERANCE IS THE NURSE OF VICE. 
 
 By faring deliciously every day, men become sense- 
 less of the evils of mankind, inapprehensive of the 
 troubles of their brethren, unconcerned in the 
 changes of the world, and the cries of the poor, the 
 hunger of the fatherless, and the thrist of widows. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 1J7 
 
 INTEMPERANCE IS A PERFECT DESTRUCTION 
 OF WISDOM. 
 
 A FULL gorged belly never produced a sprightly 
 mind. When the sun gives the sign to spread the 
 tables, and intemperance brings in the messes, and 
 drunkenness fills the bowls, then the man falls away, 
 and leaves a beast in his room. A full meal is like 
 Sisera's banquet, at the end of which there is a nail 
 struck into the head. 
 
 THE RULES AND MEASURES OF TEMPERANCE. 
 
 Every drunkard clothes his head with a mighty 
 scorn ; and makes himself lower at that time than 
 the meanest of his servants ; the boys can laugh at 
 him when he is led like a cripple, directed like a 
 blind man, and speaks, like an infant, imperfect 
 noises, lisping with a full and spongy tongue, and 
 an empty head, and a vain and foolish heart ; so 
 cheaply does he part with his honour for drink or 
 loads of meat ; for which honour he is ready to die 
 rather than hear it to be disparaged by another; when 
 himself destroys it as bubbles perish with the breath 
 of children. Do not the laws of all wise nations 
 mark the drunkard for a fool, with the meanest and 
 most scornful punishment ? and is there any thing 
 in the world so foolish as a man that is drunk ? 
 but, good God ! what an intolerable sorrow hath 
 seized upon great portions of mankind, that this 
 folly and madness should possess the greatest spirits 
 and wittiest men, the best company, the most 
 
118 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 sensible of the word honour, and the most jealous 
 of losing" the shadow, and the most careless of the 
 thing ! Is it not a horrid thin^, that a wise or a 
 crafty, a learned or a noble person should dishonour 
 himself as a fool, destroy his body as a murderer, 
 lessen his estate as a prodigal, disgrace every good 
 cause that he can pretend to by his relation, and 
 become an appellative of scorn, a scene of laughter 
 or derision, — and all for the reward of forgetful- 
 ness and madness ? for there are in immoderate 
 drinking no other pleasures. 
 
 I end with the saying of a wise man ; — He is 
 fit to sit at the table of the Lord, and to feast with 
 saints, who moderately uses the creatures which 
 God hath given him ; but he that despises even 
 lawful pleasures, shall not only sit and feast with 
 God, but reign together with him, and partake of 
 his glorious kingdom." 
 
 THE SACRAMENT. 
 
 We sometimes espy a bright cloud formed into an 
 irregular figuce ; when it is observed by unskilful 
 and fantastic travellers, it looks like a Centaur to 
 some, and as a castle to others ; some tell that 
 they saw an army with banners, and it signifies 
 war : but another, wiser than his fellow, says, it 
 looks for all the world like a flock of sheep, and 
 foretells plenty : and all the while it is nothing 
 but a shining cloud, by its own mobility, and the 
 activity of a wind cast into a contingent and in- 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 119 
 
 artificial shape. So it is in this great mystery of 
 our religion, in which some espy strange things 
 which God intended not, and others see not what 
 God hath plainly told ; some call that part of it a 
 mystery which is none ; and others think all of it 
 nothing but a mere ceremony, and a sign ; some 
 say it signifies, and some say it effects ; some say 
 it is a sacrifice, and others call it a sacrament ; 
 some schools of learning make it the instrument in 
 the hand of God : others say that it is God him- 
 self in that instrument of grace.* 
 
 Since all societies of Christians pretend to the 
 greatest esteem of this, above all the rights or ex- 
 ternal parts and ministeries of religion, it cannot 
 be otherwise but that they will all speak honour- 
 able things of it, and suppose holy things to be in 
 it, and great blessings one way or other to come 
 by it ; and it is contemptible only among the pro- 
 fane and the atheistical ; all the innumerable dif- 
 ferences which are in the discourses, and conse- 
 quent practices relating to it, proceed from some 
 common truths, and universal notions, and myste- 
 rious or inexplicable words, and tend all to reve- 
 rential thoughts, and pious treatment of these rites 
 and holy offices ; and therefore it will not be im- 
 possible to find honey or wholesome dews upon all 
 this variety of plants. f 
 
 * Worthy Communicant, p. 6. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 8. 
 
120 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 RETURN OF KINDNESS. 
 
 Nothing makes societies so fair and lasting a§ 
 the mutual endearment of each other by good 
 offices ; and never any man did a good turn to his 
 brother, but one time or other himself did eat the 
 fruit of it. The good man in the Greek epigram, 
 that found a dead man's skull unburied, in kind- 
 ness digging a grave for it, opened the inclosures 
 of a treasure ; and we read in the Annals of 
 France, that when Gontran king of Burgundy 
 was sleeping by the murmurs of a little brook, his 
 servant espied a lizard coming from his master's 
 head, and essaying to pass the water, but seeming 
 troubled because it could not, he laid his sword 
 over the brook, and made an iron bridge for the 
 little beast, who passing, entered into the earth, 
 and speedily returned back to the king, and dis- 
 turbed him, (as it is supposed) into a dream, in 
 which he saw an iron bridge, which landed him at 
 the foot of the mountain, where if he did dig, he 
 should find a great heap of gold. The servant 
 expounded his master's dream, and shewed him 
 the iron bridge ; and they digged where the lizard 
 had entered, where they found indeed a treasure ; 
 and that the servant's piety was rewarded upon his 
 lord's head, and procured wealth to one, and ho- 
 nour to the other. There is in human nature a 
 strange kind of nobleness and love to return and 
 exchange good offices ; but because there are some 
 dogs who bite your hand when you reach them 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 121 
 
 bread, God by the ministry of his little creatures 
 tells, that if we do not, yet he will certainly re- 
 compense every act of piety and charity we do one 
 to another.* 
 
 REAL AND APPARENT HAPPINESS. 
 
 If we should look under the skirt of the prosper- 
 ous 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 pre- 
 sently 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 ; f and the spirit 
 of a man makes felicity and content, not any spoils 
 of a rich fortune wrapt about a sickly and an un- 
 easy soul. Apollodorus was a traitor and a tyrant, 
 and the world wondered to see a bad man have so 
 
 * Worthy Communicant, p. 191. 
 
 t See Darwin's Zoonomia Diseases of Volition, 8vo. edi- 
 tion, vol. 4, p. 68, and see the anecdote in Wordsworth's 
 Lyrical Ballads. 
 
 She prayed, her withered hand uprearing, 
 While Harry held her by the arm — 
 
 God ! who art never out of hearing, 
 O may he never more be warm 
 The cold, cold moon above her head, 
 And icy cold he turned away. 
 
122 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 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 daugh- 
 ters like pillars of fire, dancing round about a 
 cauldron 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 no body, 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 ? 
 
 * See Dr. Franklin's letter upon the art of procuring plea- 
 sant dreams, which thus concludes, — These are the rules of 
 the art that, though they generally prove effectual in pro- 
 ducing the end intended, there is a case in which the most 
 punctual observance of them will be totally fruitless. T need 
 not mention the case to you, my dear friend : but my account 
 of the art would be imperfect without it. The case is, when 
 the person who desires to have pleasant dreams has not taken 
 care to preserve, what is necessary above all things — A good 
 conscience. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 123 
 
 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 
 merchant-man hath them. But althouoh 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. 
 
 ON SUPERSTITION. 
 
 I HAVE seen a harmless dove made dark with an 
 artificial night, and her eyes sealed and locked up 
 with a little quill, soaring upward and flying with 
 amazement, fear, and an undiscerning wing ; she 
 made towards heaven, but knew not that she was 
 made a train and an instrument, to teach her 
 enemy to prevail upon her and all her defenceless 
 kindred. So is a superstitious man, jealous and 
 blind, forward and mistaken ; he runs towards 
 heaven as he thinks, but he chooses foolish paths, 
 and out of fear takes any thing that he is told ; or 
 fancies and guesses concerning God, by measures 
 taken from his own diseases and imperfections.* 
 
 * Sermon on Godly Fear : Serm. ix. part 3. 
 
124 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ADVERSITY.* 
 
 All is well as long as the sun shines, and the fair 
 breath of heaven gently wafts us to our own pur- 
 poses. But if you will try the excellency, and feel 
 the work of faith, place the man in a persecution ; 
 let him ride in a storm, let his bones be broken with 
 sorrow, and his eyelids loosed with sickness, let his 
 bread be dipped with tears, and all the daughters of 
 music be brought low; let us come to sit upon the 
 margent of our grave, and let a tyrant lean hard 
 upon our fortunes, and dwell upon our wrong ; let 
 the storm arise, and the keels toss till the cordage 
 crack, or that all our hopes bulge under us, and de- 
 scend into the hollo wness of sad misfortunes. 
 
 * In the reproof of chance 
 
 Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth, 
 How many shallow bauble boats dare sail 
 Upon her patient breast, making their way 
 With those of nobler bulk ! 
 But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage 
 The gentle Thetis, and anon, behold 
 The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cuts, 
 Bounding between the two moist elements, 
 Like Perseus' horse ; where's then the saucy boat. 
 Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now 
 Co-rival'd greatness ? troilus and cressida. 
 See Bacon's beautiful Essay on Adversity, where he says — 
 ** But to speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is tem- 
 perance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals 
 is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the 
 Old Testament, Adversity is the blessing of the new, which 
 carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of 
 God's favour. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen 
 to David's harp, you shall hear as many hearse -like airs as 
 carols." 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 125 
 
 ON THE MISERIES OF MAN'S LIFE. 
 
 How few men in the world are prosperous ! What 
 an infinite number of slaves and beggars, of per- 
 secuted and oppressed people, fill all corners of the 
 earth with groans, and heaven itself with weeping, 
 prayers, and sad remembrances ! How many pro- 
 vinces and kingdoms are afflicted by a violent 
 war, or made desolate by popular diseases ! Some 
 whole countries are remarked with fatal evils, or 
 periodical sicknesses. Grand Cairo in Egypt feels 
 the plague every three years returning like a 
 quartan ague, and destroying many thousand of 
 persons. All the inhabitants of Arabia the desart 
 are in continual fear of being buried in huge 
 heaps of sand, and therefore dwell in tents and 
 ambulatory houses, or retire to unfruitful moun- 
 tains, to prolong an uneasy and wilder life. And 
 all the countries round about the Adriatic sea feel 
 such violent convulsions, by tempests and intole- 
 rable earthquakes, that sometimes whole cities find 
 a tomb, and every man sinks with his own house, 
 made ready to become his monument, and his bed 
 is crushed into the disorders of a grave. 
 
 It were too sad if I should tell how^ many per- 
 sons are afflicted with evil spirits, with spectres 
 and illusions of the night. 
 
 He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if 
 he be in love with this world, we need not despair 
 but that a witty man might reconcile him with tor- 
 
126 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 tures, and make him think charitably of the rack, 
 and be brought to dwell with vipers and dragons, 
 and entertain his guests with the shrieks of man- 
 drakes, cats, and screech-owls, with the filing of 
 iron and the harshness of rending of silk, or to ad- 
 mire the harmony that is made by a herd of even- 
 ing wolves, when they miss their draught of blood 
 in their midnight revels. The groans of a man in 
 a fit of the stone are worse than all these ; and the 
 distractions of a troubled conscience are worse 
 than those groans ; and yet a merry careless sin- 
 ner is worse than all that. But if we could, from 
 one of the battlements of heaven, espy how many 
 men and women at this time lie fainting and dying 
 for want of bread ; how many young men are hewn 
 down by the sword of war ; how many poor or- 
 phans are now weeping over the graves of their 
 father, by whose life they were enabled to eat ; if 
 we could but hear how mariners and passengers 
 are at this present in a storm, and shriek out be- 
 cause their keel dashes against a rock or bulges 
 under them ; how many people there are that weep 
 with want, and are mad with oppression, or are 
 desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infe- 
 licity ; in all reason we should be glad to be out of 
 the noise and participation of so many evils. This 
 is a place of sorrows and tears, of so great evils and 
 a constant calamity : let us remove from hence, at 
 least, in affections and preparation of mind.* 
 
 * Holy Dying, ch. 1. 
 
 From the place of my birth I shall only desire to remem- 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 127 
 
 ON IDLE CURIOSITY. 
 
 Commonly curious persons, or (as the apostle's 
 phrase is is) busy-bodies, are not solicitous or 
 
 ber the goodness of the Lord who hath caused my lot to fall 
 in a good ground ; who hath fed me in a pleasant pasture, 
 where the well springs of life flow to all that desire to dvink 
 them. And this is no small favour if I consider how many 
 poor people perish among the heathen, where they never hear 
 the name of Christ ; how many poor christians spring up in 
 countries enslaved by Turkish and Anti-christian tyrants, 
 whose souls and bodies languish under miserable slavery. 
 None knows what mercy 'tis to live under a good and whole- 
 some law, that have not considered the sad condition of 
 being subject to the will of an unlimited man. 
 
 Nor is the place only but the time of my coming into the 
 world a considerable mercy to me. It was not in the mid- 
 night of popery, nor in the dawn of the gospel restored day, 
 when light and shades were blended and almost undistin- 
 guished, but when the sun of truth was exalted in his pro- 
 gress and hastening towards a meridian glory. 
 
 The next blessing I have to consider in my nativity is my 
 parents, both of them pious and virtuous in their own conver- 
 sation, and careful instructors of my youth, not only by pre- 
 cept, but example, &cc. — Hutchinson's Memoirs, 
 
 Such are Mrs. Hutchinson's effusions of gratitude. The 
 same sentiment is expressed by Gibbon, who says, **My lot 
 might have been that of a slave, a savage, or a peasant ; nor 
 can I reflect without pleasure on the bounty of nature, which 
 cast my birth in a free and civilized country, in an age of 
 science and philosophy, in a family of honourable rank, and 
 decently endowed with the gifts of fortune." 
 
 Gibbons Memoirs, 
 Coleridge in the introduction to his Lay Sermons, page x. 
 says, Few are sufliciently aware how much reason most of 
 us have, even as common moral livers, to thank God for being 
 
128 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 inquisitive into the beauty and order of a well 
 governed family, or after the virtues of an ex- 
 Englishmen. It would furnish grounds both for humility 
 towards Providence and for increased attachment to our 
 country, if each individual could but see and feel, how large 
 a part of his innocence he owes to his birth, breeding, and 
 residence in Great Britain. The administration of the laws ; 
 the almost continued preaching of moral prudence ; the num- 
 ber and respectability of our sects ; the pressure of our ranks 
 on each other, with the consequent reserve and watchfulness 
 of demeanour in the superior ranks, and the emulation, in the 
 subordinate ; the vast depth, expansion, and systematic move- 
 ments of our trade ; and the consequent interdependence, the 
 arterial or nerve-like net-work of property, which make every 
 deviation from outward integrity a calculable loss to the 
 offending individual himself from its mere effects, as obstruc- 
 tion and irregularity ; and lastly, the naturalness of doing as 
 others do ; — these and the like influences, peculiar, some in 
 the kind and all in the degree, to this privileged island, are 
 the buttresses, on which our foundationless well-doing is 
 upheld even as a house of cards, the architecture of our in- 
 fancy, in which each is supported by all, 
 
 TO BRITAIN. 
 
 I love thee, O my native Isle ! 
 Dear as my mother's earliest smile. 
 Sweet as my father's voice to me, 
 Is all I hear, and all I see ; 
 When glancing o'er thy beauteous land, 
 In view thy Public Virtues stand. 
 The guardian-angels of thy coast. 
 To watch the dear domestic Host, 
 The Heart's affections, pleased to roam 
 Around the quiet heaven of Home. 
 
 I love Thee, — when I mark thy soil 
 Flourish beneath the Peasant's toil, 
 And from its lap of verdure throw 
 Treasures which neither Indies know. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 129 
 
 cellent person : but if there be any thing for 
 which men keep locks and bars and porters, 
 
 I love Thee, — when I hear around 
 Thy looms, and wheels, and anvils sound. 
 Thine Engines heaving all their force, 
 Thy waters labouring on their course, 
 And Arts, and Industry, and Wealth, 
 Exulting in the joys of Health. 
 
 I love Thee, — when I trace thy tale 
 To the dim point where records fail ; 
 Thy deeds of old renown inspire 
 My bosom with our father's fire ; 
 A proud inheritance I claim 
 In all their sufferings, all their fame : 
 Nor less delighted when I stray 
 Down History's lengthening, widening way, 
 And hail thee in thy present hour. 
 From the meridian arch of power. 
 Shedding the lustre of thy reign. 
 Like sunshine over land and main. 
 
 I love Thee, — when I read the lays 
 Of British Bards in elder days, 
 Till rapt on visionary wings. 
 High o'er thy cliffs my Spirit sings ; 
 For I, amidst thy living choir, 
 I too, can touch the sacred lyre. 
 
 I love Thee, — when I contemplate 
 The full-orb'd grandeur of thy state : 
 Thy laws- and liberties, that rise, 
 Man's noblest works beneath the skies. 
 To which the Pyramids are tame. 
 And Grecian Temples bow their fame ; 
 These, thine immortal sages wrought 
 Out of the deepest mines of thought ; 
 These, on the scaffold, in the field, 
 Thy Warriors won, thy Patriots seal'd 
 These, at the parricidal pyre, 
 T hy Martyrs sanctified in fire. 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 things that blush to see the light, and either are 
 shameful in manners, or private in nature, these 
 
 I love Thee, — when thy Sabbath dawns 
 O'er woods and mountains, dales and lawns, 
 And streams that sparkle while they run, 
 As if their fountain were the Sun : 
 When hand in hand, thy tribes repair, 
 Each to their chosen House of Prayer, 
 And all in peace and freedom call 
 On Him, who is the Lord of all.* 
 
 I love Thee, — when ray Soul can feel 
 The Seraph ardours of thy zeal ; 
 Thy Charities, to none confined, 
 Bless, like the sun, the rain, the wind ; 
 Thy schools the human brute shall raise, 
 Guide erring Youth in Wisdom's ways, 
 And leave, when we are turned to dust, 
 A generation of the Just. 
 
 I love Thee, — when I see thee stands 
 The Hope of every other land : 
 A sea-mark in the tide of Time, 
 Rearing to heaven thy brow sublime. 
 
 I love Thee, when I hear thy voice 
 Bid a despairing world rejoice, 
 And loud from shore to shore proclaim,. 
 In every tongue, Messiah's name 1 
 That name at which, from sea to sea. 
 All nations yet shall bow the knee. 
 
 I love Thee, — Next to heaven above, 
 Land of my Fathers ! thee I love ; 
 And rail thy Slanderers as they will, 
 " With all thy faults I love thee" stiil. 
 
 MONTGOMERY. 
 
 * From Bolton's old monastic tower 
 
 The bells ring loud with gladsome power ; 
 
 Of lasses and of shepherd grooms. 
 
 That down the steep hills force their way. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 things are their care and their business. But if 
 great things will satisfy our inquiry, — the course 
 
 Like cattle through the budded brooms ; 
 Path or no path, what care they? 
 And thus in joyous mood they hie 
 To Bolton's mouldering Priory. 
 That sumptuous Pile, with all its peers, 
 Too harshly hath been doom'd to taste 
 The bitterness of wrong and waste : 
 Its courts are ravaged ; but the tower 
 
 Is standing with a voice of power, 
 
 That ancient voice which wont to call 
 
 To mass or some high festival ; 
 
 And in the shatter'd fabric's heart 
 
 Remaineth one protected part ; 
 
 A rural chapel, neatly drest, 
 
 In covert like a little nest ; 
 
 The sun is bright ; the fields are gay 
 
 With people in their best array 
 
 Of stole and doublet, iiood and scarf, 
 
 Along the banks of the crystal Wharf, 
 
 Through the Vale retired and lowly 
 
 Trooping to that summons holy. 
 
 And, up among the moorlands, see 
 
 What sprinklings of blithe company ! 
 
 And thitlier young and old repair 
 
 This Sabbath day, for praise and prayer. 
 
 Wordsworth's white doe of rylstone. 
 
 Oh! brethren, I have seen sabbath sights, and joined in 
 sabbath worships, which took the heart with their simplicity, 
 and ravished it with sublime emotions. I have crossed the hills 
 in the sober and contemplative autumn, to reach the retired 
 lonely church betimes, and as I descended towards the simple 
 edifice, whitherto every heart and every foot directed itself from 
 the country round, on the sabbath morn, we beheld issuing 
 from the vales and mountain glens, the little train of worship- 
 pers coming up to the congregation of the Lord's house, around 
 
132 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 of the sun and moon, the spots in their faces, the 
 firmament of heaven and the supposed orbs, the 
 ebbing" and flowing of the sea, are work enough 
 for us ; or, if this be not, let him tell me whether 
 the number of the stars be even or odd, and when 
 they began to be so. If these be too trouble- 
 some, search lower, and tell me why this turf this 
 year brings forth a dais)% and the next year a plan- 
 tane : why the apple bears his seed in his heart 
 and wheat bears it in his head ; let him tell why 
 a graft taking nourishment from a crabstock shall 
 have a fruit more noble than its nurse and parent : 
 let him say why the best of oil is at the top, the 
 
 which the bones of their fathers reposed, and near to which 
 reposed the bones of one who had in cold blood fallen for his 
 God, at the hands of that wretched man, the hero of our north- 
 ern romances : bones oft visited by pious feet, and covered on 
 the hill side where they lie with a stone bearing an inscription 
 not to be paralleled in our noble mausoleum, which containeth 
 the ashes of those whom the nation delighteth to honour. In 
 so holy a place, the people assembled under a roof where ye 
 of the plentiful soutli would not have lodged the porter of 
 your gate. But under that roof the people sat and sang their 
 Maker's praise, tuning their hearts, by far the noblest aim,'* 
 and the pastor poured forth to God the simple wants of the 
 people, and poured into their attentive ears the scope of 
 christian doctrine and duty, and having filled the hearts of 
 his flock with his consolations, parted with them after much 
 blessing and mutual congratulation, and the people went on 
 their way rejoicing. Oh ! what meaning there was in the 
 whole ! what piety ! what intelligence ! what simplicity ! 
 The men were shepherds and came up in their shepherd's 
 guise, and the very brute, the shepherd's servant and compa- 
 nion, rejoiced to come at his feet. Oh ! it was a sabbath ! a 
 sabbath of rest ! From a Sermon of Edward Iruing. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 133 
 
 best of wine in the middle, and the best of honey 
 at the bottom. But these things are not such as 
 please busy-bodies ; they must feed upon tragedies, 
 and stories of misfortunes and crimes.* 
 
 ON MERCY. 
 
 If you do but see a maiden carried to her grave a 
 little before her intended marriage, or an infant 
 die before the birth of reason, nature hath taught 
 us to pay a tributary tear. Alas ! your eyes will 
 behold the ruin of many families, which though 
 
 * There is (for life is loo short to be wasted on fruitless 
 speculations) scarcely any subject of more importance than 
 idle curiosity ; or, to speak more correctly, (as all knowledge 
 contains something good, all dross some pure metal), curiosity 
 in things of little use. Be not curious," says the preacher, 
 
 in unnecessary matters, for more things are shewed unto 
 thee than men understand." We spend our days," says 
 the philosopher, in unprofitable questions and disputations, 
 intricate subtleties, de lana caprina, about moonshine in the 
 water. 
 
 Truths, that the learn 'd pursue with eager thought, 
 Are not important always as dear bought, 
 Proving at last, though told in pompous strains, 
 A childish waste of philosophic pains ; 
 But truths, on which depend our main concern, 
 That 'tis our shame and mis'ry not to learn, 
 Shine by the side of ev'ry path we tread, 
 With such a lustre, he that runs may read. 
 
 See the conclusion of this note, in note II. at the end of 
 the volume. 
 
134 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 they sadly have deserved, yet mercy is not de- 
 lighted with the spectacle ; and therefore God 
 places a watery cloud in the eye, that when the 
 light of heaven shines upon it, it may produce a 
 rainbow to be a sacrament and a memorial that 
 God and the sons of God do not love to see a man 
 perish.* 
 
 As contrary as cruelty is to mercy, as tyranny 
 to charity, so is war and bloodshed to the meek- 
 ness and gentleness of Christian religion: and, 
 however, there are some exterminating spirits 
 who think God to delight in human sacrifices, as 
 if that Oracle — Kat /ce^aXac acr} Kal tm irarpi 
 TTc/xTrere (^a>ra, had come from the Father of Spirit, 
 yet if they were capable of cool and tame homilies, 
 or would hear men of other opinions give a quiet 
 account without invincible resolutions never to 
 alter their persuasions, I am very much persuaded 
 it would not be very hard to dispute such men 
 into mercies and compliances, and tolerations mu- 
 tual, such I say, who are zealous for Jesus Christ, 
 than whose doctrine never was any thing more 
 merciful and humane, whose lessons were softer 
 than nard, or the juice of the Candian olive. 
 
 * Sermon at the Opening of the Parliament. 
 
FROM BISHOP TAYLOR. 
 
 135 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 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 reputa- 
 tion, 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 orna- 
 ments. I pray God this may go forth into a bless- 
 ing 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, t 
 
 * Query inlaid. 
 
 t Preface to Life of Christ. 
 
136 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 SECTION II.. 
 BISHOP LATIMER. 
 
 My father wa? a yeoman, and had no lands of his own, only 
 he had a farm of three or four pounds by the year at the 
 utmost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half a dozen 
 men. He had walk for a hundred sheep ; and my mother 
 milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a 
 harness, with himself and his horse, whilst he came to the 
 place that he should receive the king's wages. I can remem- 
 ber that I buckled his harness when he went to Blackheath 
 field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to 
 have preached before the king's majesty now. 
 
 Sermon preached before the King, vol. i. 79. 
 
 HASTY JUDGMENT. 
 
 Here I have occasion to tell you a story which 
 happened at Cambridge. Master Bilney, or rather 
 Saint Bilney, that suffered death for God's word 
 sake, the same Bilney was the instrument whereby 
 God called me to knowledge, for I may thank him, 
 next to God, for that knowledge that I have in the 
 word of God. For I was as obstinate a papist as 
 any was in England, insomuch that when I should 
 be made Bachelor of Divinity, my whole oration 
 went against Philip Melancthon and against his 
 opinions. Bilney heard me at that time and per- 
 ceived that I was zealous without knowledge ; he 
 
FROM BISHOP LATIMER. 
 
 137 
 
 came to me afterward in my study and desired 
 me for God's sake to hear his confession : I did 
 so, and, to say the very truth, by his confession I 
 learned more than before in many years ; so from 
 that time forward I began to smell the word of God, 
 and forsook the school-doctors and such fooleries. 
 
 Now after I had been acquainted with him, I 
 went with him to visit the prisoners in the tower 
 at Cambridge, for he was ever visiting prisoners 
 and sick folk. So we went together, and ex- 
 horted them as well as w^e were able to do ; mind- 
 ing them to patience, and to acknowledge their 
 faults. Among other prisoners, there was a wo- 
 man which was accused that she had killed her 
 child, which act she plainly and steadfastly denied, 
 and could not be brought to confess the act ; 
 which denying gave us occasion to search for the 
 matter, and so we did, and at length we found 
 that her husband loved her not, and therefore he 
 sought means to make her out of the way. The 
 matter was thus : 
 
 A child of hers had been sick by the space of 
 a year, and so decayed as it were in a consump- 
 tion. At length it died in harvest time; she 
 went to her neighbours and other friends to desire 
 their help to prepare the child for burial ; but 
 there was nobody at home, every man was in the 
 field. The woman, in a heaviness and trouble of 
 spirit, went, and being herself alone, prepared the 
 child for burial. Her husband coming home, not 
 having great love towards her, accused her of the 
 murder, and so she was taken and brought to Cam- 
 
SELECTIONS 
 
 bridge. But as far forth as I could learn, through 
 earnest inquisition, I thought in my conscience 
 the woman v/as not guilty, all the circumstances 
 well considered. 
 
 Immediately after this, I was called to preach 
 before the king, which w^as my first Sermon that 
 1 made before his majesty, and it was done at 
 Windsor ; where his majesty after the sermon was 
 done did most familiarly talk with me in a gal- 
 lery. Now when I saw my time, I kneeled down 
 before his majesty, opening the whole matter, and 
 afterwards most humbly desired his majesty to 
 pardon that woman. For I thought in my con- 
 science she was not guilty, or else I would not for 
 all the world sue for a murderer. The king most 
 graciously heard my humble request, insomuch 
 that I had a pardon ready for her at my returning 
 homeward. In the mean season, that woman was 
 delivered of a child in the tower of Cambridge, 
 whose godfather I was, and Mistress Cheek was 
 godmother. But all that time I hid my pardon, 
 and told her nothing of it, Ojaly exhorting her to 
 confess the truth. At the length the time came 
 when she looked to suffer ; I came as I was wont 
 to do, to instruct her ; she made great moan to me. 
 So we travailed with this w^oman till we brought 
 her to a good opinion ; and at length shewed her 
 the king's pardon, and let her go. 
 
 This tale I told you by this occasion, that though 
 some women be very unnatural, and forget their 
 children, yet when we hear any body so report, 
 we should not be too hasty in believing the tale, 
 
FROM BISHOP LATIMER. 139 
 
 but rather suspend our judgments till we know the 
 truth.* 
 
 ^ CAUSE AND EFFECT. 
 
 Here now I remember an argument of Master 
 More's, which he bringeth in a book that he made 
 against Bilney, and here by the way I will tell 
 you a merry toy. Master More was once sent in 
 commission into Kent, to help to try out, if it 
 might be, what was the cause of Goodwin sands 
 and the shelf that stopped up Sandwich haven. 
 Thither cometh Master More, and calleth the 
 country before him, such as were thought to be 
 men of experience, and men that could of likbli- 
 hood best certify him of that matter, concerning 
 the stopping of Sandwich haven. Among others 
 came in before him an old man with a white head, 
 and one that was thought to be little less than a 
 hundred years old. When master More saw this 
 aged man, he thought it expedient to hear him say 
 his mind in this matter, for, being so old a man, it 
 was likely that he knew most of any man in that 
 presence and company. So Master More called 
 this old aged man unto him, and said, father, tell 
 me, if ye can, w^hat is the cause of this great rising 
 of the sands and shelves here about this haven, 
 the which stop it up, so that no ships can arrive 
 here ? Ye are the eldest man that I can espy in 
 
 Serm. xvi. vol. 1, 326, ed. 1758. 
 
140 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 all this company, so that if any man can tell any 
 cause of it, ye of likelihood can say most of it, or 
 at leastwise more than any man here assembled. 
 Yea, forsooth, ^ood Master, quoth this old man, 
 for I am well nigh a hundred years old, and no 
 man here in this company any thing near unto 
 my age. Well then, quoth Master More, how say 
 you in this matter ? What think ye to be the cause 
 of these shelves and flats that stop up Sandwich 
 haven? Forsooth, sir, quoth he, I am an old man ; 
 I think that Tenderden-steeple is the cause of 
 Goodwin sands ; for I am an old man, sir, quoth 
 he, and I may remember the building of Tender- 
 den-steeple, and I may remember when there was 
 no steeple at all there. And before that Tenderden- 
 steeple was in building, there was no manner of 
 speaking of any flats or sands that stopped the 
 haven, and therefore I think that Tenderden-steeple 
 is the cause of the destroying and decay of Sand- 
 wich haven. And so to my purpose, preaching of 
 God's word is the cause of rebellion, as Tenderden- 
 steeple was the cause that Sandwich haven is 
 decayed.* 
 
 * The subject of Cause and Effect, is of so much import- 
 ance to the regulation of our opinions, and the subject has of 
 late been so much investigated, particularly by Brown, in 
 his excellent work on Cause and Effect, that I venture to 
 subjoin six general positions upon this most interesting part 
 of science. See note III. at the end of the volume. 
 
FROM BISHOP LATIMER. 14] 
 
 CHURCH PATRONAGE. 
 
 If the men in Turkey should use in their religion 
 of Mahomet* to sell, as our patrons commonly 
 sell benefices here, the office of preaching-, the 
 office of salvation, it would be taken as an intole- 
 rable thing; the Turk would not suffer it in his 
 commonwealth. Patrons be charged to see the 
 office done, and not to seek lucre and gain by their 
 patronship. There was a patron in England, when 
 it was, that had a benefice fallen into his hand, 
 and a good brother of mine came unto him, and 
 brought him thirty apples in a dish, and gave them 
 to his man to carry them to his master : and it is 
 like he gave one to his man for his labour, to make 
 up the game, and so there was thirty-one. This 
 man cometh to his master, and presenteth him 
 with the dish of apples, saying, sir, such a man 
 hath sent you a dish of fruit, and desireth you to 
 be good unto him for such a benefice. Tush, tush, 
 quoth he, this is no apple matter : I will have 
 none of his apples, I have as good as these, or as 
 any he hath, in my own orchard. The man came 
 to the priest again, and told him what his master 
 said : then quoth the priest, desire him yet to prove 
 
 * Ricaut says. The Turks have a great regard to truth in 
 all their dealings ; and that they detest lying and deceit. 
 The Mufti of Constantinople keep no office for the sale of 
 dispensations, pardons, indulgences, the purchase of livings 
 in proviso, the praying of souls out of purgatory, and the 
 canonization of saints. 
 
H2 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 one of them for my sake, he shall find them much 
 better than they look for. He cut one of them, 
 and found ten pieces of ^old in it. Marry, quoth 
 he, this is a good apple : the priest standing* not 
 far off, hearing what the gentleman said, cried 
 out and answered, they are all one fruit, I warrant 
 you, sir : they grew all on one tree, and have all 
 one taste. Well, he is a good fellow, let him have 
 it, said the patron, &c. Get you a graft of this 
 tree, and I warrant you it will stand you in better 
 stead than all St. Paul's learning.* 
 
 CONTEMPLATION AND ACTION.f 
 
 We read a pretty story of St. Anthony, who being 
 in the wilderness, led there a very hard and strict 
 life, insomuch as none at that time did the like, 
 to whom came a voice from heaven, saying, An- 
 thony, thou art not so perfect as is a cobbler that 
 
 * Serm. ix. vol. 1, 165. ed. 1758. 
 
 t Lord Bacon is constant in his admonition of the wisdom 
 of uniting contemplation and action ; " that," he says, " will 
 indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and 
 action may be more nearly and strongly conjoined and united 
 together, than they have been; a conjunction like unto that 
 of the two highest planets, Saturn the planet of rest and 
 contemplation, and Jupiter the planet of civil society and ac- 
 tion and speaking of himself. Lord Bacon says, we judge 
 also that mankind may conceive some hopes from our ex- 
 ample, which we offer, not by way of ostentation, but because 
 it may be useful. If any one therefore should despair, let 
 hirn consider a man as much employed in civil affairs as any 
 other of his age, a man of no great share of health, who must 
 
FROM BISHOP LATIMER. 
 
 143 
 
 dwelleth at Alexandria. Anthony hearing- this, 
 rose up forthwith, and took his staff and travelled 
 till he came to Alexandria, where he found the 
 cobbler. The cobbler was astonished to see so 
 reverend a father come to his house. Then An- 
 thony said unto him, Come and tell me thy whole 
 conversation, and how thou spendest thy time ? 
 Sir, said the cobbler, as for me, good works have 
 I none, for my life is but simple and slender ; I 
 am but a poor cobbler : in the morning* when I 
 rise, I pray for the w^hole city wherein I dwell, 
 especially for all such neighbours and poor friends 
 as I have : after, I set me at my labour, where I 
 spen4 the whole day in getting my living, and I 
 keep me from all falsehood, for I hate nothing so 
 much as I do deceitfulness ; wherefore, when I 
 make any man a promise, I keep it, and perform 
 it truly; and thus I spend my time poorly, with 
 my wife and children, whom I teach and instruct, 
 as far as my wit will serve me, to fear and dread 
 God. And this is the sum of my simple life.* 
 
 therefore have lost much time, and yet, in this undertaking, 
 he is the first that leads the way, unassisted by any mortal, 
 and ste idfastly entering the true path, that was absolutely 
 untrod before, and submitting his mind to things, may some- 
 what have advanced the design." 
 
 * Serm. xxxiii. vol.2, p. 737. ed. 1758. 
 
 Amongst the reasons which Sir Thomas More assigns for 
 not having sooner published his Utopia, he has transmitted 
 to us the following family picture : — Dum foris totum ferme 
 diem aliis impertior, reliquum meis : relinquo mihi, hoc est, 
 literis nihil. Nempe reverso domum, cum uxore fabulan- 
 dum est, garriendum cum liberis, colloquendum cum minis- 
 tris. Quae ego omnia inter negotia numero, quando fieri 
 
144 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 THE SHEPHERDS. 
 
 The Nativity was revealed first to the shepherds, 
 and it was revealed unto them in the night time, 
 when every body w^as at rest, then they heard the 
 joyful tidings of the Saviour of the world : for these 
 shepherds were keeping their sheep in the night 
 season from the wolf or other beasts, and from the 
 fox. 
 
 By these shepherds all men may learn to attend 
 upon their offices, and callings: I would wish that 
 all clergymen, the curates, parsons, and vicars, 
 the bishops, and all other spiritual persons, would 
 learn this lesson by these poor shepherds ; which 
 is this, to abide by their flocks and by their sheep, 
 to tarry amongst them, to be careful over them, 
 not to run hither and thither after their own plea- 
 sure, but to tarry by their benefices and feed their 
 sheep with the food of God's word, and to keep 
 
 necesse est (necesse est autem, nisi velis esse domi tua pere- 
 grinus) et danda, omnino opera est, ut quos vitae tuae comites, 
 aut natura providit, aut fecit casus, aut ipse delegisti, his ut 
 te quam jucundissimum compares. — Mori Utopia, prcBfatiOj 
 pagina^ 4, 5. 
 
 He devoted the little time which he could spare from his 
 avocations abroad to his family, and spent it in little innocent 
 and endearing conversations with his wife and children : 
 which, though some might think them trifling amusements, 
 he placed among the necessary duties and business of life ; 
 it being incumbent on every one to make himself as agreeable 
 as possible to those whom nature has made, or he himself has 
 singled out for his companions in life. 
 
FROM BISHOP LATIMER. 
 
 145 
 
 hospitality, and so to feed them both soul and 
 body.* 
 
 And now I would ask a strange question ; who 
 is the most diligent bishop and prelate in all Engr 
 land, and passeth all the rest in doing his office ? 
 I can tell, for I know him who he is ; I know him 
 well : but now methinks I see you listening and 
 hearkening that I should name him. There is one 
 that passeth all the other, and is the most diligent 
 prelate and preacher in all England. And will ye 
 know who it is ? I will tell you : It is the devil. 
 He is the most diligent preacher of all other ; he 
 is never out of his diocess ; he is never from his 
 cure ; ye shall never find him unoccupied ; he is 
 ever in his parish ; he keepeth residence at all 
 times ; ye shall never find him out of the way, 
 call for him when ye will ; he is ever at home ; 
 the most diligent preacher in all the realm. He is 
 ever at his plough ; no lording nor loitering may 
 hinder him ; he is ever applying to his business ; 
 ye shall never find him idle, I warrant you. And 
 his office is to hinder religion, to maintain supersti- 
 tion, to set up idolatry, to teach all kind of popery. 
 He is as ready as can be wished for to set forth 
 his plough ; to devise as many ways as can be to 
 deface and obscure God's glory. Where the devil 
 is resident, and hath his plough going, there away 
 with books and up with candles ; away with Bibles 
 and up with beads; away with the light of the 
 gospel, and up with the light of candles, yea, at 
 
 * Serm. xxxv. vol. 2, p. 769, ed. 1758. 
 L 
 
146 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 noon-day. Where the devil is resident, that he 
 may prevail, up with all superstition and idolatry ; 
 censing, painting* of images, candles, palms, ashes, 
 holy water, and new service of men's inventing ; 
 as though man could invent a better way to honour 
 God with, than God himself hath appointed. Dowji 
 with Christ's cross, up with purgatory pickpurse, 
 up with popish purgatory, I mean. Away with 
 clothing the naked, the poor and impotent, up with 
 decking of images, and gay garnishing of stocks 
 and stones ; up with man's traditions and his laws, 
 down with God's will and his most holy word. 
 Down with the old honour due unto God, and up 
 with the new god's honour. Let all things be done 
 in Latin : there must be nothing but Latin, not so 
 much as, Remember man that thou art ashes, 
 and into ashes shalt thou return."* 
 
 DRESS. 
 
 We need not to cry out against Bethlehem, but 
 let us cry out on ourselves, for we are as ill in all 
 points as they were. I warrant you, there was 
 many a jolly damsel at that time in Bethlehem, 
 yet amongst them all there w^as not one found that 
 would humble herself so much as once to go see 
 poor Mary in the stable, and to comfort her. No, 
 no ; they were too fine to take so much pains. I 
 warrant you they had their bracelets, and fardin- 
 
 * Serm. iv. vol. 1, p. 32, ed. 1758. 
 
FROM BISHOP LATIMER. I47 
 
 gales, and were trimmed with all manner of fine 
 and costly raiment, like as there be many now-a- 
 days amongst us, which study nothing else but 
 how they may devise fine raiment ; and in the mean 
 season, they suffer poor Mary to lie in the stable ; 
 that is to say, the poor people of God they suffer 
 to perish for lack of necessaries.* But what was 
 her swaddling clothes wherein she laid the king 
 of heaven and earth ? no doubt it was poor gear, 
 peradventure it was her kerchief which she took 
 from her head.f 
 
 " By this shall all men know that ye are my 
 disciples if ye shall love one another.'' So that he 
 maketh love his cognizance, his badge, his livery. 
 Like as every lord most commonly giveth a certain 
 livery to his servants, whereby they may be knovvn 
 that they pertain unto him ; and so we say yonder 
 is this Lord's servants, because they wear his livery. 
 So our Saviour, who is the lord above all lords, would 
 
 * Serm. xxxii. vol. 2, p. 715, ed. 1758. 
 
 + Burnet, in his History of his Own Times, when speaking 
 of Sir H. Grimstone, says, — 
 
 *' His second wife, whom I knew, was niece to tlie great 
 Sir Francis Bacon, and was the last of that family. She had 
 all the high notions for the church and the crown, in which 
 she had been bred ; but was the humblest, and devoutest, 
 and the best tempered person I ever knew of that sort. It 
 was really a pleasure to hear her talk of religion. She did it 
 with so much elevation and force. She was always very plain 
 in her clothes. And went oft to jails to consider the wants 
 of the prisoners, and relieve, or discharge them ; and by the 
 meanness of her dress she passed but for a servant trusted 
 with the charities of others. W hen she was travelling in the 
 country, as she drew near a village, she often ordered her 
 
148 
 
 SLLECTIOXS 
 
 have his servants to be known by their liveries and 
 badge, which badge is love alone. Whosoever now 
 is indued with love and charity, is his servant ; him 
 we may call Christ's servant : for love is the token 
 whereby you know that such a servant pertaineth 
 to Christ ; so that charity may be called the very 
 livery of Christ. He that hath charity is Christ's 
 servant : he that hath not charity is the servant of 
 the devil. For like as Christ's livery is love and 
 charity, so the devirs livery is hatred, malice, and 
 discord. 
 
 RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. 
 
 St. Luke hath observants, observants ; that is, 
 watchers, tooters, spies, much like the observant 
 friars, the barefoot friars that were here ; which 
 
 coach to stay behind till she had walked about it, giving 
 orders for ihe instruction of child) en, and leaving liberally 
 for that end. With two such persons I spent several of my 
 years very happily." — Virtue,'' says Lord Bacon, is like 
 a rich stone, best plain set. Cleanliness, and the civil beauty 
 of the body was ever esteemed to proceed from a modesty of 
 behaviour, and a due reverence in the first place towards God, 
 whose creatures we are : then towards society, wherein we 
 live : then towards ourselves, whom we ought no less, nay 
 much more to revere. But adulterate decoration by painting 
 and ceruse, is well worthy the imperfections which attend it ; 
 being neither fine enough to deceive, nor handsome enough 
 to please, nor yvholesome to use. We read of Jesabel that 
 she painted her face : but there is no such report of Esther or 
 Judith." 
 
FROM BISHOP LATIMEll. 
 
 149 
 
 indeed were the bishop of Rome's spies, watchinir, 
 in every country, what was said or done against 
 him. He had it quickly by one or other of his 
 spies, they were his men altogether ; his posts, to 
 work against the regalita. In the court, in the 
 noblemen's houses, in every merchant's house, 
 those observants were spying, tooting, and looking, 
 w^atching and praying, what they might hear and 
 see, against the see of Rome. Take heed of these 
 observants.^ 
 
 I was once in examination before five or six 
 bishops, where I had much turmoiling : every week 
 thrice I came to examination, and many snares 
 and traps were laid to get something. Now God 
 knoweth I was ignorant of the law ; but that God 
 gave me answer and wisdom what I should speak. 
 It was God, indeed, for else I had never escaped 
 them. At the last I was brought forth to be ex- 
 amined, in a chamber hanged with arras, where I 
 was w^ont to be examined, but now at this time the 
 chamber was somewhat altered. For whereas 
 before there was wont ever to be a fire in the 
 chimney, now the fire was taken away, and an 
 arras hanging hanged over the chimney, and the 
 table stood near the chimney's end ; so that I stood 
 between the table and the chimney's end. There 
 was among these bishops that examined me, one 
 with whom I have been very familiar, and took 
 him for my great friend, an aged man, and he sat 
 next the table's end. Then among all other 
 
 § Serm. xli. vol. 2, p. 236, ed. 1758. 
 
150 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 questions, he put forth one, a very subtle and 
 crafty one, and such a one indeed as I could not 
 think so ^reat danger in. And when 1 should 
 make answer, I pray you. Master Latimer, saith 
 he, speak out ; I am very thick of hearing, and 
 here be many that sit far off. I marvelled at this, 
 that I was bidden to speak out, and began to mis- 
 deem, and gave an ear to the chimney. And, sir, 
 there I heard a pen walking in the chimney behind 
 the cloth. They had appointed one there to write 
 all my answers, for they made sure work that I 
 should not start from them, there was no starting 
 from them. God was my good Lord, and gave me 
 answer, I could never else have escaped it. J 
 
 At the trial of Bishop Latimer in the 76th year 
 of his age, the charge was read by the Bishop of 
 Lincoln. We object to thee, Hugh Latimer, 
 first, that thou in this University of Oxford, in the 
 year 1554, in April, May, June, July, or in some 
 one or more of them, hast affirmed, and openly de- 
 fended and maintained, and in many other times 
 and places besides, That the true and natural body 
 of Christ, after the consecration of the priest, is 
 not really present in the sacrament of the altar." 
 Whereupon Lincoln, with the other Bishops, ex- 
 horted Master Latimer again to recant and revoke 
 his errors. But on his refusal the Bishop of Lincoln 
 called aloud to Master Latimer, and bid him hearken 
 to him ; and then he pronounced on him the sen- 
 tence, and delivered him over to the secular power. 
 
 t Serm. xii, vol. 1, p, 247, ^d, 1758. 
 
FROM BISHOP LATIMER. 
 
 15] 
 
 About eight of the clock Ridley and Latimer 
 were conducted from the mayor's house to the place 
 of execution, which was a spot of ground on the 
 north side of the town over-against Baliol College. 
 In their way thither Ridley outwent Latimer some 
 way before ; but he looking back espied Latimer 
 coming after, and said to him, O, be ye there V* 
 ** Yea," said Master Latimer, have after as fast 
 as I can follow.'^ Bishop Ridley first entered the 
 lists, dressed in his episcopal habit ; and soon after, 
 Bishop Latimer, as usual, in his prison garb. 
 Master Latimer now suffered the keeper to pull off 
 his prison-garb, and then he appeared in a shroud. 
 Being ready, he fervently recommended his soul 
 to God, and then delivered himself to the execu- 
 tioner, saying to the Bishop of London these pro- 
 phetical words : We shall this day, my lord, light 
 such a candle in England, as shall never be extin- 
 guished.'* 
 
152 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 SECTION III. 
 DR. SOUTH. 
 
 Who can tell all the windings and turnings, all the depths, 
 all the hollownesses and dark corners of the mind of man ? 
 He who enters upon this scrutiny, enters into a labyrinth or 
 a wilderness, where he has no guide but chance or industry 
 to direct his enquiries or to put an end to his search. It is 
 a wilderness, in which a man may wander more than forty 
 years; a wilderness through which few have passed to the 
 promised land. Sermon on Frov. xxviii. 26. 
 
 PLEASURE. 
 
 1. In general. 
 '2. In particular. 
 
 1. Sensual compared with intellectual plea- 
 
 sure. 
 
 2. Pleasure of great place. 
 
 3. Pleasure of amusement compared with 
 
 the pleasure of industry. 
 
 4. Pleasure of meditation. 
 
 5. Pleasure of religion. 
 
 PLEASURE IN GENERAL. 
 
 Pleasure in general, is the apprehension of a 
 suitable object, suitably applied to a rightly disposed 
 faculty ; and so must be conversant both about 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 153 
 
 the faculties of the body and of the soul respec- 
 tively.* 
 
 SENSUAL COMPARED WITH INTELLECTUAL 
 PLEASURE. 
 
 The difference of which two estates consists in 
 this; that in the former the sensitive appetites 
 rule and domineer ; in the latter the supreme fa- 
 culty of the soul, called reason, sways the sceptre 
 and acts the whole man above the irregular de- 
 mands of appetite and affection. 
 
 There is no doubt, but a man while he resigns 
 himself up to the brutish guidance of sense and 
 appetite, has no relish at all for the spiritual re- 
 fined delights of a soul clarified by grace and vir- 
 tue. The pleasures of an angel can never be the 
 pleasures of a hog. But this is the thing that we 
 contend for, that a man having once advanced 
 himself to a state of superiority over the control of 
 his inferior appetites, finds an infinitely more solid 
 and sublime pleasure in the delights proper to his 
 reason, than the same person had ever conveyed 
 to him by the bare ministry of his senses. f 
 
 * Does not happiness consist in a due exercise of all our 
 faculties ? The harp in tune and properly played. 
 Strange that a harp with many strings 
 Should keep in tune so long, 
 t The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learning far 
 surpasseth all other in nature ; for, shall the pleasures of the 
 affections so exceed the senses, as much as the obtaining of 
 desire or victory exceedeth a song or a dinner ; and must 
 not, of consequence, the pleasures of the intellect or under- 
 
154 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 The change and passage from a state of nature, to 
 a state of virtue, is laborious. The ascent up the 
 
 standing exceed the pleasures of the affections? We see in 
 all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used, 
 their verdure departeth ; which sheweth well they be but 
 deceits of pleasure, and not pleasure; and that it was the 
 novelty which pleased, and not the quality : and therefore 
 we see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious prince? 
 turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but 
 satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable. 
 
 The poet that beautified the sect, that was otherwise infe- 
 rior to the rest, saith yet excellently well : It is a pleasure to 
 stand upon the shore, and to see ships tossed upon the sea : 
 a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a 
 battle, and the adventures thereof below : but no pleasure is 
 comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of truth 
 (a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always 
 clear and serene), and to see the errors, and wanderings, and 
 mists, and tempests, in the vale below ; so always that this 
 prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Cer- 
 tainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move 
 in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of 
 truth. 
 
 Nature never did betray 
 
 The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege. 
 Through all the years of this our life, to lead 
 From joy to joy : for she can so inform] 
 The mind that is within us, so impress 
 With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
 With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, 
 Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men. 
 Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all 
 The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
 Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
 Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold 
 Is full of blessings. Wordsworth. 
 Children and fools choose to please their senses rather 
 than their reason, because they still dwell within the regions 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 155 
 
 hill is hard and tedious, but the serenity and fair 
 prospect at the top, is sufficient to incite the la- 
 bour of undertaking it, and to reward it being un- 
 dertook.* 
 
 PLEASURE OF GREAT PLACE. 
 
 But to look upon those pleasures also, that have 
 a higher object than the body ; as those that spring 
 from honour and grandeur of condition ; yet we 
 shall find, that even these are not so fresh and 
 constant but the mind can nauseate them, and 
 
 of sense, and have but little residence among intellectual 
 essences. And because the needs of nature first employ the 
 sensual appetites, these being first in possession would also 
 fain retain it, and therefore for ever continue the title, and 
 perpetually fight for it ; but because the inferior faculty fight- 
 ing against the superior is no better than a rebel, and that it 
 takes reason for its enemy, it shews such actions which please 
 tl?e sense and do not please the reason to be unnatural, mon- 
 strous, and unreasonable. And it is a great disreputation to 
 the understanding of a man, to be so cozened and deceived, 
 as to choose money before a moral virtue ; to please that 
 which is common to him and beasts, rather than that part 
 which is a communication of the divine nature ; to see him 
 run after a bubble which himself hath made, and the sun 
 hath particoloured. 
 
 Against this folly christian religion opposes contempt of 
 things below, and setting our aflfections on things above. 
 
 TAYLOR'S Life of Christ, 
 
 * I shall detain you now no longer in the demonstration 
 of what we should not do, but straight conduct you to a hill 
 side, where I will point you out the right path of a virtuous 
 and noble education ; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but 
 else so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and me- 
 lodious sounds on every side, that the harp of Orpheus was not 
 more charming. — milton. 
 
156 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 quickly feel the thinness of a popular breath. Those 
 that are so fond of applause while they pursue it, 
 how little do they taste it when they have it ' like 
 lightning, it only flashes upon the face and is gone, 
 and it is well if it does not hurt the man. But for 
 greatness of place, though it is fit and necessary 
 that some persons in the world should be in love 
 with a splendid servitude, yet certainly they must 
 be much beholding to their own fancy, that they 
 can be pleased at it.* 
 
 THE PLEASURE OF AMUSEMENT COMPARED WITHTHE 
 PLEASURE FROM INDUSTRY IN OUR CALLINGS. 
 
 Nor is that man less deceived, that thinks to 
 maintain a constant tenure of pleasure, by a con- 
 tinual pursuit of sports and recreations. The most 
 
 * Men in great place are thrice servants ; servants of the 
 sovereign or state, servants of fame, and servants of business ; 
 so as they have no freedom, neither in their persons, nor in their 
 actions, nor in their times. It is a strange desire to seek power 
 and to lose liberty ; or to seek power over others and to lose 
 power over a man's self. Certainly great persons had need to 
 borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy ; for 
 if they judge by their own feeling they cannot find it ; but if 
 they think with themselves what other men think of them, and 
 that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy 
 as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary 
 within ; for they are the first that find their own griefs, though 
 they be the last that find their own faults. Certainly men in 
 great fortunes are strangers to themselves, and while they are 
 in the puzzle of business they have no time to tend their health 
 either of body or mind : *Mlli mors gravis incubat, qui notus 
 nimis omnibus, ignotus moritur sibi." — bacon. 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 157 
 
 voluptuous and loose person breathing, were he 
 but tied to follow bis hawks and his hounds, his 
 dice and his courtships every day, would find it 
 the greatest torment and calamity that could befall 
 him ; he would fly to the mines and galleys for his 
 recreation, and to the spade and the mattock for a 
 diversion from the misery of a continual uninter- 
 mitted pleasure. But, on the contrary, the provi- 
 dence of God has so ordered the course of things, 
 that there is no action, the usefulness of which has 
 made it the matter of duty and of a profession, but 
 a man may bear the continual pursuit of it, without 
 loathing and satiety. The same shop and trade, 
 that employs a man in his youth, employs him also 
 in his age. Every morning he rises fresh to his 
 hammer and anvil ;* he passes the day singing ; 
 custom has naturalized his labour to him ; his shop 
 is his element, and he cannot with any enjoyment 
 of himself live out of it.f 
 
 * See ante, 142. 
 ^ t With what hard toil, with what uneasy cares, 
 The woodpecker his scanty meal prepares : 
 Tho' small the feast that must reward his pains, 
 Sweet is that meal which honest labour gains. 
 Johnson thought the happiest life was that of a man of 
 business, with some literary pursuits for his amusement : and 
 that in general no one could be virtuous or happy, that was 
 not completely employed. ** Be not solitary ; be not idle," 
 is the conclusion of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. See;, 
 Search's Light of Nature, vol. x. where there is a chapter on 
 employment of Time. 
 
158 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 THE PLEASURE OF MEDITATION 
 
 Has been sometimes so great, so intense, so in- 
 grossing all the powers of the soul, that there has 
 been no room left for any other pleasure. Contem- 
 plation feels no hunger, nor is sensible of any thirst, 
 but of that after knowledge. How frequent and 
 exalted a pleasure did David find from his medita- 
 tion in the divine law ? all the day long it was the 
 theme of his thoughts. The affairs of state, the 
 government of his kingdom, might indeed employ, 
 but it was this only that refreshed his mind. 
 
 How short of this are the delights of the epicure ? 
 how vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the 
 eating and of the thinking man ? indeed as different 
 as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a 
 problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash. 
 
 PLEASURE OF RELIGION. 
 
 Its object is no less than the great God himself, 
 and that both in his nature and his works. For 
 the eye of reason, like that of the eagle, directs it- 
 self chiefly to the sun, to a glory that neither admits 
 of a superior, nor an equal. Religion carries the 
 soul to the study of every divine attribute. Her 
 ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths 
 are peace. f 
 
 t Serm. i- vol. 1. 
 
 It was now the middle of May, and the morning was re- 
 markably serene, when Mr. Allworthy walked forth on the 
 terrace, where the dawn opened every minute that lovely pros- 
 pect we have before described to his eye. And now, having 
 sent forth streams of light, which ascended the blue firmament 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 159 
 
 HUMAN PERFECTION : 
 
 OR ADAM IN PARADISE. 
 
 So God created man in his own image ^ in the image 
 of God created he him . 
 
 ANALYSIS OF THE SERMON. 
 
 1. The mind. 
 
 The Understanding. 
 The Will. 
 The Passions. 
 
 2. The Body. 
 
 PERFECTION IN GENERAL. 
 
 The image of God in man is that universal recti- 
 tude of all the faculties of the soul, by which they 
 stand apt and disposed to their respective offices 
 and operations. 
 
 PERFECTION OF UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 And first for its noblest faculty the understand- 
 ing: it was then sublime, clear, and aspiring, and, 
 as it were, the soul's upper region, lofty and se- 
 I'ene, free from the vapours and disturbances of 
 the inferior affections. It was the leading, con- 
 
 before him as harbingers preceding his pomp, in the full blaze 
 of his majesty, up rose the sun ; than which one object alone 
 in this lower creation could be more glorious, and that Mr. 
 Allworthy himself presented — a human being replete with 
 benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render him- 
 self most acceptable to his Creator, by doing most good to his 
 creatures. — fielding. 
 
160 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 trolling faculty; all the passions wore the colours 
 of reason; it did not so much persuade, as com- 
 mand ; it was not consul but dictator. Discourse 
 was then almost as quick as intuition ; it was 
 nimble in proposing, firm in concluding; it could 
 sooner determine than now it can dispute. Like 
 the sun it had both light and agility ; it knew no 
 rest but in motion ; no quiet but in activity. It 
 did not so properly apprehend as irradiate the ob- 
 ject ; not so much find, as make things intelligible. 
 It did arbitrate upon the several reports of sense, 
 and all the varieties of imagination ; not like a 
 drowsy judge, only hearing, but also directing 
 their verdict. In sum, it was vegete, quick, and 
 lively ; open as the day, untainted as the morn- 
 ing, full of the innocence and sprightliness of 
 youth ; it gave the soul a bright and a full view 
 into all things. 
 
 SPECULATIVE UNDERSTANDING.* 
 
 For the understanding speculative, there are some 
 general maxims and notions in the mind of man, 
 which are the rules of discourse, and the basis of 
 all philosophy. Now it was Adam's happiness in 
 the state of innocence to have these clear and un- 
 sullied. He came into the world a philosopher. 
 
 * That understanding is in a perfect state for the acquisi - 
 tion of knowledge, which is capable, at any time, to acquire 
 any sort of knowledge. The defects therefore are either, 1st. 
 An inability at particular times to acquire knowledge: or, 
 2ndly. An inability to acquire particular sorts of knowledge. 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 161 
 
 He could see consequents yet dormant in their 
 principles, and eflfects yet unborn and in the womb 
 of their causes : his understanding could almost 
 pierce into future contingents ; his conjectures im- 
 proving even to prophecy, or the certainties of 
 prediction ; till his fall it was ignorant of nothing 
 but of sin ; or at least it rested in the notion with- 
 out the smart of the experiment. Could any dif- 
 ficulty have been proposed, the resolution would 
 have been as early as the proposal ; it could not 
 have had time to settle into doubt. Like a better 
 Archimedes, the issue of all his enquiries was an 
 evprjKa an evpr]Ka, the offspring of his brain with- 
 out the sv/eat of his brow. There was then no 
 poring, no struggling with memory, no straining 
 for invention. His faculties were quick and ex- 
 pedite ; they answered without knocking-, they 
 were ready upon the first summons, there was fi'ee- 
 dom and firmness in all their operations. I con- 
 fess 'tis as difficult for us who date our ignorance 
 from our first being, and were still bred up with 
 the same infirmities abput us with which we were 
 born, to raise our thoughts and imagination to 
 those intellectual perfections that attended our na- 
 ture in the time of innocence, as it is for a peasant 
 bred up in the obscurities of a cottage, to fancy in 
 his mind the unseen splendours of a court. But 
 by rating positives by their privatives, and other 
 arts of reason, by which discourse supplies the 
 want of the reports of sense, we may collect the 
 excellency of the understanding then, by the glo- 
 rious remainders of it now, and guess at the state- 
 
 M 
 
162 SELECTIONS 
 
 liness of the building by the magnificence of its 
 ruins. And certainly that must needs have been 
 very glorious, the decays of which are so admira- 
 ble. He that is comely, when old and decrepit, 
 surely was very beautiful when he was young. 
 An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and 
 Athens but the rudiments of paradise. 
 
 PRACTICAL UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 The image of God was no less resplendent in that 
 which w^e call man's practical understanding ; 
 namely, that storehouse of the soul, in which are 
 treasured up the rules of action, and the seeds of 
 morality. Now of this sort are these maxims, 
 That God is to be worshipped.'' That parents 
 are to be honoured." ^' That a man's word is to 
 be kept." It was the privilege of Adam innocent 
 to have these notions also firm and untainted, to 
 carry his monitor in his bosom, his law in his 
 heart. His own mind taught him a due depend- 
 ence upon God, and chalked out to him the just 
 proportions, and measures of behaviour to his fel- 
 lows-creatures. Reason was his tutor, and first 
 principles his magna moralia. The decalogue of 
 Moses was but a transcript, not an original. All 
 the laws of nations and w^ise decrees of state, the 
 statutes of Solon, and the twelve tables, were but 
 a paraphrase upon this standing rectitude of na- 
 ture, this fruitful principle of Justice, that was 
 ready to run out and enlarge itself into suitable 
 determinations upon all emergent objects and oc- 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 163 
 
 casions. Justice then was neither blind to dis- 
 cern nor lame to execute. It was not subject to 
 be imposed upon by a deluded fancy, nor yet to be 
 bribed by a glozing appetite, for an utile or Jucun- 
 clum to turn the balance to a false or dishonest 
 sentence. In all its directions of the inferior 
 faculties it conveyed its su^g-estions with clearness 
 and enjoined them with power ; it had the passions 
 in perfect subjection ; and though its command 
 over them was but suasive and poUtical, yet it had 
 the force of coaction and despotical. It was not 
 then, as it is now, where the conscience has only 
 power to disapprove and to protest against the 
 exorbitances of the passions, and rather to wish, 
 than make them otherwise. The voice of con- 
 science now is low and weak, chastising the pas- 
 sions, as old Eli did his lustful domineering sons : 
 " Not so, my sons, not so but the voice of con- 
 science then was not, " This should, or this ought 
 to be done but " this must, this shall be done," 
 It spoke like a legislator : the thing spoke was a 
 law : and the manner of speaking it a new obliga- 
 tion. 
 
 PERFECTION OF THE WILL. 
 
 The will was then ductile and pliant to all the 
 motions of right reason, it met the dictates of a 
 clarified understanding half way. And the ac- 
 tive information of the intellect filling the passive 
 reception of the will, like form closing with mat- 
 ter, grew actuate into a third and distinct per- 
 
164 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 fection of practice : the understanding and will 
 never disagreed, for the proposals of the one never 
 thwarted the inclinations of the other. Yet neither 
 did the will servilely attend upon the understand- 
 ing, but as a favourite does upon his prince, where 
 the service is privilege and preferment ; or as So- 
 lomon's servants waited upon him, it admired its 
 wisdom and heard his prudent dictates and coun- 
 sels, both the direction and the reward of its obe- 
 dience. It is indeed the nature of this faculty to 
 follow a superior guide, to be drawn by the intel- 
 lect; but then it was drawn, as a triumphant 
 chariot, which at the same time both follows and 
 triumphs ; while it obeyed this it commanded the 
 other faculties. It was subordinate, not enslaved 
 to the understanding : not as a servant to a master, 
 but as a queen to her king ; who both acknow- 
 ledges a subjection, and yet retains a majesty. 
 
 LOVE. 
 
 This is the great instrument and engine of nature, 
 the bond and cement of society, the spring and 
 spirit of the universe. It is of that active, restless 
 nature, that it must of necessity exert itself : and 
 like the fire, to which it is so often compared, it 
 is not a free agent to choose whether it will heat 
 or no, but it streams forth by natural results, and 
 unavoidable emanations, so that it will fasten upon 
 an inferior, unsuitable object, rather than none at 
 all.t The soul may sooner leave off to subsist, 
 
 t Bacon in his Essay of Goodness of Nature says, "The 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 165 
 
 than to love ; and like the vine, it withers and 
 dies, if it has nothing to embrace. Now this af- 
 fection in the state of innocence was happily 
 pitched upon its right object ; it flamed up in di- 
 rect fervours of devotion to God, and in collateral 
 emissions of charity to its neighbour. It was a 
 vestal and a virgin fire, and differed as much from 
 that which usually passes by this name now-a-days, 
 as the vital heat from the burning of a fever. 
 
 HATRED. 
 
 No rancour, no hatred of our brother : an inno- 
 cent nature could hate nothing that was innocent. 
 In a word, so great is the commutation, that the 
 soul then hated only that, which now only it loves, 
 i. e. sin. 
 
 ANGER. 
 
 Anger then was like the sword of Justice, keen, 
 but innocent and righteous. It did not act like 
 fury, and then call it self-zeal. It always espoused 
 God's honour : and never kindled upon anything 
 but in order to a sacrifice. It sparkled like the 
 
 inclination to goodness is imprinted deeply in the nature of 
 man, insomuch, that if it issue not towards men, it will take 
 unto other living creatures ; as it is seen in the Turks, a 
 cruel people, who nevertheless are kind to beasts, and give 
 alms to dogs and birds j insomuch, as Busbechius reporteth a 
 Christian boy in Constantinople had like to have been stoned 
 for gagging in a waggishness a long-billed fowl. 
 
166 
 
 SELFXTIONS 
 
 coal upon the altar, with the fervours of piety, the 
 heats of devotion, the sallies and vibrations of a 
 harmless activity 4 
 
 JOY. 
 
 In the next place, for the lightsome passion of 
 joy. It was not that which now often usurps this 
 name ; that trivial, vanishing, superficial thing, 
 that only gilds the apprehension, and plays upon 
 the surface of the soul. It was not the mere 
 crackling of thorns, a sudden blaze of the spirits, 
 the exultation of a tickled fancy or a pleased ap- 
 petite. Joy was then a masculine and a severe 
 thing: the recreation of the judgment, the jubilee 
 of reason. It was the result of a real good suit- 
 ably applied. It commenced upon the solidities 
 of truth and the substance of fruition. It did not 
 run out in voice or undecent eruptions, but filled 
 the soul, as God does the universe, silently and 
 without noise. 
 
 SORROW. 
 
 And, on the other side, for sorrow. Had any 
 loss or disaster made but room for grief, it would 
 have moved according to the severe allowances of 
 prudence, and the proportions of the provocation. 
 It would not have sallied out into complaint or 
 loudness, nor spread itself upon the face, and writ 
 sad stories upon the forehead. No wringing of 
 
 t Ante, 43. 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 167 
 
 the hands ; knocking the hreast, or wishing one's 
 self unborn ; all which are but the ceremonies of 
 sorrow, the pomp and ostentation of an effeminate 
 grief: which speak not so much the greatness of 
 the misery, as the smallness of the mind. Sorrow 
 then would have been as silent as thought, as se- 
 vere as philosophy. It would have rested in in- 
 ward senses, tacit dislikes ; and the whole scene of 
 it been transacted in sad and silent reflections.! 
 
 FEAR. 
 
 It is now indeed an unhappiness, the disease of 
 the soul ; it flies from a shadow, and makes more 
 dangers than it avoids : it weakens the judgment 
 and betrays the succours of reason. It was then 
 the instrument of caution, not of anxiety ; a guard, 
 and not a torment to the breast. It fixed upon 
 him who is only to be feared — God ; and yet with 
 a filial fear, w-hich at the same time both fears and 
 loves. It was awe without amazement, dread 
 Avithout distraction. There was then a beauty 
 even in its very paleness. It was the colour of 
 devotion, giving a lustre to reverence and a gloss 
 to humility.! 
 
 THE BODY. 
 
 Adam was no less glorious in his externals ; he 
 had a beautiful body, as well as an immortal soul. 
 
 t See ante, 9. 
 
 ^ See ante, 76. 
 
168 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 The whole compound was like a well built temple, 
 stately without, and sacred within.* 
 
 GRATITUDE AND INGRATITUDE. 
 
 Gratitude is properly a virtue, disposing the 
 mind to an inward sense and an outward acknow- 
 ledgment of a benefit received, together with a 
 readiness to return the same or the like, as the 
 occasions of the doer of it shall require, and the 
 abilities of the receiver extend to. David in the 
 overflowing sense of God's goodness to him cries 
 out in the 116 Psalm, verse 12, What shall I 
 render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards 
 me ?" So the grateful person pressed down upon 
 the apprehension of any great kindness done him, 
 eases his burthened mind a little by such expostu- 
 lations with himself as these : *^ What shall I do 
 for such a friend, for such a patron, who has so 
 frankly, so generously, so unconstrainedly, relieved 
 me in such a distress ; supported me against such 
 an enemy; supplied, cherished, and upheld me, 
 
 * MINUTE ANALYSIS OF THE SERMON. 
 
 1. In General. 
 
 .1. The Under- fl. Speculative. 
 
 standing. <[ 
 2. The Will. L2. Practical. 
 
 C3 
 O 
 
 2. In Par 
 ticular. ^ 
 
 l.Mind.-<! ,1 T 
 
 f 1. Love. 
 
 j 2. Hatred. 
 
 3. The Pas- J 3. Anger. 
 
 sions. ) 4. Envy. 
 
 I 5. Sorrow. 
 
 L2. Body. F^'^'- 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 169 
 
 when relations would not know me, or at least 
 could not help me ; and, in a word, has prevented 
 my desires, and outdone my necessities ?"* Ingra- 
 titude is an insensibility of kindnesses received, 
 without any endeavour either to acknowledge or 
 repay them. Ingratitude sits on its throne, with 
 pride at its right hand and cruelty at its left, 
 worthy supporters of such a state. You may rest 
 upon this as a proposition of an eternal unfailing 
 truth, that there neither is, nor ever was any per- 
 son remarkably ungrateful, who was not also in- 
 sufferably proud ; nor, convertibly, any one proud, 
 who was not equally ungrateful. For as snakes 
 breed in dunghills not singly, but in knots, so in 
 such base noisome hearts, you shall ever see prid& 
 
 * 1 subjoin a specimen of '* gratitude,^ as taught by 
 the Moralist, the Historian, and the Poet. 
 
 THE MORALIST. 
 
 Examples of ingratitude check and discourage voluntary 
 beneficence : and in this the mischief of ingratitude consists. 
 Nor is the mischief small ; for after all is done that can be 
 done, by prescribing general rules of justice, and enforcing 
 the observation of them by penalties or compulsion, much 
 must be left to those offices of kindness, which men remain 
 at liberty to exert or withhold. — Paley's Moral Philosophy, 
 234. 
 
 THE HISTORIAN. 
 
 The father of Caius Toranius had been proscribed by the 
 triumvirate. Cains Toranius, coming over to the interests of 
 that party, discovered to the officers, who were in pursuit of 
 his father's life, the place where he concealed himself, and 
 gave them withal a description, by which they might distin- 
 guish his person, when they found him. The old man, more 
 
170 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and ingratitude indivisibly wreathed, and twisted 
 together. Ingratitude overlooks all kindnesses, 
 but it is, because pride makes it carry its head so 
 high. Ingratitude is too base to return a kind- 
 ness, and too proud to regard it ; much like the 
 tops of mountains, barren indeed, but yet lofty; 
 they produce nothing, they feed nobody, they 
 clothe nobody, yet are high and stately, and look 
 down upon all the world about them. Ingratitude 
 indeed put the poniard into Brutus's hand, but it 
 was want of compassion which thrust it into 
 Caesar's heart. Fiiendship consists properly in 
 mutual offices, and a generous strife in alternate 
 acts of kindness. But he who does a kindness to 
 an ungrateful person, sets his seal to a flint, and 
 
 anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son, than about the 
 little that might remain of his own life, began immediately 
 to enquire of the officers who seized him, whether his son 
 were well, whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of 
 his generals. That son," replied one of the officers, **so 
 dear to thy affections, betrayed thee to us ; by his informa- 
 tion thou art apprehended, and diest." The officer with this 
 struck a poniard to his heart, and the unhappy parent fell, 
 not so much affected by his fate, as by the means to which 
 he owed it. — Ibid, 8. 
 
 THE POET. 
 
 The bridegroom may forget his bride 
 
 Was made his wedded wife yestreen : 
 The monarch may forget his crown 
 
 Which on his head an hour has been ; 
 The mother may forget her child 
 
 Wha' smiles sae sweetly on her knee. 
 But I'll remember thee, Glencairn, 
 
 And all that thou hast done for me. burns. 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 171 
 
 sows his seed upon the sand : upon the former he 
 makes no impression, and from the latter he finds 
 no production. The only voice of ingratitude is, 
 g-ive, give; but Vv'hen the gift is once received, 
 then, Hke the swine at his trough, it is silent and 
 insatiable. In a word, the ungrateful person is a 
 monster, which is all throat and belly ; a kind of 
 thoroughfare or common shore, for the good things 
 of the world to pass into ; and of whom, in respect 
 of all kindnesses conferred on him, may be verified 
 that observation of the lion's den ; before which 
 appeared the footsteps of many that had gone in 
 thither, but no prints of any that ever came out 
 thence. 
 
 COVETOUSNESS. 
 
 Of covetousness we may truly say, that it makes 
 both the Alpha and Omega in the devil's alphabet, 
 and that it is the first vice in corrupt nature which 
 moves, and the last which dies. For look upon 
 any infant, and as soon as it can but move a hand, 
 we shall see it reaching out after something or 
 other w^hich it should not have ; and he who does 
 not know it to be the proper and peculiar sin of 
 old age, seems himself to have the dotage of that 
 age upon him, whether he has the years or no. 
 
 The covetous person lives as if the world were 
 made altogether for him, and not he for the world, 
 to take in every thing, and to part with nothing. 
 Charity is accounted no grace with him, nor gra- 
 titude any virtue. The cries of the poor never 
 
172 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 enter into his ears ; or if they do, he has always 
 one ear readier to let them out than the other to 
 take them in. In a word, by his rapines and ex- 
 tortions, he is always for making as many poor as 
 he can, but for relieving none, whom he either 
 finds or makes so. So that it is a question, whether 
 his heart be harder, or his fist closer. In a word, 
 he is a pest and a monster : greedier than the sea, 
 and barrenner than the shore. 
 
 SELF-DECEPTION. 
 
 From the beginning of the world, to this day, thei'e 
 was never any great villany acted by men, but it 
 was in the strength of some great fallacy put upon 
 their minds by a false representation of evil for 
 good, or good for evil. Is a man impoverished and 
 undone by the purchase of an estate ? why ; it 
 is, because he bought an imposture ; payed down 
 his money for a lie, and by the help of the best 
 and ablest counsel (forsooth) that could be had, 
 took a bad title for a good. Is a man unfortunate 
 in marriage? still it is, because he was deceived, 
 and put his neck into the snare, before he put it 
 into the yoke, and so took that for virtue and af- 
 fection, which was nothing but vice in a disguise, 
 and a devilish humour under a demure look. Is 
 he again unhappy and calamitous in his friend- 
 ships ? why : in this also, it is because he built 
 upon the air and trod upon a quicksand, and took 
 that for kindness and sincerity which was only 
 malice and design. 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 173 
 
 KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL. 
 
 The natural inability of most men to jud^^e exactly 
 of things, makes it very difficult for them to dis- 
 cern the real g-ood and evil of what comes before 
 them, to consider and weigh circumstances, to 
 scatter and look through the mists of error, and so 
 separate appearances from reality. For the greater 
 part of mankind is but slow and dull of apprehen- 
 sion ; and therefore in many cases under a neces- 
 sity of seeing with other men's eyes, and judging 
 with other men's understandings. To which their 
 want of judging or discerning abilities, we may 
 add also their want of leisure and opportunity to 
 apply their minds to such a serious and attent con- 
 sideration, as may let them into a full discovery of 
 the true goodness and evil of things, which are 
 qualities which seldom display themselves to the 
 first view : There must be leisure and retirement, 
 solitude and a sequestration of man's self from the 
 noise and toil of the world ; for truth scorns to be 
 seen by eyes too much fixed upon inferior objects. 
 It lies too deep to be fetched up with the plough, 
 and too close to be beaten out with the hammer. It 
 dwells not in shops or workhouses ; nor till the 
 late age was it ever known, that any one served 
 seven years to a smith or a tailor, that he might 
 at the end thereof, proceed master of any other 
 arts, but such as those trades taught him : and 
 much less that he should commence doctor or di- 
 
174 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 vine from the shopboard, or the anvil : or from 
 whistling to a team, come to preach to a congre- 
 gation. These were the peculiar, extraordinary 
 privileges of the late blessed times of light and in- 
 spiration : otherwise nature will still hold on its 
 old course, never doing anything which is conside- 
 rable without the assistance of its two great helps 
 — art and industry. But above all, the know- 
 ledge of what is good and what is evil, what ought 
 and what ought not to be done in the several offices 
 and relations of life, is a thing too large to be com- 
 passed, and too hard to be mastered, without brains 
 and study, parts and contemplation.* 
 
 * Such were the sentiments of South. Shakespeare, in 
 Troilus and Cressida, says, 
 
 Paris, and Troilus, yon have both said well ; 
 And on the cause and question now in hand 
 Have gloz'd, but superficially ; not much 
 Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought 
 Unfit to hear moral philosophy : 
 The reasons you allege, do more conduce 
 To the hot passion of distemper'd blood. 
 Than to make up a free determination 
 'Twixt right and wrong ; for pleasure and revenge 
 Have ears more deaf than adders to the voice 
 Of any true decision. 
 Lord Bacon, in stating the objections made by divines to 
 the advancement of learning, says, '* They urge that know- 
 ledge is of the nature and number of those things, which are 
 to be accepted with great limitation and caution ; that the 
 aspiring to overmuch knowledge was the original temptation 
 and sin, whereupon ensued the fall of man." To which 
 Lord Bacon answers, the divines do not observe and con- 
 sider, that it was not that pure and primitive kiiowledge of 
 nature, by the light whereof man did give names to other 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 175 
 
 IGNORANCE IN POWER.* 
 
 We know how great an absurdity our Saviour ac- 
 counted it for the blind to lead the blind ; and to 
 put him that cannot so much as see, to discharge 
 the office of a watch. Nothing more exposes to 
 contempt than ignorance. When Samson's eyes 
 were out, of a public magistrate he was made a 
 public sport. And when Eli was blind, we know 
 how well he governed his sons, and how well they 
 
 creatures in paradise, as they were brought before him, ac- 
 cording to their proprieties, which gave the occasion to the 
 fall ; but it was that proud knowledge of good and evil, with 
 an intent to shake off God and to give law unto himself.'* 
 
 So too, in his tract on education, he says, Is it not a wise 
 opinion of Aristotle and worthy to be regarded : J'hat young 
 men are no fit auditors of Moral philosophy, because the 
 boiling heat of their affections is not yet settled, nor attem- 
 pered with time and experience. And to speak truth, doth 
 it not hereof come that those excellent books and discourses 
 of ancient writers, (whereby they have persuaded unto virtue 
 most effectually ; representing as well her stately majesty to 
 the eyes of the world, as exposing to scorn popular opinions 
 in disgrace of virtue, attired as it were, in their parasite 
 coats) are of so little effect towards honesty of life and the 
 reformation of corrupt manners ; because they use net to be 
 read and revolved by men mature in years and judgment, 
 but are left and confined only to boys and beginners. But 
 is it not true also that young men are much less fit auditors 
 of policy than morality, till they have been thoroughly 
 seasoned with religion and the knowledge of manners and 
 duties; lest their judgments be corrupted and made apt to 
 think that there are no moral differences true and solid of 
 things ; but that all is to be valued according to utility and 
 fortune." 
 
 * Vol. i. 258. 
 
176 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 governed the church under him. But now the 
 blindness of the understanding* is greater and more 
 scandalous : especially in such a seeing age as ours ; 
 in which the very knowledge of former times passes 
 but for ignorance in a better dress ; an age that 
 flies at all learning, and enquires into every thing, 
 but especially into faults and defects. Ignorance, 
 indeed, so far as it may be resolved into natural 
 inability, is, as to men, at least, inculpable, and 
 consequently not the object of scorn, but pity ; but 
 in a governor, it cannot be without the conjunction 
 of the highest impudence ; for who bid such a one 
 aspire to teach and to govern. A blind man sitting 
 in the chimney corner is pardonable enough, but 
 sitting at the helm he is intolerable. If men will 
 be ignorant and illiterate, let them be so in private, 
 and to themselves, and not set their defects in a 
 high place, to make them visible and conspicuous. 
 If owls will not be hooted at, let them keep close 
 within the tree, and not perch upon the upper 
 boughs. Solomon built his temple with the tallest 
 cedars ; and surely when God refused the defec- 
 tive and the maimed for sacrifice, we cannot think 
 that he requires them for the priesthood. When 
 learning, abilities, and what is excellent in the 
 w^orld forsake the church, we may easily foretell 
 its ruin without the gift of prophesy. And when 
 ignorance succeeds in the place of learning, weak- 
 ness in the room of judgment, we may be sure 
 heresy and confusion will quickly come in the room 
 of religion.* 
 
 * Vol. i. 258. 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 177 
 
 VICE IN POWER. 
 
 Every rebuke of vice comes, or should come, from 
 the preacher's mouth, like a dart or arrow thrown 
 by some mig-hty hand, which does execution pro- 
 portionably to the force or impulse it received from 
 that which threw it ; so our Saviour's matchless 
 virtue, free from the least tincture of any thing 
 immoral, armed every one of his reproofs with a 
 piercing edge and an irresistible force. f We may 
 easily guess with what impatience the world would 
 have heard an incestuous Herod discoursing" of 
 
 o 
 
 chastity, a Judas condemning covetousness, or a 
 Pharisee preaching against hypocrisy. J: 
 
 THE EYE OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 That the eye of conscience may be always quick 
 and lively, let constant use be sure to keep it con- 
 stantly open, and thereby ready and prepared to 
 admit and let in those heavenly beams which are 
 always streaming forth from God upon minds fitted 
 to receive them. And to this purpose let a man fly 
 from every thing which may leave either a foulness 
 or a bias upon it ; let him dread every gross act of 
 sin ; for one great stab may as certainly and 
 speedily destroy life as forty lesser wounds. Let 
 
 t Vol. iv. 423. t See Proverbs, c. 29. 
 
178 SELECTIONS 
 
 him carry a jealous eye over every growing habit 
 of sin ; let him keep aloof from all commerce and 
 fellowship with any vicious and base affection, 
 especially from all sensuality; let him keep him- 
 self untouched with the hellish, unhallowed heats 
 of lust and the noisome steams and exhalations of 
 intemperance ; let him bear himself above that 
 soi'did and low thing-, that utter contradiction to all 
 greatness of mind — covetousness : let him disen- 
 slave himself from the pelf of the world, from that 
 " amor sceleratus habendi;*' lastly, let him leara 
 so to look upon the honours, the pomp, and great- 
 ness of the world, as to look through them. Fools 
 indeed are apt to be blown up by them and to sa- 
 crifice all for them : sometimes venturing their 
 heads only to get a feather in their caps.* 
 
 SENSUALITY. t 
 
 The wicked and sensual part of the world are only 
 concerned to find scope and room enough to wallow 
 in ; if they can but have it, whence they have it 
 troubles not their thoughts ; saying grace is no part 
 of their meal ; they feed and grovel like swine 
 under an oak, filling themselves with the mast, but 
 never so much as looking up either to the boughs 
 that bore, or the hands that shook it down. 
 
 * Vol.iii. 104. 
 
 t See ante, p. 39. 
 
FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 179 
 
 THE PROSPERITY OF FOOLS.* 
 
 Why the prosperity of fools proves destructive to 
 them, is, because prosperity has a peculiar force to 
 abate men's virtues, and to heighten their cor- 
 ruptions. Prosperity and ease upon an unsanc- 
 tified impure heart, is like the sun-beams upon a 
 dunghill, it raises many filthy, noisome exhalations. 
 The same soldiers, who in hard service, and in the 
 battle are in perfect subjection to their leaders, in 
 peace and luxury are apt to mutiny and rebel. 
 That corrupt affection which has lain, as it were, 
 dead and frozen in the midst of distracting busi- 
 nesses or under adversity, when the sun of pros- 
 
 * Bacon, in his Essay on Adversity, says, — The virtue of 
 prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, 
 which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is 
 the blessing of the Old Testament, adversity is the blessing 
 of the ISJew, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the 
 clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet even in the Old 
 Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as 
 many hearse4ike airs as carols ; and the pencil of the Holy 
 Ghost hath laboured more in describing the afflictions of Job 
 than the felicities of Solomon. Prosperity is not without 
 many fears and distastes ; and adversity is not without com- 
 fort and hopes. We see in needle works and embroideries, 
 it is more pleasing to have a lively work upon a sad and 
 solemn ground, than to have a dark and melancholy work 
 upon a lightsome ground ; judge, therefore, of the pleasure of 
 the heart by the pleasure of the eye. Certainly virtue is like 
 precious odours, most fragrant when they are incensed, or 
 crushed ; for prosperity doth best discover vice, but adversity 
 doth best discover virtue. 
 
180 SELECTIONS FROM DR. SOUTH. 
 
 perity has shined upon it, then like a snake it pre- 
 sently recovers its former strenc^th and venom.* 
 
 THE GLORY OF THE CLERGY. 
 
 God is the fountain of honour, and the conduit by 
 which he conveys it to the sons of men, are vir- 
 tues and generous practices. Some indeed may 
 please and promise themselves high matters from 
 full revenues, stately palaces, court interests, and 
 great dependances. But that which makes the 
 clergy glorious, is to be knowing in their profes- 
 sion, unspotted in their lives, active and laborious 
 in their charges, bold and resolute in opposing se- 
 ducers, and daring to look vice in the face though 
 never so potent and illustrious. And lastly, to be 
 gentle, courteous, and compassionate to all. These 
 are our robes, and our maces, our escutcheons and 
 highest titles of honour.f 
 
 * Mud walls swell when the sun shines upon them, 
 t Vol. i. 264. 
 
181 
 
 SECTION IV. 
 BISHOP HALL. 
 
 All that I can say for myself, is a desire of doing good ; 
 which if it were as fervent in richer hearts, the church, 
 which now we see comely, would then be glorious. This 
 honest ambition hath carried me to neglect the fear of seem- 
 ing prodigal of my little ; and, while I see others' talents 
 rusting in the earth, hath drawn me to traffic with mine in 
 public. 
 
 REAL AND APPARENT HAPPINESS. 
 
 We pity the folly of the lark, which while it play- 
 eth with the feather and stoopeth to the glass is 
 caught in the fowler's net ; and yet cannot see 
 ourselves alike made fools by Satan : who, deluding 
 us by the vain feathers and glasses of the world, 
 suddenly enwrappeth us in his snares. We see 
 not the nets indeed : it is too much that we shall 
 feel them, and that they are not so easily escaped 
 after, as before avoided. O Lord keep thou mine 
 eyes from beholding vanity. And, though mine 
 eyes see it, let not my heart stoop to it, but loath it 
 afar off. And, if I stoop at any time and be taken, 
 set thou my soul at liberty, that I may say, my soul 
 is escaped, even as a bird out of the snare of the 
 fowler; the snare is broken, and I am delivered.* 
 
 * Cent. ii. 25. 
 
182 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ORDER OF ATTAINING OBJECTS. 
 
 I WILL account virtue the best riches, knowledg^e 
 the next, riches the worst : and therefore will la- 
 bour to be virtuous and learned, without condition ; 
 as for riches, if they fall in my way, I refuse them 
 not ; but if not, J desire them not.* 
 
 IGNORANCE AND INTELLIGENCE. 
 
 Tell a plain country man, that the sun, or some 
 higher or lesser star is much bigg-er than his cart 
 
 * Cent. ii. 44. 
 
 Lord Bacon says, as for the true marshalling of men's 
 pursuits towards their fortune, as they are more or less ma- 
 terial, 1 hold them to stand thus; first, the amendment of 
 their own minds ; for the remove of the impediments of the 
 mind will sooner clear the passages of fortune, than the ob- 
 taining fortune will remove the impediments of the mind. 
 In the second place I set down wealth and means ; which I 
 know most men would have placed first, because of the ge- 
 neral use which, it beareth towards all variety of occasions j 
 but that opinion I may condemn with like reason as Machi- 
 avel doth that other, that moneys were the sinews of the 
 wars ; whereas, saith he, the true sinews of the wars are the 
 sinews of men's arms, that is, a valiant, populous, and mili- 
 tary nation ; and he voucheth aptly the authority of Solon, 
 who, when Croesus showed him his treasury of gold, said to 
 him, that if another came that had better iron, he would be 
 master of his gold. In like manner it may be truly affirmed 
 that it is not moneys that are the sinews of fortune, but it is 
 the sinews and steel of men's minds, wit, courage, audacity, 
 resolution, temper, industry, and the like. In the third place. 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 i'83 
 
 wheel : or at least so many scores bigger than the 
 whole earth ; he laughs thee to scorn, as affecting- 
 admiration with a learned untruth ; yet the scho- 
 lar, by the eye of reason, doth as plainly see and 
 acknowledge this truth, as that his hand is bigger 
 than his pen. What a thick mist, yea, what a pal- 
 pable and more than Egyptian darkness, doth the 
 natural man live in 1 what a world is there that 
 he doth not see at all ! and how little doth he see 
 in this, which is his proper element ! there is no 
 bodily thing, but the brute creatures see as well as 
 he, and some of them better. As for his eye of 
 reason, how dim is it in those things which are 
 best fitted to it ! what one thing is there in nature. 
 
 I set down reputation, because of the peremptory tides and 
 currents it bath ; which if they be not taken in their due time, 
 are seldom recovered, it being extreme hard to play an after 
 game of reputation. And Lastly, 1 place honour, which is 
 more easily won by any of the other three, much more by all, 
 than any of them can be purchased by honour. 
 
 He, in whom talents, genius, and principle are united, 
 will have a firm mind, in whatever embarrassment he may 
 be placed ; will look steadily at the most undefined shapes 
 of difiSculty and danger, of possible mistake or mischance : 
 nor will they appear to him more formidable than they really 
 are. For his attention is not distracted— he has but one 
 business, and that is with the object before him. Neither in 
 general conduct nor in particular emergencies are his plans 
 subservient to coitsiderations of rewards, estate, or title ; 
 these are not to have precedence in his thoughts, to govern 
 his actions, but to follow in the train of his duty. Such 
 men in ancient times, were Phocion, Epaminondas, and 
 Philopoemon ; and such a man was Sir Philip Sidney, of 
 whom it has been said, that he first taught this country the 
 majesty of honest dealing.— William Wordsworth. 
 
184 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 which he doth perfectly know? what herb or flower, 
 or w^orm that he treads on, is there whose true es- 
 sence he knoweth ! no, not so much as what is in 
 his own bosom ; what it is, where it is, or whence 
 it is, that gives being to himself. But, for those 
 things which concern the best world he doth not so 
 much as confusedly see them ; neither knoweth 
 whether they be. He sees no whit into the great 
 and awful majesty of God. He discerns him not 
 in all his creatures, filling the world with his in- 
 finite and glorious presence. He sees not his wise 
 providence, overruling all things, disposing all ca- 
 sual events, ordering all sinful actions of men to 
 his own glory.* As travellers in a foreign coun- 
 try make every sight a lesson; so ought we in 
 this our pilgrimage. Thou seest the heaven roll- 
 ing above thine head, in a constant and unmove- 
 able motion ; the stars so overlooking one another, 
 that the greatest show little, and the least greatest, 
 all glorious ; the air full of the bottles of rain, or 
 fleeces of snow, or divers forms of fiery exhala- 
 tions ; the sea, under one uniform face, full of 
 strange and monstrous shapes beneath ; the earth 
 so adorned with variety of plants, that thou canst 
 not but tread on many at once with every foot; 
 besides the store of creatures that fly above it, walk 
 upon it, live in it. Thou idle truant, dost thou 
 learn nothing of so many masters ? f 
 
 * Century ii. 82. 
 
 t Art of Divine Meditation, chap. iv. 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 185 
 
 THE HAPPY MAN, 
 
 That hath learned to read himself more than all 
 books ; and hath so taken out this lesson that he 
 can never forget it ; that knows the world, and 
 cares not for it ; that after many traverses of 
 thoughts, is grown to know what he may trust to, 
 and stands now equally armed for all events ; that 
 hath got the mastery at home, so as he can cross 
 his will without a mutiny, and so please it, that he 
 makes it not a wanton : that in earthly things 
 wishes no more than nature ; in spiritual, is ever 
 graciously ambitious ; that for his condition, stands 
 on his own feet, not needing to lean upon the great; 
 and can so frame his thoughts to his estate, that 
 when he hath least, he cannot want, because he is 
 as free from desire, as superfluity ; that he hath sea- 
 sonably broken the headstrong restiness of prospe- 
 rity, and can now manage it at pleasure. Upon 
 whom all smaller crosses light as hailstones upon a 
 roof : and for the greater calamities, he can take 
 them as tributes of life, and tokens of love ; and if 
 his ship be tossed, yet is he sure his anchor is fast. 
 If all the world were his, he could be no other than 
 he is, no whit gladder of himself, no whit higher 
 in his carriage, because he knows contentment is 
 not in the things he hath, but in the mind that 
 values them.* The powers of his resolution can 
 
 * Its no in titles nor in rank ; 
 
 Its no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 
 To purchase peace and rest ; 
 
186 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 either multiply, or substract at pleasure. He can 
 make his cottage a manor, or a palace when he 
 lists; and his homeclose a large dominion ; his 
 stained cloth, arrass ; his earth, plate; andean 
 
 Its no in making inuckle mair : 
 Its no in books : its no in lear, 
 
 To mrike us truly blest ; 
 If happiness hae not her seat 
 And centre in the breast, 
 We may be wise, or rich, or great, 
 But never can be blest : 
 
 Nae treasures, nor pleasures, 
 
 Could make us happy lang; 
 The heart ay's the part ay, 
 
 That makes us right or wrang. burns. 
 
 — In early youth among my native hills 
 I knew a Scottish peasant who possessed 
 A few small crofts of stone-encumbered ground ; 
 Masses of every shape and size, that lay 
 Scattered about beneath the mouldering walls 
 Of a rough precipice ; and some apart, 
 In quarters unobnoxious to such chance. 
 As if the moon had showered them down in spite, 
 But he repined not. Though the plough was scared 
 By these obstructions, " round the shady stones 
 A fertilizing moisture," said the swain, 
 ** Gathers, and is preserved ; and feeding dews 
 And damps, through all the droughty summer day. 
 From out their substance issuing, maintain 
 Herbage that never fails ; no grass springs up 
 " So green, so fresh, so plentiful, as mine !" 
 
 'Excursion, 4to. 240. 
 
 This truth then ought to be deeply printed in minds stu- 
 dious of wisdom and their own content, that they bear their 
 happiness or unhappiness within their breast ; and that all 
 outward things have a right and a wrong handle : he that 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 187 
 
 see state in the attendance of one servant : as one 
 that hath learned a man's greatness or baseness is 
 in himself ; and in this he may even contest with 
 the proud, that he thinks his own the best. Or if 
 
 takes them by the right handle, finds them good ; he that 
 takes them by the wrong indiscreetly, finds them evil. Take 
 a knife by the haft it will serve you, take it by the edge it 
 will cut you'. There is no good thing but is mingled with 
 evil : There is no evil but some good enters into the compo- 
 sition. The same truth holds, in all persons, actions, and 
 events. Out of the worst a well composed mind endowed 
 with the grace of God, may extract good, with no other chy- 
 mistry than piety, wisdom, and serenity. It lieth in us, as 
 we incline our minds, to be pleased or displeased with most 
 things of the world. One that has fed his eyes with the 
 rich prospect of delicate countries, as Lombardy, Anjou, 
 where all the beauties and dainties of nature are assembled, 
 will another time take no less delight in a wild and rugged 
 prospect of high bare mountains, and fifty stories of steep 
 rocks, as about the grand Chartreuse, and the bottom of Ar- 
 dennes, where the very horror contributes to the delectation. 
 If I have been delighted to see the trees of my orchard, in 
 the spring blossomed, in summer shady, in autumn hung 
 with fruit; I will delight again, after the fall of the leaf, to 
 see through my trees new prospects which the bushy boughs 
 hid before ; and will be pleased with the sight of the snow 
 candied about the branches, as the flowers of the season. — 
 
 DU MOULIN. 
 
 E'en winter bleak has charms to me 
 When winds rave thro' the naked tree ; 
 Or frosts on hills of Ochiltree 
 
 Are hoary gray ; 
 Or blinding drifts wild-furious flee, 
 
 Darkening the day. burns. 
 
 These symptoms of a rising reputation gave me encourage- 
 ment, as I was ever more disposed to see the favourable than 
 
188 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 he must be outwardly great, he can but turn the 
 other end of the g^lass, and make his stately manor 
 a low and straig^ht cottage ; and in all his costly 
 furniture he can see not richness but use. He 
 
 the unfavourable side of things, a turn of mind which it is 
 more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten 
 thousand a year. — Hume's Life of Himself, 
 
 We are not here, as those angels, celestial powers and 
 bodies, sun and moon, to finish our course without all offence, 
 with such constancy, to continue for so many ages ; but sub- 
 ject to such infirmities, miseries, interrupted, tossed and tum- 
 bled up and down, carried about with every small blast, often 
 molested and disquieted upon each slender occasion, uncer- 
 tain, brittle ; and so is all that we trust unto. And he that 
 knows not this, and is not armed to endure it, is not fit to 
 live in this world (as one condoles our time) ; he knows not 
 the condition of it, where with a reciprocal tye, pleasure and 
 pain are still united, and succeed one another in a ring. 
 
 BURTON. 
 
 Some look at the black clouds, others at the blue sky. 
 Some look through the clouds. See number 126 of the 
 World. Arachne collecting poison from the fairest flowers ; 
 and Melissa gathering honey from every weed. 
 
 THE FRENCH PEASANT. 
 
 A peasant of the true French breed 
 
 Was driving in a narrow road, 
 A cart with but one sorry steed, 
 
 And filled with onions, sav'ry load. 
 Careless he trudged along before 
 
 Singing a Gascon roundelay : 
 Hard by there ran a whimpering brook. 
 
 The road hung shelving towards the brim, 
 The spiteful wind th' advantage took, 
 
 The wheels fly up, the onions swim. 
 The peasant saw his favourite store 
 
 At one rude blast all puffed away. 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 189 
 
 can see dross in the best metal, and earth through 
 the best cloths ; and in all his troop he can see 
 .himself his own servant. He lives quietly at 
 home,* out of the noise of the world, f and loves 
 
 How would an English clown have sworn, 
 I And cursed the day that he was born, &c. 
 
 I Our Frenchman acted quite as well, 
 
 He stopped, and hardly stopped, his song, 
 First raised the poney from his swoon ; 
 . Then stood a little while to view 
 
 » His onions floating up and down ; 
 
 At last he shrugging cried, Parbleu 
 II ne manqu* ici que de sel 
 
 Pour faire du potage excellent." 
 
 See the character of Croker in Goldsmith's Good-natured 
 Man. See Goldsmith's Essay, 230. 
 
 Be not over exquisite 
 To cast the fashion of uncertain evils ; 
 For grant they be so, while they rest unknown. 
 What need a man forestall his date of grief, 
 And run to meet what he^would most avoid ? 
 Or if they be but false alarms of fear. 
 How bitter is such self-delusion ? milton. 
 * I knew a man that had health and riches and several 
 houses, all beautiful and ready furnished, and would often 
 trouble himself and family to be removing from one house to 
 another : and, being asked by a friend Why he removed 
 so often from one house to another V replied, It was to 
 find content in some one of them." "Content," said his 
 friend, ever dwells in a meek and quiet soul." — Walton's 
 Angler. 
 
 t The happiness of light minds is always in the next room ; 
 its eyes are in the ends of the earth. 
 
 The Philosopher carries with him into the world the tem- 
 per of the cloister, and preserves the fear of doing evil, while 
 he is impelled by the zeal of doing good. He is rich or poor, 
 without pride in riches, or discontent in poverty ; he partakes 
 
190 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 to enjoy himself always, and sometimes his friend, 
 and hath as full scope to his thoughts as to his 
 eyes. He walks ever even in the midway be- 
 twixt hopes and fears, resolved to fear nothing but 
 God, to hope for nothing but that which he must 
 have. He hath a wise and virtuous mind in a 
 seiTiceable body; which, that better part affects 
 
 the pleasures of sense with temperance^ and enjoys the dis- 
 tinctions of honour with moderation. He passes undefiled 
 through a polluted world, and, amidst all the vicissitudes of 
 good and evil, has his heart fixed only where true joys are to 
 be found. 
 
 Newton etoit doux, tranquille, modeste, simple, affable, 
 toujours de niveau avec tout le monde, ne se dementit point 
 pendant le cours de sa longue et brillante carriere. II auroit 
 mieux aime etre inconnu, que de voir le calme de sa vie 
 trouble par ces orages litteraires, que I'esprit et la science 
 attirent a ceux qui cherchent trop la gloire. Je me repro- 
 cherois, disoit-il, mon imprudence, de perdre une chose aussi 
 reelle que le repos, pour courir apres une ombre. 
 
 Si Descartes eut quelques foiblesses de I'humanite, il eut 
 aussi les principales vertus du philosophe. Sobre, tempe- 
 rant, ami de la liberte et de la retraite, reconnoissant, libe- 
 ral, sensible a I'amitie, tendre, compatissant, il ne connois- 
 soit que les passions douces et savoit resister aux violentes. 
 Quand on me fait oflense, disoit-il, tache d'e lever mon dme 
 $i haut^ que Voffense ne parvien7ie pas jusqu* a elle. L'ambi- 
 tion ne I'agita pas plus que la vengeance. II disoit, comme 
 Ovide ; Vivre cacht, c'est vivre heureux. 
 
 The Caliph of Bagdad, fatigued with hunting, separated 
 himself from the company, to sleep on the green bank of a 
 rivulet, which seemed by its gentle murmuring to invite him 
 to repose. — He awoke suddenly in the most acute pain. In 
 a few days after his return to the palace, his complexion be- 
 came pale and sickly, his eyes grew dim, his limbs swelled, 
 and his appetite failed, 'i'he physicians employed all their 
 art in vain ; The Angel of Death stood ready to summon 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 191 
 
 as a present servant and a future companion, so 
 cherishing his flesh, as one that would scorn to be 
 all flesh. He hath no enemies ; not for that all 
 love him, but because he knows to make a gain 
 of malice. * He is not so engaged to any earthly 
 thing that they two cannot part on even terms ; f 
 
 him. A stranger at that time in Bagdad, of great skill in 
 medicine, was summoned to the palace. The moment he 
 looked upon the eyes of the Caliph, he said, " It is the sting 
 of a lizard :" and, taking a small phial from his pocket, gave 
 the Caliph a few drops mixed with water. After the struggle 
 of an hour his patient became composed ; on the next day 
 the delirium left him ; and, before the moon had performed 
 its levolution, his colour returned and the heat of youth 
 glowed again in his veins. Henceforth, Alchaman," said 
 the Caliph, ** the palace of Bagdad is your home. My trea- 
 sury is open to you. The honours of my kingdom are at your 
 disposal." — " Generous Monarch," said Alchaman, to your 
 majesty's care in action the public welfare is entrusted, my 
 utility consists in contemplation. Permit me to return to my 
 home, where I endeavour to converse with truth and wisdom. 
 Pardon me. Sire, for saying that freedom of mind is the only 
 empire a philosopher can covet ; not from sloth, but from a 
 conviction that the life and faculties of man, at the best but 
 short and limited, cannot be more usefully employed than in 
 researches which may enlighten the world and benefit future 
 ages : and, as a knowledge of the properties of a few drops 
 of fluid has enabled me to restore a beloved monarch to his 
 people, may I retire with this grateful recollection, confirmed 
 in my opinion, that all truths partake of one common essence, 
 and, like drops of rain, which fall separately into the river, 
 mix themselves at once with the stream, and strengthen the 
 general current." 
 
 • " Did a person," said the Abbe de Ilaunci, but know 
 the value of an enemy, he would purchase him with pure 
 gold." 
 
 t See ante, p. 8. 
 
192 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 there is neither laughter in their meeting, nor in 
 their shaking hands, tears. He keeps ever the 
 best company, the God of spirits, and the spirits 
 of that God, whom he entertains continually in an 
 awful familiarity, not being hindered either with 
 too much light, or with none at all. His con- 
 science and his hands are friends, and (what devil 
 soever tempt him) will not fall out. That divine 
 part goes ever uprightly and freely, not stooping 
 under the burthen of a willing sin, not fettered 
 with the gyves of unjust scruples ; he would not, 
 if he could, run away from himself, or from God ; 
 not caring from whom he is hid so he may look 
 these two in the face. Censures and applauses 
 are passengers to him, not guests : his ear is their 
 thoroughfare, not their harbour; he hath learned 
 to fetch both his counsel and his sentence from 
 his own breast. He doth not lay weight upon his 
 own shoulders, as one that loves to torment him- 
 self with the honour of much employment ; but as 
 he makes work his game, so doth he not list to 
 make himself work. His strife is ever to redeem 
 and not to spend time. It is his trade to do good, 
 and to think of it his recreation. He hath hands 
 enough for himself and others, which are ever 
 stretched forth for beneficence, not for need. He 
 walks cheerfully the way that God hath chalked, 
 and never wishes it more wide, or more smooth. 
 Those very temptations whereby he is foiled, 
 strengthen him ; he comes forth crowned, and tri- 
 umphing out of the spiritual battles, and those 
 scars that he hath, make him beautiful. His soul 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 193 
 
 is every day dilated to receive that God in whom 
 he is, and hath attained to love himself for God, 
 and God for his own sake. His eyes stick so fast 
 in heaven, that no earthly object can remove them; 
 yea, his whole self is there before his time ; and 
 sees with Stephen, and hears with Paul, and en- 
 joys with Lazarus, the glory that he shall have ; 
 and takes possession before hand of his room 
 amongst the saints ; and these heavenly content- 
 ments have so taken him up, that now he looks 
 down displeasedly upon the earth, as the regions 
 of his sorrow and banishment; yet joying more in 
 hope than troubled with the sense of evil, he holds 
 it no great matter to live, and greatest business to 
 die : and is so well acquainted with his last guest, 
 that he fears no unkindness from him ; neither 
 makes he any other of dying, than of walking home 
 when he is abroad, or of going to bed when he is 
 weary of the day. He is well provided for both 
 worlds, and is sure of peace here, of glory here- 
 after ; and therefore hath a light heart, and a 
 cheerful face. All his fellow-creatures rejoice to 
 serve him ; his betters, the angels, love to observe 
 him ; God himself takes pleasure to converse with 
 him ; and hath sainted him before his death, and 
 in his death crowned him. 
 
 THE HYPOCRITE. 
 
 An hypocrite is the worst kind of player, by so 
 much that he acts the better part; which hath 
 always two faces, ofttimes two hearts ; that can 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 compose his forehead to sadness and gravity, while 
 he bids his heart be wanton and careless within, 
 and (in the mean time) laughs within himself to 
 think how smoothly he hath cozened the beholder. 
 In whose silent face are written the characters of 
 religion, which his tongue and gestures pronounce, 
 but his hands recant. That hath a clean face and 
 garment, with a foul soul ; whose mouth belies his 
 heart, and his fingers bely his mouth. Walking 
 early up into the city he turns into the great 
 church, and salutes one of the pillars on one knee, 
 worshipping that God which at home he cares not 
 for, while his eye is fixed on some window or some 
 passenger, and his heart knows not w'hither his 
 lips go. He rises, and, looking about with admi- 
 ration, complains of our frozen charity, commends 
 the ancient. At church he will ever sit where he 
 may be seen best, and in the midst of the sermon 
 pulls out his tables in haste, as if he feared to lose 
 that note, when he writes either his forgotten er- 
 rand, or nothing. Then he turns his Bible with a 
 noise, to seek an omitted quotation, and folds the 
 leaf as if he had found it, and asks aloud the name 
 of the preacher, and repeats it, whom he publicly 
 salutes, thanks, praises in an honest mouth. He 
 can command tears when he speaks of his youth, 
 indeed, because it is past, not because it was sin- 
 ful ; himself is now better, but the times are worse. 
 All other sins he reckons up with detestation, 
 while he loves and hides his darling in his bosom ; 
 all his speech returns to himself, and every occur- 
 rent draws in a story to his own praise. When he 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 195 
 
 should give, he looks about him, and says, Who 
 sees me ? no alms nor prayers fall from him with- 
 out a witness ; belike lest God should deny that 
 he hath received them ; and when he hath done 
 (lest the world should not know it) his own mouth 
 is his trumpet to proclaim it. With the super- 
 fluity of his usury he builds an hospital, and har- 
 bours them whom his extortion hath spoiled ; so 
 when he makes many beggars, he keeps some. 
 He turneth all gnats into camels, and cares not to 
 undo the world for a circumstance. Flesh on a 
 Friday is more abominable to him than his neigh- 
 bour's bed ; he abhors more not to uncover at the 
 name of Jesus than to swear by the name of God. 
 When a rhymer reads his poem to him, he begs a 
 copy, and persuades the press. There is nothing 
 that he dislikes in presence, that in absence he 
 censures not. He comes to the sick bed of his 
 stepmother and weeps, when he secretly fears her 
 recovery. He greets his friend in the street with 
 a clear countenance, so fast a closure, that the 
 other thinks he reads his heart in his face ; and 
 shakes hands with an indefinite invitation of When 
 will you come ? and when his back is turned, joys 
 that he is so well rid of a guest ; yet if that guest 
 • visit him unfeared, he counterfeits a smiling ^vel- 
 come and excuses his cheer, when closely he frowns 
 on his wife for too much. He shows well, and 
 says well, and himself is the worst thing he hath. 
 In brief, he is the stranger's saint, the neighbour's 
 disease, the blot of goodness, a rotten stick in a 
 dark night, the poppy in a corn field, an ill-tern- 
 
196 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 pered candle with a great snuff, that in going out 
 smells ill ; an angel abroad, a devil at home ; and 
 worse when an angel, than when a devil. 
 
 DAVID.* 
 
 David had lived obscurely in his father's house ; 
 his only care and ambition was the welfare of the 
 
 * la the preface to an edition of Horne on the Psalms by 
 the Rev. Edward Irving, there is a character of David, from 
 w^hich the following is extracted — 
 
 " Now, as the apostle, in writino-to the Hebrews, concern- 
 ing the priesthood of Christ, calls upon them to consider 
 Melchizedek his solitary majesty, and singular condition and 
 remarkable honour ; so call we upon the church to consider 
 David, the son of Jesse, his unexampled accumulation of 
 gifts, his wonderful variety of conditions, his spiritual riches 
 and his spiritual desolation, and the multifarious contingencies 
 of his life ; with his faculty, his uniivalled faculty, of expres- 
 sing the emotions of Ins soul, under all the days of brightness 
 and days of darkness which passed over his head. For 
 thereby shall the church understand how this the law -giver of 
 her devotion was prepared by God for the work which he ac- 
 complished, and how it hath happened that one man should 
 have brought forth that vast variety of experience, in which 
 every soul rejoiceth to find itself reflected. There never was a 
 specimen of manhood, so rich and ennobled as David, the 
 son of Jesse, whom other saints haply may have equalled in 
 single features of his character, but such a combination of 
 manly, heroic qualities, such a flush of generous godlike ex- 
 cellencies, hath never yet been seen embodied in a single 
 man. His psalms, to speak as a man, do place him in the 
 highest rank of lyrical poets, as they set him above all the 
 inspired writers of the old Testament, — equalling in sublimity 
 thfe flights of Isaiah himself, and revealing the cloudy mystery 
 of Ezekiel ; but in love of country, and glorying in its hea- 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 197 
 
 flock he tended ; and now while his father and his 
 brothers neglected him as fit for nothing but the 
 field, he is talked of at the court. Some of Saul's 
 
 venly patronage, surpassing them all. And where are there 
 such expressions of the varied conditions into which human 
 nature is cast by the accidents of providence, such delineations 
 of deep affliction and inconsolable anguish, and anon such joy, 
 such rapture, such revelry of emotion, in the worship of the 
 living God ! such invocations to all nature, animate and in- 
 animate, such summonings of the hidden powers of harmony, 
 and of the breathing instruments of melody ! single hymns 
 of this poet would have conferred immortality upon any mor- 
 tal, and borne down his name as one of the most favoured 
 of the sons of men. 
 
 But it is not the writings of the man which strike us with 
 such wonder, as the actions and events of his wonderful his- 
 tory. He was a hero without a peer, bold in battle and 
 generous in victory : by distress or by triumph never over- 
 come. Though hunted like a wild beast among the moun- 
 tains, and forsaken like a pelican in the wilderness, by the 
 country whose armies he had delivered from disgrace, and by 
 the monarch whose daughter he had won — whose son he had 
 bound to him with cords of brotherly love, and whose own 
 soul he was wont to charm with the sacredness of his min- 
 strelsy — he never indulged malice or revenge against his un- 
 natural enemies. Twice, at the peril of his life, he brought 
 his blood hunter within his power, and twice he spared him 
 and would not be persuaded to injure a hair upon his head, 
 — who, when he fell in his high plans, was lamented over by 
 David, with the bitterness of a son, and his death avenged 
 upon the sacriligious man who had lifted his sword against 
 the Lord's anointed. In friendship and love, and also in do- 
 mestic affection, he was not less notable than in heroical en- 
 dowments, and in piety to God he was most remarkable of all. 
 He had to flee from his bedchamber in the dead of night, his 
 friendly meetings had to be concerted upon the perilous edge of 
 captivity and death, his food lie had to seek at the risk of 
 
198 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 followers had been at Jesse's house, and taken 
 notice of David's skill ; and now, that harp which 
 he practised for his private recreation shall make 
 
 sacrilege, for a refuge from death to cast himself upon the 
 people of Gath to counterfeit idiocy, and become the laugh- 
 ing stock of his enemies. And who shall tell of his hidings 
 ^n the cave of Adullam, and of his wanderings in the wilderness 
 of Ziph : in the weariness of which he had power to stand 
 before his armed enemy with all his host, and by the genero- 
 sity of his deeds, and the affectionate language which flowed 
 from his lips, to melt into childlike weeping the obdurate 
 spirit of king Saul, which had the nerve to evoke the spirits 
 of the dead ! King David was a man extreme in all his ex- 
 cellencies, — a man of the highest strain, whether for counsel, 
 for expression, or for action, in peace and in war, in exile and 
 on the throne. That such a warm and ebullient spirit should 
 have given way before the tide of its affections, we wonder 
 not. We rather wonder that tried by such extremes his 
 mighty spirit should not often have burst control, and enacted 
 right forward the conqueror, the avenger and the destroyer. 
 But God, who anointed him from his childhood, had given him 
 store of the best natural and inspired gifts, which preserved 
 him for sinking under the long delay of his promised crown, 
 and kept him from contracting any of the craft, or cruelty of 
 a hunted persecuted man. And adversity did but bring out 
 th^ splendour of his character, which might have slumbered 
 like the fire in the flint, or the precious metal in the dull and 
 earthly ore. 
 
 Bat to conceive aright of the gracefulness and strength of 
 king David's character, we must draw him into comparison 
 with men similarly conditioned, and then we shall see how 
 vain the world is to cope with him. Conceive a man who 
 had saved his country, and clothed himself with gracefulness 
 and renown in the sight of all the people by the chivalry of 
 his deeds, won for himself intermarriage with the royal line, 
 and by unction of the Lord's prophet been set apart to the 
 throne itself ; such a one conceive driven with fury, from 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 199 
 
 him of a shepherd a courtier. The music that he 
 meant only to himself and his sheep brings him 
 before kings. 
 
 house and hold, and through tedious years, deserted of every 
 stay but heaven, with no soothing sympathies of quiet life, 
 harassed for ever betvi^een famine and the edge of the sword, 
 and kept in savage holds and deserts ; and tell us in the an- 
 nals of men, of one so disappointed, so bereaved and straitened, 
 maintaining not fortitude alone, but sweet composure and a 
 heavenly frame of soul, inditing praise to no avenging deity, 
 and couching songs in no revengeful mood, according with 
 his outcast and unsocial life ; but inditing praises to the God 
 of mercy and songf^, which soar into the third heavens of the 
 soul ; not indeed without the burst of sorrow and the com- 
 plaint of solitariness, and prophetic warnings to his blood- 
 thirsty foes, but ever closing in sweet preludes of good to come, 
 and desire of present contentment. Find us such a one in 
 the annals of men, and we yield the argument of this contro- 
 versy. Men there have been driven before the wrath of kings 
 to wander outlaws and exiles, whose musings and actings 
 have been recorded to us in the minstrelsy of our native land. 
 Draw these songs of the exile into comparison with the psalms 
 of David, and know the spirit of the man after God's own 
 heart; the stern defiance of the one, with the tranquil ac- 
 quiescence of the other ; the deep despair of the one, with 
 the rooted trust of the other ; the vindictive imprecations of the 
 one, with the tender regret and forgiveness of the other. Show 
 us an outlaw who never spoiled the country which had for- 
 saken him, nor turned his hand in self-defence or revenge upon 
 his persecutors, who used the vigour of his arm only against 
 the enemies of his country, yea lifted up his arm in behalf of 
 that mother, which had cast her son, crowned with salvation, 
 away from her bosom and held him at a distance from her 
 love, and raised the rest of her family to hunt him to the 
 death ; — in the defence of that thankless unnatural mother 
 country, find us such a repudiated son lifting up his arm, and 
 spending its vigour in smiting and utterly discomfiting her 
 
200 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 Now David hath leisure to return to Bethlehem. 
 The glory of the court cannot transport him to 
 ambitious vanity; he would rather be his father's 
 
 enemies, whose spoils he kept not to enrich himself and his ruth- 
 less followers, but dispensed to comfort her and her happier 
 children. Find us among the Themistocles, and Coriolani, 
 and Cromwells and Napoleons of the earth such a man, and 
 we will yield the argument of this controversy which we main- 
 tain for the peerless son of Jesse. 
 
 But we fear that not such another man is to be found in 
 the recorded annals of men. Though he rose from the pea- 
 santry to fill the throne, and enlarge the borders of his native 
 land; he gave himself neither to ambition nor to glory ; though 
 more basely treated than the sons of men, he gave not place 
 to despondency or revenge : though of the highest genius in 
 poetry, he gave it not license to sing his own deeds, nor to 
 depict loose and licentious life, nor to ennoble any worldly 
 sentiment or attachment of the human heart, however virtuous 
 or honourable, but constrained it to sing the praises of God, 
 and the victories of the right hand of the Lord of hosts, and his 
 admirable works which are of old from everlasting. And he 
 hath dressed out religion in such a rich end beautiful garment 
 of divine poesy as beseemeth her majesty, in which, being 
 arrayed, she can stand up before the eyes even of her enemies, 
 in more royal state than any personification of love, or glory, 
 or pleasure, to which highly gifted mortals have devoted their 
 genius. 
 
 The force of his character was vast, and the scope of his 
 life was immense. His harp was full stringed, ami every 
 angel of joy and of sorrow swept over the cords as he past ; 
 but the melody always breathed of heaven. And such oceans 
 of affection lay within his breast, as could not always slum- 
 ber in their calmness. For the hearts of a hundred men 
 strove and struggled together within the narrow continent of 
 his single heart. And will the scornful men have no sympa- 
 thy for one so conditioned, but scorn him because he ruled 
 not with constant quietness, the unruly host of divers natures 
 which dwelt within his single souH of self-command surely 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 201 
 
 shepherd, than Saul's armour-bearer ; all the mag- 
 nificence and state which he saw, could not put 
 his mouth out of the taste of a retired simplicity ; 
 yea rather he loves his hook the better since he 
 
 he will not be held deficient, who endured Saul's javelin to 
 be so often launched at him, while the people without were 
 willing to hail him king ; who endured all bodily hardships 
 and taunts of his enemies when revenge was in his hand, and 
 ruled his desperate band like a company of saints, and re- 
 strained them from their country's injury. But that he should 
 not be able to enact all characters without a fault, the simple 
 shepherd, the conquering hero, and the romantic lover ; the 
 perfect friend, the innocent outlaw, and the royal monarch ; 
 the poet, the prophet, and the regenerator of the church ; and 
 withal the man, the man of vast soul, who played not these 
 parts by turns, but was the original of them all, and wholly 
 present in them all ; oh ! that he should have fulfilled this 
 high priesthood of humanity, this universal miiastry of man- 
 hood without an error, were more than human. With the de- 
 fence of his backslidings, which he hath himself more keenly 
 scrutinized, more clearly discerned against and more bitterly 
 lamented than any of his censors, we do not charge ourselves ; 
 but if, when of these acts he became convinced, he be found 
 less true to God, and to righteousness; indisposed to repent- 
 ance and sorrow and anguish ; exculpatory of himself; stout- 
 hearted in his courses, a formalist in his penitence, or in any 
 way less worthy of a spiritual man in those than in the rest 
 of his infinite moods, then, verily strike him from the canon, 
 and let his psalms become monkish legends, or what you 
 please. But if these penitential psalms discover the soul's 
 deepest hell of agony, and lay bare the iron ribs of misery, 
 whereon the very heart dissolveth, and if they, expressing the 
 same in words, which melt the soul that conceiveth, and bow 
 the head that uttereth them, then, we say, let us keep these 
 records of the psalmist's grief and despondency, as the most 
 precious of his utterances, and sure to be needed in the case 
 of every man who es?ayeth to live a spiritual life, &c. 
 
202 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 saw the court ; and now his brethren serve Saul 
 in his stead. Forty days together had the Philis- 
 tines and Israelites faced each other, nothing but a 
 valley was betwixt them. Both stand upon defence 
 and advantage ; if they had not meant to fight, 
 they had never drawn so near; and if they had 
 been eager to fight, a valley could not have parted 
 them. David hath now lain long enough close 
 amongst his flock in the field of Bethlehem ; God 
 sees a time to send him to the pitched field of 
 Israel. Good old Jesse, that was doubtless joyful 
 to think that he had afforded three sons to the wars 
 of his king, is no less careful of their welfare and 
 provision ; and who, amongst all the rest of his 
 seven sons, shall be picked out for this service, but 
 his youngest son David, whose former and almost 
 worn out acquaintance in the court and employment 
 under §^aul, seemed to fit him best for this employ- 
 ment. E^ly in the morning is David upon his 
 way ; yet not so early as to leave his flock unpro- 
 vided. If his father*s commands dismiss him, yet 
 will he stay till he have trusted his sheep with a 
 careful keeper. Ere David's -speed can bring him 
 to the valley of Elah, both the armies are on foot 
 ready to join. He takes not this excuse to stay 
 without, as a man daunted with the horrors of war ; 
 but leaving his present with his servant, he thrusts 
 himself into the thickest of the host, and salutes 
 his brethren which were now thinking of nothing 
 but killing or dying, when the proud champion of 
 the Philistines comes stalking forth before all the 
 troops, and renews his insolent challenge against 
 Israel. David sees the man and hears his defi- 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 203 
 
 ance, and looks about him to see what answer 
 would be given ; and when he espies nothing but 
 pale faces and backs turned, he wonders, not so 
 much that one man should dare all Israel, as that 
 all Israel should run from one man. Even when 
 they fly from Goliath, they talk of the reward 
 that should be given to that encounter and victory 
 which they dare not undertake ; so those which 
 have not grace to believe, yet can say, There is 
 glory laid up for the faithful.'^ 
 
 Ever since his anointing was David possessed 
 with God's spirit, and thereby filled both with 
 courage and wisdom : the more strange doth it 
 seem to him, that all Israel should be thus das- 
 tardly ; ready to undertake the quarrel, because no 
 man else dare do it. His eyes sparkled with holy 
 anger, and his heart rose up to his mouth when he 
 heard this proud challenger ; " Who is this uncir- 
 cumcised Philistine that he should revile the host 
 of the living God V . It was for his brethren's 
 sake, that David came thither ; and yet his very 
 journey is cast upon him by them, for a reproach ; 
 
 Wherefore camesfcthou down hither and when 
 their bitterness can meet with nothing else to 
 shame him, his sheep are cast in* his teeth : Is it 
 for thee, an idle proud boy, to be meddling' with 
 our martial matters ? Doth not yonder champion 
 look as if he were a fit match for thee ? What 
 makest thou of thyself, or what dost thou think of 
 us ? I wis it were fitter for thee to be looking to 
 thy sheep than looking to Goliath : the wilderness 
 would become thee better than the field ; wherein 
 art thou equal to any man thou seest, but in arro- 
 
204 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 gance and presumption ? The pastures of Bethle- 
 hem could not hold thee, but thou though test it a 
 goodly matter to see the wars ; I know thee, as if 
 I were in thy bosom ; this was thy thought, 
 * There is no glory to be got among fleeces, I will 
 go seek it in arms ; now are my brethren winning 
 honour in the troops of Israel, while I am basely 
 tending on sheep ; why should not I be as forward 
 as the best of them V This vanity would make thee 
 straight of a shepherd, a soldier, a champion : get 
 thee home, foolish stripling, to thy hook and thy 
 harp : let swords and spears alone to those that 
 know how to use them/* 
 
 David's first victory is of himself ; next, of his 
 brother ; he overcomes himself, in a patient for- 
 bearance of his brother ; he overcomes the mali- 
 cious rage of his brother with the mildness of his 
 answer. There now lieth the great defier of Israel, 
 grovelling and grinning in death : and is not suf- 
 fered to deal one blow for his life : and bites the 
 unwelcome earth for indignation that he dies by 
 the hand of a shepherd. 
 
 THE PLEASURE OF STUDY AND CON- 
 TEMPLATION.* 
 
 I CAN wonder at nothing more than how a man 
 can be idle ; but of all others, a scholar ; in so 
 
 * From his Epistle to Mr. Milward. A discourse of the 
 pleasure of study and contemplation, with the varieties of 
 scholarlike employments, not without incitation of others 
 thereunto ; and a censure of their neglect. 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 205 
 
 many improvements of reason, in such sweetness 
 of knowledge, in such variety of studies, in such 
 importunity of thoughts : other artizans do but 
 practise, we still learn ; others run still in the same 
 gyre to weariness, to satiety; our choice is infi- 
 nite ; other labours require recreations ; our very 
 labour recreates our sports ; we can never want 
 either somewhat to do, or somewhat that we would 
 do. How numberless are the volumes which men 
 have written of arts, of tongues ! How endless is 
 that volume which God hath written of the world ! 
 wherein every creature is a letter ; every day a 
 new page. Who can be weary of either of these ? 
 To find wit in poetry ; in philosophy, profound- 
 ness ; in mathematics, acuteness ; in history, won- 
 der of events ; in oratory, sweet eloquence ; in 
 divinity, supernatural light, and holy devotion ; as 
 so many rich metals in their proper mines ; whom 
 would it not ravish with delight ? After all these, 
 let us but open our eyes, we cannot look beside a 
 lesson, in this universal book of our Maker, worth 
 our study, worth taking out. What creature hath 
 not his miracle ? w^hat event doth not challenge 
 his observation ? And, if, weary of foreign em- 
 ployment, we list to look home into ourselves, there 
 we find a more private world of thoughts which set 
 us on work anew% more busily and not less pro- 
 fitably : now our silence is vocal, our solitariness 
 popular ; and we are shut up, to do good unto 
 many ; if once we be cloyed with our own com- 
 pany, the door of conference is open ; here in- 
 terchange of discourse (besides pleasure) benefits 
 
206 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 us; and he is a weak companion from whom we 
 return not wiser. I could envy, if I could believe 
 that anchoret, who, secluded from the world, and 
 pent up in his voluntary prison walls, denied that 
 he thought the day long*, whiles yet he wanted 
 learning to vary his thoughts. Not to be cloyed 
 with the same conceit is difficult, above human 
 strength ; but to a man so furnished with all sorts 
 of knowledge, that according to his dispositions he 
 can change his studies, I should wonder that ever 
 the sun should seem to pass slowly. How many 
 busy tongues chase away good hours in pleasant 
 chat, and complain of the haste of night ! What 
 ingenious mind can be sooner weary of talking with 
 learned authors, the most harmless and sweetest 
 companions ? What a heaven lives a scholar in, 
 that at once in one close room can daily converse 
 with all the glorious martyrs and fathers ? that can 
 single out at pleasure, either sententious Tertullian, 
 or grave Cyprian, or resolute Hierome, or flowing 
 Chrysostome, or divine Ambrose, or devout Ber- 
 nard, or, (who alone is all these) heavenly Augus- 
 tine, and talk with them and hear their wise and 
 holy counsels, verdicts, resolutions ; yea, (to rise 
 higher) with courtly Esay, with learned Paul, with 
 all their fellow-prophets, apostles ; yet more, like 
 another Moses, with God himself, in them both ? 
 Let the world contemn us ; while we have these 
 dehghts we cannot envy them ; we cannot wish 
 ourselves other than we are. Besides, the way to 
 all other contentments is troublesome ; the only 
 recompense is in the end. To delve in the mines, 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 207 
 
 to scorch in the fire for the getting, for the fining 
 of gold is a slavish toil; the comfort is in the 
 wedge to the owner, not the labourers ; where our 
 very search of knowledge is delightsome. Study 
 itself is our life ; from which we would not be 
 barred for a world. How much sweeter then is 
 the fruit of study, the conscience of knowledge ? 
 In comparison whereof the soul that hath once 
 tasted it, easily contemns all human comforts. Go 
 now, ye worldlings, and insult over our paleness, 
 our neediness, our neglect. Ye could not be so 
 jocund -if you were not ignorant ; if you did not 
 want knowledge, you could not overlook him that 
 hath it ; for me, I am so far from emulating you, 
 that I profess I had as lieve be a brute beast, as 
 an ignorant rich man. How is it then, that those 
 gallants, which have privilege of blood and birth, 
 and better education, do so scornfully turn off these 
 most manly, reasonable, noble exercises of scholar- 
 ship ? a hawk becomes their fist better than a 
 book ; no dog but is a better company : any thing 
 or nothing, rather than what we ought. O minds 
 brutishly sensual ! Do they think that God made 
 them for disport, who even in his paradise, would 
 not allow pleasure without work ? And if for bu- 
 siness, either of body or mind : those of the body 
 are commonly servile, like itself. The mind there- 
 fore, the mind only, that honourable and divine 
 part, is fittest to be employed of those which would 
 reach to the highest perfection of men, and would 
 be more than the most. And what work is there 
 of the mind but the trade of a scholar, study? 
 
208 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 Let me therefore fasten this problem on our school 
 gates, and challenge all comers, in the defence of 
 it ; that no scholar, cannot but be truly noble. 
 And if I make it not good let me never be admitted 
 further then to the subject of our question. Thus 
 we do well to congratulate to ourselves our own 
 happiness ; if others will come to us, it shall be our 
 comfort, but more theirs ; if not, it is enough that 
 W'e can joy in ourselves, and in him in whom we 
 are that we are. 
 
 HOW A DAY SHOULD BE SPENT.* 
 FROM AN EPISTLE TO MY LORD DENNY. 
 
 Every day is a little life : and our whole is but a 
 day repeated : whence it is that old Jacob num- 
 bers his life by days, and Moses desires to be taught 
 this point of holy arithmetic, to number not his 
 years, but his days.- Those therefore that dare 
 lose a day, are dangerously prodigal ; those that 
 dare mispend it, desperate. We can best teach 
 others by ourselves ; let me tell your lordship, how 
 I would pass my days, whether common or sacred ; 
 that you (or whosoever others, overhearing me) 
 may either approve my thriftiness, or correct my 
 errors : to whom is the account of my hours more 
 due, or more known. All days are his, who gave 
 time a beginning and continuance ; yet some he 
 hath made ours, not to command, but to use. 
 
 * David vi. Epist. 1. 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 209 
 
 In none may we forget him ; in some we must 
 forget all, besides him. First, therefore, I desire 
 to awake at those hours, not when I will, but when 
 I must ; pleasure is not a fit rule for rest, but health ; 
 neither do I consult so much with the sun, as mine 
 own necessity, whether of body or in that of the mind. 
 If this vassal could well serve me waking, it should 
 never sleep ; but now it must be pleased, that it must 
 be serviceable. Now when sleep is rather driven 
 away than leaves me, I would ever awake with 
 God ; my first thoughts are for him, who hath made 
 the night for rest, and the day for travel ; and as 
 he gives, so blesses both.* If my heart be early 
 seasoned with his presence, it will savour of him 
 all day after. While my body is dressing, not with 
 an effeminate curiosity, nor yet with rude neglect ; 
 my mind addresses itself to her ensuing task, be- 
 thinking what is to be done, and in what order ; 
 and marshalling (as it may) my hours with my 
 work ; that done, after some whiles meditation, I 
 walk up to my masters and companions, my books ; 
 and sitting down amongst them, with the best con- 
 tentment, I dare not reach forth my hand to salute 
 
 * See Bishop Taylor's rules in his Holy Living for em- 
 ploying our time. — *' Tn the morning, when you awake, ac- 
 custom yourself to think first upon God, or something in order 
 to his service ; and at night also let him close thine eyes, and 
 let your sleep be necessary and healthful, not idle and expen- 
 sive of time, beyond t he needs and conveniences of nature ; 
 and sometimes be curious to see the preparation which the sun 
 makes, when he is coming forth from his chambers of the 
 east." 
 
210 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 any of them, till I have first looked up to heaven, and 
 craved favour of him to whom all my studies are 
 duly referred : without whom, I can neither profit, 
 nor labour. After this, out of no over great variety, 
 I call forth those which may best fit my occasions ; 
 wherein I am not too scrupulous of age ; sometimes 
 I put myself to school, to one of those ancients, 
 whom the church hath honoured with the name of 
 Fathers; whose volumes I confess not to open, 
 without a sacred reverence of their holiness and 
 gravity ; sometimes to those later doctors, which 
 want nothing but age to make them classical ; 
 always to God's book. That day is lost, whereof 
 some hours are not improved in those divine monu- 
 ments : others I turn over out of choice : these out 
 of duty. Ere I can have sate unto weariness, my 
 family, having now overcome all household dis- 
 tractions, invites me to our common devotions ; not 
 without some short preparation. These heartily 
 performed, send me up with a more strong and 
 cheerful appetite to my former work, which I find 
 made easy to me by intermission, and variety; 
 now therefore can I deceive the hours with change 
 of pleasures, that is, of labours. One while mine 
 eyes are busied, another w^hile my hand, and some- 
 times my mind takes the burthen from them both ; 
 wherein I would imitate the skilfullest cooks, which 
 make the best dishes with manifold mixtures ; one 
 hour is spent in textual divinity, another in contro- 
 versy ; histories relieve them both. Now, when 
 the mind is weary of other labours, it begins to un- 
 dertake her own ; sometimes it meditates and winds 
 
PROM BISHOP HALL. 
 
 211 
 
 up for future use ; sometimes it lays forth her con- 
 ceits into present discourse ; sometimes for itself, 
 ofter for others. Neither know 1 whether it works 
 or plays in these thoughts ; I am sure no sport hath 
 more pleasure, no work more use : only the decay 
 of a weak body makes me think these delights in- 
 sensibly laborious. Thus could I all day (as ringers 
 use) make myself music with changes, and com- 
 plain sooner of the day for shortness, than of the 
 business for toil; were it not that this faint moni- 
 tor interrupts me still in the midst of my busy 
 pleasures, and inforces me both to respite and re- 
 past ; I must yield to both ; while my body and 
 mind are joined together in unequal couples, the 
 better must follow the weaker. Before my meals, 
 therefore, and after, I let myself loose from all 
 thoughts ; and now, would forget that I ever 
 studied ; a full mind takes away the body's appetite 
 no less than a full body makes a dull and unwieldy 
 mind; company, discourse, recreations, are now 
 seasonable and welcome: these prepare me for a diet, 
 not gluttonous, but medicinal ; the palate may not 
 be pleased, but the stomach ; nor that for its own 
 sake ; neither would I think any of these comforts 
 worth respect in themselves but in their use, in their 
 end ; so far as they may enable me to better things. 
 If I see any dish to tempt my palate, 1 fear a ser- 
 pent in that apple, and would please myself in a 
 wilful denial ; 1 rise capable of more, not desirous ; 
 not now immediately from my trencher to my book ; 
 but after some intermission. Moderate speed is a 
 sure help to all proceedings ; where those things 
 
212 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 which are prosecuted with violence of endeavour 
 or desire, either succeed not, or continue not. 
 
 After my later meal, my thoughts are slight; 
 only my memory may be charged with her task, of 
 recalling what was committed to her custody in 
 the day ; and my heart is busy in examining my 
 hands and mouth, and all other senses, of that day's 
 behaviour. And now the evening is come, no trades- 
 man doth more carefully take in his wares, clear 
 his shopboard, and shut his windows, than I would 
 shut up my thoughts, and clear my mind. That 
 student shall live miserably, which like a camel lies 
 down under his burden. All this done, calling 
 together my family, w^e end the day with God.* 
 Thus do we rather drive away the time before us, 
 than follow it. I grant neither is my practice 
 w^orthy to be exemplary, neither are our callings 
 proportionable. The lives of a nobleman, of a 
 courtier, of a scholar, of a citizen, of a countryman, 
 differ no less than their dispositions ; yet must all 
 conspire in honest labour. 
 
 * Fuller, in his Life of Lord Burleigh, says, — No man 
 was more pleasant and merry at meals \ and he had a pretty 
 wit-rack in himself to make the dumb to speak, to draw speech 
 out of the most sullen and silent guest at his table, to show 
 his disposition in any point he should propound. For fo- 
 reign intelligence, though he traded sometimes on the stock of 
 Secretary Walsingham, yet wanted he not a plentiful bank of 
 his own. At night when he put off his gown he used to say 
 * Lie there, Lord Treasurer,' and bidding adieu to all state 
 affairs, disposed himself to his quiet rest." 
 
 Bacon, in his Essay on Health, says, To be free-minded 
 and cheerfully disposed at hours of meat, and sleep, and of 
 exercise, is one of the best precepts of long lasting." 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL. 213 
 
 Sweet is the destiny of all trades, whether of 
 the brows, or of the mind. God never allowed any 
 man to do nothing. How miserable is the condi- 
 tion of those men, which spend the time as if it were 
 given them, and not lent; as if hours w^ere waste 
 creatures, and such as never should be accounted 
 for ; as if God would take this for a good bill of 
 reckoning : Item, spent upon my pleasures forty 
 years ! These men shall once find, that no blood 
 can privilege idleness ; and that nothing is more 
 precious to God, than that which they desire to 
 cast away, time. Such are my common days ; 
 but God's day calls for another respect. The same 
 sun arises on this day, and enlightens it ; yet be- 
 cause that Sun of Righteousness arose upon it, and 
 gave a new life unto the world in it, and drew the 
 strength of God's moral precept unto it, therefore 
 justly do we sing with the psalmist; This is the 
 day which the Lord hath made. Now I forget the 
 w^orld, and in a sort myself ; and deal with my 
 wonted thoughts, as great men use, who, at some- 
 
 See, in the Sentimental Journey, the anecdote of ''The 
 Grace," which concludes thus : — '* I thought I beheld Reli- 
 gion mixing in the dance, but as I had never seen her so en- 
 gaged, I should have looked upon it now, as one of the illu- 
 sions of an imagination which is eternally misleading me, 
 had not the old man, as soon as the dance was ended, said, 
 that this was their constant way, and that all his life long he 
 had made it a rule, after supper was over, to call out his 
 family to dance and rejoice, believing, he said, that a cheer- 
 ful and contented mind was the best sort of thanks to heaven 
 that an illiterate peasant could pay. Or a learned prelate 
 either, said I." 
 
214 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 times of their privacy, forbid the access of all 
 suitors. Prayer, meditation, reading, hearing, 
 preaching, singing, good conference, are- the bu- 
 sinesses of this day, which I dare not bestow on 
 any work, or pleasure, but heavenly. 
 
 I hate superstition on the one side, and looseness 
 on the other ; but I find it hard to offend in too 
 much devotion, easy in profaneness. The whole 
 week is sanctified by this day ;* and according to 
 
 * See Burnetts Life of Sir M. Hale, where he says, " he 
 divided himself between the duties of religion, and the 
 studies of his profession; in the former he was so regular, 
 that for six and thirty years time, he never once failed going 
 to church on the Lord's day ; he took a strict account of his 
 time, of which the reader will best judge, by the scheme he 
 drew for a diary. It is set down in the same simplicity in 
 which he writ it for his own private use. 
 
 MORNING. — To lift up my heart to God in thankfulness for 
 renewing my life. 
 
 EVENING. — Cast up the accounts of the day. If aught amiss, 
 beg pardon. Gather resolution of more vigilance. If well, 
 bless the mercy and grace of God that hath supported thee. 
 
 Locke, in his Conduct of the Understanding, says, Be- 
 sides his particular calling for the support of his life, every 
 one has a concern in a future life, which he is bound to look 
 after. This engages his thoughts in religion ; and here it 
 mightily lies upon him to understand and reason right. Men 
 therefore cannot be excused from understanding the words, 
 and framing the general notions relating to religion right. 
 The one day of seven, besides other days of rest, allows in 
 the christian world time enough for this (had they no other 
 idle hours) if they would but make use of these vacancies 
 from their daily labour, and apply themselves to an improve- 
 ment of knov^ledge, with as much diligence as they often do 
 to a great many other things that aie useless. 
 
FROM BISHOP HALL, 
 
 215 
 
 my care of this, is my blessing on the rest. I 
 show your lordship what I would do, and what I 
 oug'ht ; I commit my desires to the imitation of 
 the weak ; my actions to the censures of the wise 
 and holy ; my weaknesses to the pardon and re- 
 dress of my merciful God. 
 
 OLD AGE. 
 
 Our infancy is full of folly : youth, of disorder 
 and toil ; age, of infirinity. Each time hath his 
 burden; and that which may justly work our wea- 
 riness : yet infancy longeth after youth ; and youth 
 after more age ; and he, that is very old, as he is 
 a child for simplicity, so he would be for years. I 
 account old age the best of the three ; partly, for 
 that it hath passed through the folly and disorder 
 of the others ; partly, for that the inconveniences 
 of this are but bodily, with a bettered estate of the 
 mind ; and partly, for that it is nearest to dissolu- 
 tion. There is nothing more miserable, than an 
 old man that w^ould be young again. It was an 
 answer worthy the commendations of Petrarch : 
 and that, which argued a mind truly philosophical 
 of him, who, when his friend bemoaned his age 
 appearing in his white temples, telling him he was 
 sorry to see him look so old, replied, Nay, be 
 sorry rather, that ever I was young, to be a fool." 
 
216 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 SECTION VI. 
 DR. BARROW. 
 
 If a man lack wisdom, let him ask it of God, who giveth 
 freely. Therefore, O everlasting wisdom, the maker, re- 
 deemer, and governor of all things, let some comfortable 
 beams from thy great body of heavenly light descend upon 
 us, to illuminate our dark minds and quicken our dead hearts ; 
 to inflame us with ardent love unto thee, and to direct our 
 steps in obedience to thy laws through the gloomy shades of 
 this world into that region of eternal light and bliss where 
 thou reignest in perfect glory and majesty, one God ever- 
 blessed, world without end. Amen. 
 
 KNOWLEDGE IS A SOURCE OF DELIGHT.* 
 
 Wisdom of itself is delectable and satisfactory, as 
 it implies a revelation of truth and a detection of 
 error to us. Tis like light, pleasant to behold, 
 casting a sprightly lustre, and diffusing a benign 
 influence all about ; presenting a goodly prospect 
 of things to the eyes of our mind ; displaying ob- 
 jects in their due shapes, postures, magnitudes, and 
 colours ; quickening our spirits with a comfortable 
 warmth, and disposing our minds to a cheerful ac- 
 tivity ; dispelling the darkness of ignorance, scat- 
 tering the mists of doubt, driving away the spectres 
 of delusive fancy ; mitigating the cold of sullen 
 
 * Sermon i. p. 1. 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 217 
 
 melancholy ; discovering obstacles, securing pro- 
 gress, and making the passages of life clear, open, 
 and pleasant. We are all naturally endowed with 
 a strong appetite to know, to see, to pursue truth ; 
 and with a bashful abhorrency from being deceived 
 and entangled in mistake. And as success in 
 enquiry after truth affords matter of joy and tri- 
 umph ; so being conscious of error and miscarriage 
 therein, is attended with shame and sorrow. These 
 desires wisdom in the most perfect manner satis- 
 fies, not by entertaining us with dry, empty, fruit- 
 less theories upon mean and vulgar subjects ; but 
 by enriching our minds with excellent and useful 
 knowledge, directed to the noblest objects, and 
 serviceable to the highest ends. * 
 
 * Bacon, in enumerating the advantages of knowledge, 
 says, 1. It relieves man's afflictions. 2. It promotes public 
 virtue and order. 3. It promotes private virtues, by hu- 
 manizing, humbling, nullifying vain admiration, improving. 
 3. It is power. 4. The pleasure of knowledge far ex- 
 ceedeth all other pleasures ; for, shall the pleasures of the 
 affections so exceed the senses, as much as the obtaining of 
 desire or victory exceedeth a song or a dinner ; and must 
 not, of consequence, the pleasures of the intellect or under- 
 standing exceed the pleasures of the affections'? We see in 
 all other pleasures there is satiety, and after they be used, 
 their verdure deparleth ; which sheweth well they be but 
 deceits of pleasure, and not pleasures ; and that it was the 
 novelty which pleased, and not the quality ; and therefore we 
 see that voluptuous men turn friars, and ambitious princes 
 turn melancholy. But of knowledge there is no satiety, but 
 satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangeable; and 
 therefore appeareth to be good in itself simply, without fal- 
 lacy or accident. Neitlier is that pleasure of small efficacy 
 
213 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 WISDOM SELECTS TRUE PLEASURES. 
 
 Wisdom is exceedingly pleasant and peaceable ; 
 in general, by disposing us to acquire and to enjoy 
 all the good delight and happiness we are capable 
 of; and by freeing us from all the inconveniences, 
 mischiefs, and infelicities our condition is subject 
 to. For whatever good from clear understanding, 
 deliberate advice, sagacious foresight, stable reso- 
 lution, dexterous address, right intention, and or- 
 derly proceeding doth naturally result, wisdom 
 Confers : whatever evil blind ignorance, false pre- 
 sumption, unw^ary credulity, precipitate rashness, 
 unsteady purpose, ill contrivance, backwardness, 
 inability, unwieldiness and confusion of thought 
 beget, wisdom prevents. From a thousand snares 
 and treacherous allurements, from innumerable 
 rocks and dangerous surprises, from exceedingly 
 
 and contentment to the mind of man, which the poet Lucre- 
 tius describeth elegantly, 
 
 ** Suave mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis/' &c. 
 
 ** It is a view of delight/' saith he, " to stand or walk 
 upon the shore side, and to see a ship tossed with tempest 
 upon the sea : or to be in a fortified tower, and to see two 
 battles join upon a plain ; but it is a pleasure incomparable, 
 for the mind of man to be settled, landed, and fortified in the 
 certainty of truth, and from thence to descry and behold the 
 errors, perturbations, labours, and wanderings up and down 
 of other men." So always, that this prospect be with pity, 
 and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon 
 earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in provi- 
 dence, and turn upon the poles of truth." 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 219 
 
 many needless incumbrances and vexatious toils of 
 fruitless endeavours she redeems and secures us. 
 
 Wisdom instructs us to examine, compare, and 
 rightly to value the objects that court our affec- 
 tions and challenge our care ! and thereby regu- 
 lates our passions and moderates our endeavours, 
 which begets a pleasant serenity and peaceable 
 tranquillity of mind. For when being deluded with 
 false shows, and relying upon ill-grounded pre- 
 sumptions, we highly esteem, passionately affect, 
 and eagerly pursue things of little worth in them- 
 selves or concernment to us ; as we unhand- 
 somely prostitute our affections, and prodigally 
 misspend our time, and vainly lose our labour, so 
 the event not answering our expectation, our minds 
 thereby are confounded, disturbed, and distem- 
 pered. But, when guided by right reason, we 
 conceive great esteem of, and zealously are enam- 
 oured witli, and vigorously strive to attain things 
 of excellent worth and w^eighty consequence, the 
 conscience of having well placed our affections 
 and well employed our pains, and the experience 
 of fruits corresponding to our hopes, ravishes our 
 minds with unexpressible content. And so it is : 
 preseAt appearance and vulgar conceit ordinarily 
 impose upon our fancies, disguising things with a 
 deceitful varnish, and representing those that are 
 vainest with the greatest advantage ; whilst the 
 noblest objects, being of a more subtle and spiritual 
 nature, like fairest jewels enclosed in a homely 
 box, avoid the notice of gross sense, and pass un- 
 discerned by us. But the light of wisdom, as it 
 
220 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 unmasks specious imposture and bereaves it of its 
 false colours, so it penetrates into the retirements 
 of true excellency and reveals its genuine lustre.* 
 
 KNOWLEDGE AVOIDS THE MISERY TO 
 WHICH IGNORANCE IS EXPOSED, f 
 
 Wisdom makes all the troubles, griefs, and pains 
 incident to life, whether casual adversities, or na- 
 tural afflictions, easy and supportable, by rightly 
 valuing the importance and moderating the in- 
 fluence of them; It suffers not busy fancy to alter 
 the nature, amplify the degree, or extend the 
 duration of them, by representing them more sad, 
 heavy, and remediless than they truly are. It 
 allows them no force beyond what naturally and 
 necessarily they have, nor contributes nourish- 
 ment to their increase. It keeps them at a due 
 distance, not permitting them to encroach upon 
 the soul, or to propagate their influence beyond 
 their proper sphere. X 
 
 * Wisdom doth balance in her scales those true and false 
 pleasures which do equally invite the senses : and rejecting 
 all such as have no solid value or lasting refreshment, doth 
 select and take to her bosom those delights that, proving 
 immortal, do seem to smell and taste of that paradise from 
 which they sprung. Like the wise husbandman who, taking 
 the rough grain which carries in its heart the bread to sustain 
 life, doth trample under foot the gay and idle flowers which 
 many times destroy it. — A. M. 
 
 t Serm. i. p. 2. 
 
 t Ignorance can shake strong sinews with idle thoughts, 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 221 
 
 HONOURING GOD.* 
 
 God is honoured by a willing* and careful practice 
 of all piety and virtue for conscience' sake, or an 
 avowed obedience to his holy will. This is the 
 most natural expression of our reverence towards 
 him, and the most effectual way of promoting^ the 
 
 and sink brave hearts with light sorrows, and doth lead in- 
 nocent feet to impure dens, and haunts the simple rustic with 
 credulous fears, and the swart Indian with that more potent 
 magic, under which spell he pines and dies. And by igno- 
 rance is a man fast bound from childhood to the grave, till 
 knowledge, which is the revelation of good and evil, doth set 
 him free.— A. M. 
 
 Knowledge mitigates the fear of death and adverse for- 
 tune ; for, if a man be deeply imbued with the contempla- 
 tion of mortality and the corruptible nature of all tilings, he 
 will easily concur with Epictetus, who went forth one day 
 and saw a woman weeping for her pitcher of earth that was 
 broken ; and went forth the next day and saw a woman 
 weeping for her son that was dead : and thereupon said, 
 " Heri vidi fragilem frangi ; hodie vidi mortalem mori." 
 And therefore Virgil did excellently and profoundly couple 
 the knowledge of causes and the conquest of all fears as 
 concomitant : 
 
 Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, 
 Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum 
 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. 
 
 BACON. 
 
 Near to the Hartz Mountains in Germany, a gigantic 
 figure has from time immemorial occasionally appeared in 
 the heavens. It is indistinct, but always resembles the 
 form of a human being. Its appearance has ever been a 
 certain indication of approaching misfortune. It is called 
 * Sermon iv. p. 34. 
 
222 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 same in others. A subject cannot better demon- 
 strate the reverence he bears towards his prince, 
 than by (with a cheerful diligence ) observing his 
 laws ; for by so doing he declares that he acknow- 
 ledgeth the authority, and revereth the majesty 
 which enacted them ; that he approves the wisdom 
 which devised them, and the goodness which de- 
 
 the Spectre of the Broken. It has been seen by many tra- 
 vellers. In speaking of it, Monsieur Jordan says, " In the 
 course of my repeated tours through the Hartz Mountains, 
 I often, but in vain, ascended the Broken, that I might see 
 the spectre. At length, on a serene morning, as the sun was 
 just appearing aboVe the horizon, it stood before me, at a 
 great distance, towards the opposite mountain. It seemed to 
 be the gigantic figure of a man. It vanished in a moment.'^ 
 In September, 1796, the celebrated Abbe Haiiy visited this 
 country. He says : " After having ascended the mountain 
 for thirty times, I at last saw the spectre. It was just at sun- 
 rise, in the middle of the month of May, about four o'clock 
 in the morning. I saw distinctly a human figure of a mon* 
 strous size. The atmosphere was quite serene towards the 
 east. In the south-west a high wind carried before it some 
 light vapours, which were scarcely condensed into clouds 
 and hung round the mountains upon which the figure stood. 
 I bowed. The colossal figure repeated it. I paid my re- 
 spects a second time, which was returned with the same 
 civility. I then called the landlord of the inn ; and having 
 taken the same position which I had before occupied, we 
 looked towards the mountain, when we clearly saw two such 
 colossal figures, which, after having repeated our compliment 
 by bending their bodies, vanished. — When the rising sun 
 throws his rays over the Broken upon the body of a man stand- 
 ing opposite to fleecy clouds, let him fix his eye steadfastly 
 upon them, and in all probability he will see his own shadow 
 extending the length of five or six hundred feet, at the dis- 
 tance of about two miles from him." 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 223 
 
 signed them for public benefit ; that he dreads his 
 prince's power, which can maintain them, and his 
 justice, which will vindicate them : that here lies 
 upon his fidelity in making good what of protec- 
 tion or of recompense he propounds to the obser- 
 vers of them. No less pregnant a signification of 
 our reverence towards God, do we yield in our 
 gladly and strictly obeying his laws : thereby ev^i- 
 dencing our submission to God's sovereign autho- 
 rity, our esteem of his wisdom and goodness, our 
 awful regard to his power and justice, our confi- 
 dence in him, and dependence upon his word. The 
 goodliness to the sight, the pleasantness to the 
 taste, which is ever perceptible in those fruits 
 which genuine piety beareth, the beauty men see 
 in a calm mind and a sober conversation, the sweet- 
 ness they taste from works of justice and charity, 
 will certainly produce veneration to the doctrine 
 which teacheth such things, and to the authority 
 which enjoins them. We shall especially honour 
 God, by discharging faithfully those offices which 
 God hath intrusted us with ; by improving dili- 
 gently those talents which God hath committed to 
 us ; by using carefully those means and opportu- 
 nities which God hath vouchsafed us of doing him 
 service and promoting his glory. Thus he to 
 whom God hath given wealth, if he expend it, not 
 to the nourishment of pride and luxury, not only to 
 the gratifying his own pleasure or humour, but to 
 the furtherance of God's honour, or to the succour 
 of his indigent neighbour, in any pious or charit- 
 able way, he doth thereby in a special manner ho- 
 
224 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 nour God. He also on whom God hath bestowed 
 wit and parts, if he employ them not so much in 
 contriving projects to advance his own petty in- 
 terests, or in procuring vain applause to himself, 
 as in advantageously setting forth God's praise, 
 handsomely recommending goodness, dexterously 
 engaging men in ways of virtue, he doth thereby 
 remarkably honour God. He likewise that hath 
 honour conferred upon him, if he subordinate it to 
 God's honour, if he use his own credit as an in- 
 strument of bringing credit to goodness, thereby 
 adorning and illustrating piety, he by so doing 
 doth eminently practise this duty. 
 
 EFFECT OF EXAMPLE. 
 
 What extreme advantage great persons have, espe- 
 cially by the influence of their practice, to bring 
 God himself, as it were, into credit ! how much it 
 is in their power easily to render piety a thing in 
 fashion and request ! for in what they do they 
 never are alone, or are ill attended ; whither they 
 go, they carry the world along with them ; they 
 lead crowds of people after them, as well when 
 they go in the right way, as when they run astray. 
 The custom of living well, no less than other modes 
 and garbs, will be soon conveyed and propagated 
 from the court ; the city and country will readily 
 draw good manners thence, good manners truly so 
 called, not only superficial forms of civility, but 
 real practices of goodness. For the main body of 
 
FROM DR. BARROAV. 
 
 225 
 
 men g-oeth not qua eundem, sed qua itur/' not 
 according' to rules and reasons, but after exam- 
 ples and authorities ; especially of great persons, 
 who are like stars, shining in high and con- 
 spicuous places, by which men steer their course ; 
 their actions are to be reckoned not as single or 
 solitary ones, but are, like their persons, of a pub- 
 lic and representative nature, involving the prac- 
 tice of others, who are by them awed, or shamed 
 into compliance. Their ^ood example especially 
 hath this advantage, that men can find no excuse, 
 can have no pretence why they should not follow 
 it. Piety is not only beautified, but fortified by 
 their dignity ; it not only shines on them with a 
 clear lustre, but with a mightier force and influ- 
 ence ; a word, a look, the least intimation from 
 them will do more good, than others' best elo- 
 quence, clearest reason, most earnest endeavours. 
 For it is in them, if they would apply themselves 
 to it, as the wisest prince implies, to " scatter ini- 
 quity with their eyes.'^ A smile of theirs were 
 able to enliven virtue, and diffuse it all about ; a 
 frown might suffice to ^mortify and dissipate wick- 
 edness. Such apparently is their power of ho- 
 nouring God ; and in proportion thereto surely 
 great is their obligation to do it; of them pecu- 
 liarly God expects it, and all equity exacts it. 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ON PIETY.* 
 
 Is a man prosperous, high, or wealthy in condition ? 
 Piety guardeth him from all the mischiefs incident 
 to that state, and disposeth him to enjoy the best 
 advantages thereof. It keepeth him from being 
 swelled and puffed up with vain conceit, from being 
 transported with fond complaisance or confidence 
 therein ; minding him that it is purely the gift of 
 God, that it absolutely dependeth on his disposal, 
 so that it inay soon be taken from him, and that 
 he cannot otherwise than by humility, by gratitude, 
 by the good use of it, be secure to retain it ; mind- 
 ing him also, that he shall assuredly be forced to 
 render a strict account concerning the good man- 
 agement thereof. It preserveth him from being- 
 perverted or corrupted with the temptations to 
 which that condition is most liable ; from luxury, 
 from sloth, from stupidity, from forgetfulness of 
 God, and of himself ; maintaining among the floods 
 of plenty a sober and steady mind. It fenceth him 
 from insolence, and fastuous contempt of others ; 
 
 * Serm, xi. p. 12. 
 
 In the Profitableness of Goodness, the object of which is 
 to prove that piety, — 
 
 1st. It disposes all men properly to discharge their pecu - 
 
 liar duties. 
 2nd. Fits men for all conditions. 
 3rd. Is the greatest of all blessings. 
 4th. Is immutable. 
 The above extract is from art. 2. 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 227 
 
 rendereth him civil, condescensive, kind and help- 
 ful to those who are in a meaner state. It in- 
 structeth and inciteth him to apply his wealth and 
 power to the best uses, to the service of God, to 
 the benefit of his neighbour for his own best re- 
 putation, and most solid comfort. It is the right 
 ballast of prosperity, the only antidote for all the 
 inconveniences of wealth ; that which secureth, 
 sweeteneth and sanctifieth all other goods : with- 
 out it all apparent goods are very noxious, or ex- 
 tremely dangerous ; riches, power, honour, ease, 
 pleasure, are so many poisons or so many snares 
 without it. Again, is a man poor and low in the 
 world ? Piety doth improve and sweeten even that 
 state ; it keepeth his spirits up above dejection, 
 desperation, and disconsolateness : it freeth him 
 from all grievous solicitude and anxiety : shewing 
 him, that although he seemeth to have little, yet 
 he may be assured to want nothing, he having a 
 certain succour, and never-failing supply from 
 God's good Providence ; that notwithstanding the 
 present straitness of his condition, or scantiness 
 of outward things, he hath a title to goods infi- 
 nitely more precious and more considerable. A 
 pious man cannot but apprehend himself like the 
 child of a most wealthy, kind, and careful father, 
 who although he hath yet nothing in his own pos- 
 session, or passing under his name, yet is assured 
 that he can never come into any want of what is 
 needful to him : the Lord of all things (who hath 
 all things in heaven and earth at his disposal, who 
 is infinitely tender of his children's good, who doth 
 
228 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 incessantly watch over them) being- bis g^racious 
 Father, how can be fear to be left destitute, or not 
 to be competently provided for, as is truly best for 
 him ? What if a man seem very poor; if be be 
 abundantly satisfied in his own possessions and 
 enjoyments ? what if he tasteth not the pleasures 
 of sense ; if he enjoy etb purer and sweeter de- 
 lights of mind ? what if tempests of fortune sur- 
 round him ; if his mind be calm and serene ? what 
 if we have few or no friends ; if he yet be tho- 
 roughly in peace and amity with himself^ and can 
 delightfully converse with his own thoughts ? what 
 if men slight, censure, or revile him ; if he doth 
 value bis own state, doth approve his own actions, 
 doth acquit himself of blame in his own con- 
 science ? such external contingencies can surely 
 no more prejudice a man's real happiness, than 
 winds blustering abroad can harm or trouble him 
 that abideth in a good room within doors, than 
 storms and fluctuations at sea can molest him who 
 standeth firm upon the shore.* 
 
 PLEASURES OF PIETY. 
 
 What have we to do but to eat and drink, like 
 horses or like swine ; but to sport and play like 
 children or apes ; but to bicker and scufile about 
 trifles and impertinences, like idiots ? what, but to 
 
 * Page 21. 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 229 
 
 scrape and scramble for useless pelf; to hunt after 
 empty shows and shadows of honour, or the vain 
 fancies and dreams of men ? what but to wallow 
 or bask in sordid pleasures, the which soon de- 
 generate into remorse and bitterness ? to which sort 
 of employments were a man confined, what a pitiful 
 thing would he be, and how inconsiderable were 
 his life ? were a man designed only, like a fly, to 
 buzz about here for a time, sucking in the air and 
 licking the dew, then soon to vanish back into 
 nothing, or to be transformed into worms ; how 
 sorry and despicable a thing were he ? and such 
 without religion we should be. But it supplieth 
 us with business of a most worthy nature, and lofty 
 importance ; it setteth us upon doing things great 
 and noble as can be ; it engageth us to free our 
 minds from all fond conceits, and cleanse our hearts 
 from all corrupt alfections ; to curb our brutish 
 appetites, to tame our wild passions, to correct our 
 perverse inclinations, to conform the dispositions 
 of our soul, and the actions of our life to the eternal 
 laws of righteousness and goodness ; it putteth us 
 upon the imitation of God, and aiming at the re- 
 semblance of his perfections; upon obtaining a 
 friendship, and maintaining a correspondence with 
 the High and Holy One ; upon fitting our minds 
 for conversation and society with the wisest and 
 purest spirits above ; upon providing for an im- 
 mortal state ; upon the acquist of joy and glory 
 everlasting. It employeth us in the divinest actions 
 of promoting virtue, of performing beneficence, of 
 serving the public, and doing good to all ; the being 
 
230 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 exercised in which things doth indeed render a 
 man highly considerable, and his life excellently 
 valuable.* 
 
 DUTY OF THANKSGIVING. t 
 
 Wherever we direct our eyes, whether we reflect 
 them inward upon ourselves, we behold his good- 
 ness to occupy and penetrate the very root and 
 centre of our beings ; or extend them abroad to- 
 ward the things about us, we may perceive our- 
 selves enclosed wholly, and surrounded with his 
 benefits. At home we find a comely body framed 
 by his curious artifice, various organs fitly propor- 
 tioned, situated and tempered for strength, orna- 
 ment, and motion, actuated by a gentle heat, and 
 invigorated with lively spirits, disposed to health, 
 and qualified for a long endurance ; subservient to 
 a soul endued with divers senses, faculties, and 
 powers, apt to enquire after, pursue and perceive 
 various delights and contents. Or when we con- 
 template the wonderful works of nature, and, walk- 
 ing about at our leisure, gaze upon this ample 
 theatre of the world, considering the stately beauty, 
 constant order, and sumptuous furniture thereof ; 
 the glorious splendour and uniform motion of the 
 heavens ; the pleasant fertility of the earth ; the 
 curious figure and fragrant sweetness of plants ; 
 the exquisite franxe of animals, and all other ama- 
 
 ''^ Seim. iii. p. 25. 
 
 t Vol. 1, Serm. viii. p. 71, 79, 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 9.31 
 
 zing miracles of nature, wherein the glorious at- 
 tributes of God (especially his transcendent good- 
 ness) are most conspicuously displayed ; (so that 
 by them not only large acknowledgments, but even 
 congratulatory hymns, as it were, of praise, have 
 been extorted^from the mouths of Aristotle, Pliny, 
 Galen, and such like men, never suspected guilty 
 of an excessive devotion;) then should our hearts 
 be affected with thankful sense, and our lips break 
 forth into his praise. 
 
 WIT. 
 
 To the question what the thing we speak of is, or 
 what this facetiousness doth import ? I might reply 
 as Democritus did to him that asked the definition 
 of a Man, Tis that which we all see and know : 
 any one better apprehends what it is by acquaint- 
 ance, than I can inform him by description. It is 
 indeed a thing so versatile and multiform, appear- 
 ing in so many shapes, so many postures, so many 
 garbs, so variously apprehended by several eyes 
 and judgments, that it seemeth no less hard to 
 settle a clear and certain notion thereof, than to 
 make a portrait of Proteus, or to define the figure 
 of a fleeting air. Sometimes it lieth in pat allusion 
 to a known story, or in seasonable application of 
 a trivial saying, or in forging an apposite tale ; 
 sometimes it playeth in words and phrases, taking 
 advantage from the ambiguity of their sense, or 
 the affinity of their sound : sometimes it is wrapped 
 
232 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 in a dress of humorous expression ; sometimes it 
 lurketh under an odd similitude ; sometimes it is 
 lodged in a sly question, in a smart answer, in a 
 quirkish reason, in a shrewd intimation, in cun- 
 ningly diverting", or cleverly retorting an objection : 
 sometimes it is couched in a bold scheme of speech, 
 in a tart irony, in a lusty hyperbole, in a startling 
 metaphor, in a plausible reconciling of contradic- 
 tions, or in acute nonsense : sometimes a scenical 
 representation of persons or things, a counterfeit 
 speech, a mimical look or gesture passeth for it : 
 sometimes an affected simplicity, sometimes a pre- 
 sumptuous bluntness, giveth it being : sometimes 
 it riseth from a lucky hitting upon what is strange, 
 sometimes from a crafty wresting obvious matter 
 to the purpose : often it consisteth in one knows 
 not what, and springeth up one can hardly tell 
 how. Its ways are unaccountable and inexplica- 
 ble, being answerable to the numberless rovings 
 of fancy and windings of language. It is, in short, 
 a manner of speaking out of the simple and plain 
 way (such as reason teacheth and proveth things 
 by), which by a pretty surprising uncouth ness in 
 conceit or expression doth affect and amuse the 
 fancy, stirring in it some wonder, and breeding 
 some delight thereto.* 
 
 * Serm. xiv. Against Foolish Talking and Jesting. 
 
 Is not all laughter the sign of a sudden agreeable sensa- 
 tion, subject, therefore, to an infinite variety, according as 
 our sources of pleasure var\ ? 
 
FROM DR. BAUROW. 
 
 233 
 
 THE BEE AND THE SPIDER.* 
 
 An honest and charitable mind disposes us, when 
 we see any man endued with good quahties and 
 pursuing" a tenour of good practice, to esteem such 
 a person, to commend him, to interpret what he 
 doeth to the best, not to suspect any ill of him, or 
 to seek any exception against him ; it inclineth 
 us, w^hen we see any action materially good, to 
 yield it with simple due approbation and praise, 
 without searching for, or surmising any defect in 
 the cause or principle, whence it cometh, in the 
 design or end to which it tendeth, in the way or 
 manner of performing it. A good man would be 
 sorry to have any good thing spoiled : as to find 
 a crack in a fair building, a flaw in a fine jewel, a 
 canker in a goodly flower, is grievous to any in- 
 different man ; so would it be displeasing to him 
 to observe defects in a worthy person, or commend- 
 able action ; he therefore will not easily entertain 
 a suspicion of any such, he never will hunt for any. 
 But on the contrary, 'tis the propei'ty of a de- 
 tractor, when he seeth a worthy person, whom he 
 doth not affect, or whom he is concerned to wrong, 
 to survey him thoroughly, and to sift all his actions, 
 with intent to descry some faihng, or any sem- 
 blance of a fault, by which he may disparage him; 
 when he vieweth any good action, he peereth into 
 
 * Serm. xix. Against Detraction, p. 191. 
 
234 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 it, labouring to espy some pretence, to derogate 
 from the commendation apparently belonging to it. 
 
 As good nature, and ingenuous disposition in- 
 cline men to . observe, like, and commend what 
 appeareth best in our neighbour ; so malignity of 
 temper and heart promoteth to espy, and catch at 
 the worst: one, as a bee, gathereth honey out of 
 any herb ; the other, as a spider, sucketh poison 
 out of the sweetest flower.* 
 
 CHARITY. 
 
 Is any man fallen into disgrace ? Charity doth hold 
 down its head, is abashed and out of countenance, 
 partaking of his shame ; is any man disappointed 
 of his hopes or endeavours ? charity crieth out 
 
 * Bacoji, in his Essay on Goodness of Nature, says. 
 Neither is there only a habit of goodness directed by right 
 reason ; but there is in some men, even in nature, a dispo- 
 sition towards it ; as, on the other side, there is a malignity ; 
 for there be that in their nature do not afFect the good of 
 others. The lighter sort of malignity turneth but to a cross- 
 ness, or forwardness, or aptness to oppose, or difficileness, 
 or the like ; but the deeper sort to envy, and mere mischief. 
 Such men in other men's calamities, are, as it were, in season, 
 and are ever on the loading part : not so good as the dogs 
 that licked Lazarus' sores, but like flies that are Still buzzing 
 upon any thing that is raw ; misanthropi, that make it their 
 practice to bring men to the bough, and yet have never a 
 tree for the purpose in a garden, as Timon had: such dis- 
 positions are the very errors of human nature, and yet they 
 are the fittest timber to make great politics of ; like to knee 
 timber, that is good for ships that are ordained to be tossed, 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 235 
 
 Alas, as if it were itself defeated : is any man af- 
 flicted with pain or sickness? charity looketh sadly, 
 it sigheth and groaneth, it fainteth and languish- 
 eth with him. Is any man pinched with hard 
 want? charity, if it cannot succour, it will condole. 
 Doth ill news arrive ? charity doth hear it with an 
 unwilling ear, and a sad heart, although not par- 
 ticularly concerned in it. The sight of a wreck at 
 sea, of a field spread with carcases, of a country 
 desolated, of houses burnt and cities ruined, and 
 of the like calamities incident to mankind, would 
 touch the bowels of any man ; but the very report 
 of them would affect the heart of charity.* 
 
 but not for building houses that shall stand firm. The parts 
 and signs of goodness are many. If a man be gracious and 
 courteous to strangers, it shews he is a citizen of the world, 
 and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but 
 a continent that joins to them ;' if he be compassionate to- 
 wards the afflictions of others, it shews that his heart is like 
 the noble tree that is wounded itself when it gives the balm ; 
 if he easily pardons and remits offences, it shews that his 
 mind is planted above injuries, so that he cannot be shot; if 
 he be thankful for small benefits, it shews that he weighs 
 men's minds, and not their trash. 
 
 Does not detraction originate in the common observation 
 that " the censure of othera is a tacit approbation of our- 
 selves!" 
 
 Is not the spirit of detraction peculiar to narrow minds, to 
 wisdom in its oWn conceit T 
 
 * Vol. T. Serm. xxvii. Nature, &c. of Charity, p. 257. 
 
236 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 CONCORD AND DISCORD * 
 
 Flow good and pleasant a thing it is (as David 
 saith) for brethren (and so we are all at least by 
 nature) to live together in unity. How that (as 
 Solomon saith) better is a dry morsel, and quiet- 
 ness therewith, than a house full of sacrifices with 
 strife. How delicious that conversation is, which 
 is accompanied with mutual confidence, freedom, 
 courtesy, and complaisance; how calm the mind, 
 how composed the affections, how serene the coun- 
 tenance, how melodious the voice, how sweet the 
 sleep, how contentful the whole life is of him that 
 neither deviseth mischief against others, nor sus- 
 pects any to be contrived against himself; and 
 contrariwise, how ungrateful and loathsome a thing 
 it is to abide in a state of enmity, wrath, dissen- 
 sion : having the thoughts distracted with solici- 
 tous care, anxious suspicion, envious regret; the 
 heart boiling with choler, the face overclouded 
 with discontent, the tongue jarring and out of tune, 
 the ears filled with discordant noises of contra- 
 diction, clamour and reproach ; the whole frame of 
 body and soul distempered and disturbed with the 
 worst of passions. How much more comfortable 
 it is to walk in smooth and even paths than to 
 wander in rugged ways, overgrown with briers, ob- 
 structed with rubs, and beset with snares, to sail 
 steadily in a quiet, than to be tossed in a tempes- 
 
 * Vol. 1. Serm.xxx. p. 297-9. 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 237 
 
 tuous sea; to behold the lovely face of heaven 
 smiling" with a cheerful serenity, than to see it 
 frowning with clouds, or raging with storms ; to 
 hear harmonious consents, than dissonant jang- 
 lings ; to see objects correspondent in graceful 
 symmetry, than lying disorderly in confused heaps; 
 to be in health, and have the natural humours 
 consent in moderate temper, than (as it happens in 
 diseases) agitated with tumultuous commotions : 
 how all senses and faculties of man unanimously 
 rejoice in those emblems of peace, order, harmony, 
 and proportion. Yea, how nature universally de- 
 lights in a quiet stability or undisturbed progress 
 of motion ; the beauty, strength, and vigour, of 
 every thing requires a concurrence of force, co- 
 operation, and contribution of help ; all things 
 thrive and flourish by communicating reciprocal 
 aid, and the world subsists by a friendly conspiracy 
 of its parts ; and especially that political society of 
 men chiefly aims at peace as its end, depends on it 
 as its cause, relies on it for its support. How much 
 a peaceful state resembles heaven, into which nei- 
 ther complaint, pain, nor clamour, (ovrrj irevdoQ, 
 ovre TTovoQ, ovre Kpavyri, as it is in the Apocalypse) 
 do ever enter ; but blessed souls converse together 
 in perfect love, and in perpetual concord ; and 
 how a condition of enmity represents the state of 
 hell, that black and dismal region of dark hatred, 
 fiery wrath, and horrible tumult.* How like a 
 
 * Is it not the nature of virtue to unite, of vice and igno- 
 rance, like death, to decompose ? 
 
238 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 paradise the world would be, flourishing in joy and 
 rest, if men would cheerfully conspire in affection, 
 and helpfully contribute to each other's content : 
 and how like a savage wilderness now it is, when 
 like wild beasts, they vex and persecute, worry and 
 devour each other. How not only philosophy hath 
 placed the supreme pitch of happiness in a calm- 
 ness of mind, and tranquillity of life, void of care 
 and trouble, of irregular passions and perturba- 
 tions ; but that holy scripture itself in that one 
 term of peace most usually comprehends all joy 
 and content, all felicity and prosperity : so that 
 the heavenly consort of angels, when they agree 
 most highly to bless, and to wish the greatest 
 happiness to mankind, could not better express 
 their sense, than by saying, ' Be on earth peace, 
 and goodwill among men/ 
 
 Almighty God, the most good and beneficent 
 maker, gracious Lord, and merciful preserver of 
 all things, infuse into their hearts those heavenly 
 graces of meekness, patience, and benignity ; grant 
 us and his whole church, and all his creation to 
 serve him quietly here, and a blissful rest to praise 
 and magnify him for ever. 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN.* 
 
 An honest Pagan historian saith of the christian 
 profession, that *' nil nisi justum suadet et lene;" 
 the which is a true, though not full character 
 
 * Serm. xvi. vol. 2. 
 
FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 239 
 
 thereof. It enjoineth us that we should sincerely 
 and tenderly love one another, should earnestly 
 desire and delight in each other's good, should 
 heartily sympathize with all the evils and sorrows 
 of our brethren, should be ready to yield them all 
 the help and comfort we are able, being willing to 
 part with our substance, our ease, our pleasure for 
 their benefit or succour ; not confining this our 
 charity to any sort of men, particularly related or 
 affected towards us, bat, in conformity to our hea- 
 venly Father's boundless goodness, extending it to 
 all ; that we should mutually bear one another's 
 burthens, and bear with one another's infirmities, 
 mildly resent and freely remit all injuries, all dis- 
 courtesies done unto us, retaining no grudge in 
 our hearts, executing no revenge, but requiting 
 them with good wishes and good deeds. It chargeth 
 us to be quiet and orderly in our stations, diligent 
 in our calling, veracious in our words, upright in 
 our dealings, observant in our relations, obedient 
 and respectful towards our superiors, meek and 
 gentle to our inferiors ; modest and lowly, ingenu- 
 ous and compliant in our conversation, candid and 
 benign in our censures, innocent and inoffensive, 
 yea courteous and obliging in all our behaviour 
 towards all persons. It commandeth us to root 
 out of our hearts all spite and rancour, all envy 
 and malignity, all pride and haughtiness, all evil 
 suspicion and jealousy ; to restrain our tongue from 
 all slander, all detraction, all revihng, all bitter 
 and harsh language ; to banish from our practice 
 whatever may injure, may hurt, may needlessly 
 
240 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM DR. BARROW. 
 
 vex or trouble our neighbour. It engageth us to 
 prefer the public good before any private conveni- 
 ence, before our own opinion or humour, our credit 
 or fame, our profit or advantage, our ease or plea- 
 sure ; rather discarding a less good from ourselves, 
 than depriving others of a greater. Now who can 
 number or estimate the benefits that spring from 
 the practice of these duties, either to the man that 
 observes them, or to all men in common? O di- 
 vinest christian charity ! what tongue can worthily 
 describe thy most heavenly beauty, thy incom- 
 parable sweetness, thy more than royal clemency 
 and bounty ? how nobly dost thou enlarge our 
 mind beyond the narrow sphere of self and private 
 regard into a universal care and complacence,* 
 making every man ourself and all concernments 
 to be ours ? 
 
 * Would we learn then from Christ himself in what the 
 will of our Maker consists, let us contemplate it in the whole 
 tenour of his instructive and wonderful life. Did he fulfil 
 that will by pompous and formal displays of superior wisdom, 
 by austere and arrogant pretensions to superior righteousness, 
 by solicitude for ritual observances, by dogmatism upon ab- 
 struse speculation, by a supercilious contempt of ignorance, 
 or a ferocious intolerance of error? No. But the will of 
 God, such at least as was that which he exemplified, is to be 
 found in lessons of virtue attractive from their simplicity, 
 impressive from their earnestnessf and authoritative from the 
 miraculous evidence which accompanied them : in habits of 
 humility without meanness, and of meekness without pusil- 
 lanimity ; in unwearied endeavours to console the afflicted, 
 to soften the prejudiced, and to encourage the sincere ; in 
 unshaken firmness to strip the mask from pharisaical hypo- 
 crites, and to quell the insolence of dictatorial and deceitful 
 
241 
 
 SECTION VII. 
 DR. FULLER. 
 
 Know, next religion, there is nothing accomplisheth a man 
 more than learning. Learning in a lord is as a diamond in 
 gold. — Dedication to the Holy War, 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS.* 
 
 He must rise early, yea, not at all go to bed, who 
 will have every one's good word. 
 
 He needs strong arms who is to swim against 
 the stream. 
 
 guides : in kindness to his followers, in forgiveness to his 
 persecutors, in works of the most unfeigned and unbounded 
 charity to man, and in a spirit of the purest and most sub- 
 lime piety to his Father and his God. — dr. parr. 
 
 See Bishop Taylor's Cares of Conscience, chap. 4. It 
 is a doctrine perfective of human nature, that teaches us to 
 love God and to love one another, to hurt no man, and to 
 do good to every man, it propines to us the noblest, the 
 highest, and the bravest pleasures of the world ; the joys of 
 charity, the rest of innocence, the peace of quiet spirits, the 
 wealth of beneficence, and forbids us only to be beasts, and 
 to be devils; it allows all'that God and nature intended, and 
 only restrains the excrescences of nature, and forbids us to 
 take pleasure in that which is the only entertainment of 
 devils, in murders and revenges, malice and spiteful words 
 and actions j it permits corporal pleasures where they can 
 
 * From the Holy War. 
 R 
 
242 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 He that falls into sin is a man ; that grieves at 
 it may be a saint ; that boasteth of it is a devil. 
 
 It is hard for one of base parentage to personate 
 a king without over-acting his part. 
 
 Charity's eyes should be open as well as her 
 hands. Surely King Edward the Sixth was as 
 truly charitable in gi'anting Bridewell for the pu- 
 nishment of sturdy rogues, as in giving St. Tho- 
 mas's Hospital for the relief of the poor. 
 
 The Pope knows he can catch no fish if the 
 waters are clear. 
 
 best minister to health and societies, to conversation of fami- 
 lies, and honour of communities, it teaches men to keep their 
 words, that themselves may be secured in all their just inte- 
 rests, and to do good to others that good may be done to 
 them ; it forbids biting one another, that we may not be de- 
 voured by one another : and commands obedience to superiors, 
 that we may not be ruined in confusions ; it combines govern- 
 ments, and confirms all good laws and makes peace, and 
 opposes and prevents wars where they are not just, and where 
 they are not necessary. It is a religion that is life and spirit, 
 not consisting in ceremonies and external amusements, but 
 in the services of the heart, and the real fruits of lips, and 
 hands, that is, of good words and good deeds, and hath in it 
 both heat and light, and is not more effectual than it is beau- 
 teous ; it promises every thing that we can desire, and yet 
 promises nothing but what it does effect ; it proclaims war 
 against all vices, and generally does command every virtue ; 
 it teaches us with ease to mortify those affections which rea- 
 son durst scarce reprove, because she hath not strength 
 enough to conquer, and it does create in us those virtues 
 which reason of herself never knew, and after they are known 
 could never approve sufficiently ; it is a doctrine in which 
 nothing is superfluous or burdensome, nor yet is there anv 
 thing wanting which can procure happiness to mankind, or 
 by which God can be glorified. 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 243 
 
 The Cardinals' eyes in the court of Rome were 
 old and dim ; and therefore the glass, wherein they 
 see any thing-, must be well silvered. 
 
 Many wish that the tree may be felled, who hope 
 to gather chips by the fall. 
 
 The Holy Ghost came down, not in the shape 
 of a vulture, but in the form of a dove. 
 
 THE SKELETON. 
 
 A naked cage of bone, 
 From whence the winged soul long since is flown 
 
 WISDOM IN ITS OWN CONCEIT. 
 
 Humility is every where preached, and pride 
 practised ; they persuade others to labour for hea- 
 ven, and fall out about earth themselves ; their 
 lives are contrary to their doctrines, and their doc- 
 trines one to another. 
 
 THE RELIGION OF MAHOMET. 
 
 It may justly seem admirable how that senseless 
 religion should gain so much ground on Christi- 
 anity ; especially having neither real substance in 
 her doctrine, nor winning behaviour in her cere- 
 monies to allure professors. For what is it but 
 the scum of Judaism and Paganism sod together, 
 
244 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and here and there strewed over with a spice of 
 Christianity ? As Mahomet's tomb, so many sen- 
 tences in his Alcoran seem to hang by some secret 
 loadstone, which draweth together their gaping 
 independences with a mystical coherence, or other- 
 wise they are flat nonsense. Yet this w^onder of 
 the spreading of this leprosy is lessened, if we con- 
 sider that besides the general causes of the growing 
 of all errors (namely, the gangrene-like nature of 
 evil, and the justice of God to deliver them over to 
 believe lies who will not obey the truth) Mahome- 
 tanism hath raised itself to this height by some 
 peculiar advantages ; first, by permitting much 
 carnal liberty to the professors (as having many 
 wdves) and no wonder if they get fish enough that 
 use that bait; secondly, by promising a paradise 
 of sensual pleasure hereafter, wherewith flesh and 
 blood is more affected (as falling under her expe- 
 rience) than w^ith hope of any spiritual delights ; 
 thirdly, by prohibiting of disputes, and suppressing 
 of all learning ; and thus Mahomet made his shop 
 dark on purpose, that he might vend any wares : 
 lastly, this religion had never made her own pas- 
 sage so fast and so far, if the sword had not cut 
 the way before her, as commonly the conquered 
 follow for the most part the religion of the con- 
 querors. By this means that cursed doctrine hath 
 so improved itself, that it may outvie with pro- 
 fessors the church of Rome, which boasteth so 
 much of her latitude and extent ; though from 
 thence to infer that her faith is the best, is falsely 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 245 
 
 to conclude the fineness of the cloth from the 
 largeness of the measure.* 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF THE CRUSADERS. 
 
 Egypt is a low, level country, except some few 
 advantages which the Egyptians had fortified for 
 themselves. Through the midst of the land ran 
 the river Nilus ; whose stream they had so bridled 
 with banks and sluices, that they could keep it to 
 be their own servant, and make it their enemies' 
 master at pleasure. The Christians confidently 
 marched on ; and the Turks, perceiving the game 
 was come within the toil, pierced their banks, and 
 unmuzzling the river, let it run open mouth upon 
 them ; yet so, that at first they drowned them up 
 but to the middle, reserving their lives for a fur- 
 ther purpose, thereby in exchange to recover Da- 
 miata and their country's liberty. See here the 
 land of Egypt turned in an instant into the Egyp- 
 tian sea ! see an army of sixty thousand, as the 
 neck of one man, stretched on the block, and 
 waiting the fatal stroke ! 
 
 RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION.! 
 
 Hitherto [a. d. 1428] the corpse of John Wick- 
 liffe had quietly slept in his grave about forty-one 
 years after his death, till his body was reduced to 
 
 * Holy War. 
 
 t From the Church History. 
 
246 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 bones, and his bones almost to dust. For though 
 the earth in the chancel of Lutterworth, in Leices- 
 tershire, where he was interred, hath not so quick 
 a digestion with the earth of Aceldama, to consume 
 flesh in twenty-four hours, yet such the appetite 
 thereof, and all other English graves, to leave small 
 reversions of a body after so many years. But 
 now such the spleen of the council of Constance, 
 as they not only cursed his memory as dying an 
 obstinate heretic, but ordered that his bones (with 
 this charitable caution, — if it may be discerned 
 from the bodies of other faithful people) be taken 
 out of the ground, and thrown far off from any 
 christian burial. In obedience hereunto, Richard 
 Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, Diocesan of Lutter- 
 worth, sent his officers (vultures with a quick sight 
 scent, at a dead carcass) to ungrave him. Accor- 
 dingly to Lutterworth they come ; Summer, Com- 
 missary, Official, Chancellor, Proctors, Doctors, 
 and their servants (so that the remnant of the body 
 would not hold out a bone amongst so many hands), 
 take what was left out of the grave, and burnt them 
 to ashes, and cast them into Swift, a neighbouring 
 brook, running hard by. Thus this brook hath 
 conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, 
 Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main 
 ocean ; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the 
 emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all 
 the world over. 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 247 
 
 THE GOOD WIFE.* 
 
 She commandeth her husband, in any equal matter, 
 by constant obeying him. 
 
 She never crosseth her husband in the spring- 
 tide of his ang'er, but stays till it be ebbing-water. 
 Surely men, contrary to iron, are worst to be 
 wrought upon when they are hot. 
 
 Her clothes are rather comely than costly, and 
 she makes plain cloth to be velvet by her handsome 
 wearing it. 
 
 Her husband's secrets she will not divulge : es- 
 pecially she is careful to conceal his infirmities. 
 
 In her husband's absence she is wife and deputy 
 husband, which makes her double the files of her 
 diligence. At his return he finds all things so well, 
 that he wonders to see himself at home when he 
 was abroad, t 
 
 Her children, though many in number, are 
 none in noise, steering them with a look whither 
 she listeth. 
 
 * From the Holy State. 
 
 t In Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy there are twelve 
 reasons in favour of marriage, of which the six first are as 
 follows : — 
 
 1. Hast thou means? Thou hast one to keep and increase it* 
 
 2. Hast none 1 Thou hast one to help to get it. 
 
 3. Art in prosperity? Thine happiness is doubled. 
 
 4. Art in adversity 7 She'll comfort, assist, bear a part of 
 
 thy burden, to make it more tolerable. 
 
 5. Art at home t She'll drive away melancholy. 
 
 6. Art abroad? She looks after thee, going from home, 
 
 wishes for thee in thine absence, and joyfully wel- 
 comes thy return. 
 
248 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 The heaviest work of her servants she maketh 
 light, by orderly and seasonably enjoining it. 
 
 In her husband's sickness she feels more grief 
 than she shows. 
 
 THE GOOD PARENT.* 
 
 He continueth the care of his children till the day 
 of his death, in their infancy, youth, and man's 
 estate. 
 
 He showeth them in his own practice what to 
 follow and imitate ; and in others, what to shun 
 and avoid. A father that whipt his son for swear- 
 ing, and swore himself whilst he whipt him, did 
 more harm by his example than good by his cor- 
 rection. 
 
 If his son prove wild, he doth not cast him off 
 so far, but he marks the place where he lights. 
 With the mother of Moses, he doth not suffer his 
 son to sink or swim, but he leaves one to stand 
 afar off to watch what will become of him. 
 
 He moves him to marriage rather by argument 
 drawn from his good, than his own authority. 
 
 In choosing a profession, he is directed by his 
 child's disposition. 
 
 He allows his children maintenance according 
 to their quality. 
 
 He observeth gavel-kind in dividing his affec- 
 tions, though not his estate. 
 
 * From the Holy State. 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 249 
 
 He doth not ^ive away his loaf to his children, 
 and then come to them for a piece of bread.* 
 
 * The knowledge that it is the tendency of affection rather 
 to descend than to ascend, seems of considerable importance in 
 the regulation of parental feeling. Fuller, in his chapter on 
 moderation, says, As love does descend," &c. Du Moulin, 
 in his work on Peace and Content, says, *' Of children ex- 
 pect no good but the satisfaction to have done them good and 
 to see them do well for themselves, for in this relation the 
 nature of beneficence is to descend, seldom to remount. Bi- 
 shop Taylor, in his Life of Christ, when speaking of mothers 
 who do not suckle their own children, says, " 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 small 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." — Is not the expectation, that 
 affection should ascend, often a cause of misery 1 
 
 The following extract upon parent and child is from a ser- 
 mon of Ogden's. 
 
 Young people are not sensible how much anguish is en- 
 dured on their account. They run heedlessly forward in the 
 broad and open path, and have no thought but of the plea- 
 sure they are pursuing. Yet stop, young man, we beg, a 
 little, to look towards thy poor parents. Think it not too 
 much to bestow a moment's reflection upon those who never 
 forget thee. Recollect what they have done for thee. Re- 
 member all— all indeed thou canst not: alas! ill had been 
 thy lot, had not their care of thee begun before thou couldst 
 remember, or know any thing. 
 
 Now so proud, self-willed, inexorable, thou couldst then 
 only ask by wailing, and move them with' thy tears. And 
 they were moved. Their hearts were touched with thy dis- 
 tress : they relieved and watched thy wants, before thou 
 knewest thine own necessities or their kindness. They clothed 
 thee : thou knewest not that thou wast naked : thou askedst 
 
250 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 THE GOOD SEA CAPTAIN.* 
 
 Conceive him now in a man of war, with his let- 
 ters of marque, victualled, and appointed. 
 
 The more power he hath, the more careful he is 
 not to abuse it. Indeed a sea captain is a king in 
 
 not for bread, but they fed thee. And ever since, in short, for 
 the particulars are too many to be recounted, and too many 
 surely to be all utterly forgotten, it has been the very prin- 
 cipal endeavour, employment, and study of their lives to do 
 service to thee. 
 
 And remember, for this too is of moment, it is all out of 
 pure, unfeigned affection. Other friends mostly expect their 
 civilities to be repaid, and their kind offices returned with 
 interest. But parents have no thoughts like these. They 
 
 seek not thine, but thee.'' Their regard is real, and hearty, 
 and undesigning. They have no reflex views upon themselves, 
 no oblique glances towards their own interest. If by all their 
 endeavours they can obtain their child's welfare, they arrive 
 at the full accomplishment of their wishes. They have no 
 higher object of their ambition. Be thou but happy, and 
 they are so. 
 
 And now tell me : is not something to be done, I do not 
 now say for thyself, but for them 1 If it be too much to de- 
 
 * The Sea Captain contains a short Life of Sir Francis 
 Drake, and the following anecdote : — Francis Drake conti- 
 nued his course for Port- Rico, and riding within the road, 
 a shot from the castle entered the steerage of the ship, took 
 away the stool from under him as he sate at supper, wounded 
 Sir Nicholas Clifford and Brute Brown to death. " Ah dear 
 Brute," said Drake, " I could grieve for thee, but now is no 
 time for me to let down my spirits." — From the mouth of H. 
 Drake, Esq.^ there present, my dear and worthy parishioner 
 lately deceased. 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 251 
 
 the island of a ship, supreme judge, above appeal, 
 in causes civil and criminal, and is seldom brought 
 to an account in courts of justice on land, for 
 injuries done to his own men at sea. 
 
 He is careful in observing the Lord's day. He 
 hath a watch in his heart, though no bell sin a 
 steeple to proclaim that day by ringing to prayers. 
 
 sire of thee to be good, and wise, and virtuous, and happy for 
 thy own sake, yet be happy for theirs. Think that a sober, 
 upright, and let me add, religious life, besides the blessings it 
 will bring upon thy own head, will be a fountain of unfailing 
 comfort to thy declining parents, and make the heart of the 
 a^ed sing for joy. 
 
 What shall we say? Which of these is happier ] the son 
 that maketh a glad father 1 or the father, blessed with such 
 a son? 
 
 Fortunate young man ! who hast a heart open so early to 
 virtuous delights : and canst find thy own happiness, in re- 
 turning thy father's blessing upon his own head. 
 
 And happy father! whose years have been prolonged, not 
 as it often happens, to see his comforts fall from him one 
 after another, and to become at once old and destitute ; but 
 to taste a new pleasure, not to be found among the pleasures 
 of youth, reserved for his age ; to reap the harvest of all his 
 cares and labour in the duty, affection, and felicity of his 
 dear child. His very look bespeaks the inward satisfaction 
 of his heart. The infirmities of age sit light on him. He 
 feels not the troubles of life ; he smiles at the approach of 
 death : sees himself still living and honoured in the memory 
 and the person of his son, his other dearer self: and passes 
 down to the receptacle of all the living in the fulness of con- 
 tent and joy. 
 
 How unlike to this, is the condition of him who has the 
 affliction to be the father of a wicked offspring ! poor un- 
 happy man ! no sorrow is like unto thy sorr-ow. Diseases 
 and death are blessings, if compared with the anguish of thy 
 heart, when thou seest thy dearest children run heedlessly 
 
252 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 He is as pious and thankful when a tempest is 
 past, as devout when 'tis present ; not clamorous to 
 receive mercies, and tongue-tied to return thanks. 
 Escaping many dangers makes him not presump- 
 tuous to run into them. 
 
 In taking a prize he most prizeth the men's lives 
 whom he takes ; though some of them may chance 
 to be negroes or savages. 'Tis the custom of 
 some to cast them overboard, and there's an end 
 of them : for the dumb fishes will tell no tales. 
 But the murder is not so soon drowned as the man. 
 What, is a brother of false blood no kin ; a savage 
 hath God to his father by creation, though not the 
 church to his mother, and God will revenge his 
 innocent blood. But our captain counts the image 
 of God, nevertheless his image cut in ebony as if 
 done in ivory. * 
 
 headlong in the ways of sin, forgetful of their parents' coun- 
 sel and their own happiness. Unfortunate old man ! how 
 often does he wish he had never been born, or had been cut 
 off before he was a father ! no reflection is able to afford him 
 consolation. He grows old betimes; and the afflictions of 
 age are doubled on his head. In vain are instruments of 
 pleasure brought forth. His soul refuses comfort. Every 
 blessing of life is lost upon him. No success is able to give 
 him joy. - His triumphs are like that of David. While his 
 friends, captains, soldiers, were rending the air with shouts 
 of victory : he, poor conqueror ! ** went up," as it is written, 
 ** to the chamber over the gate, and wept : and as he went, 
 thus he said ; O my son Absalom ! my son, my son Absa- 
 lom ! would God I had died for thee ! O Absalom, my son, 
 my son!" — Sermon xi. p. 335. 
 
 * Is not this one of the earliest intercessions on behalf of 
 the poor slaves ? 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 253 
 
 In dividing the gains he wrongs none who took 
 pains to get them. Not shifting off his poor ma- 
 riners with nothing. 
 
 In time of peace he quietly returns home.^ 
 
 His voyages are not only for profit, but some 
 for honour and knowledge. f 
 
 He daily sees, and duly considers God's won- 
 ders in the deep. 
 
 § The hour now approached in which it became necessary 
 for General Washington to lake leave of his army, who had 
 been endeared to him by a long series of common sufferings 
 and dangers. The officers having previously assembled, 
 General Washington, calling for a glass of wine, thus ad- 
 dressed them : — With a heart full of love and gratitude^, I 
 now take leave of you : I most devoutly wish that your latter 
 days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones 
 have been glorious and honourable." The officers came up 
 successively, and he took an affectionate leave of each of 
 them; The General then left the room and passed through 
 the corps of light infantry to the place of embarkation, the 
 officers all following him. On his entering the barge to 
 cross the North river, he turned towards the companions of 
 his glory, and by waving his hat bid them farewell. Some 
 answered this last signal of respect and affection with tears, 
 and all hung upon the barge which conveyed him from their 
 sight till they could no longer distinguish in it the person of 
 their beloved commander. — Ramsey's America, 
 
 t This is common to ail professions : " I hold," says Lord 
 Bacon, " that every man is a debtor to his profession, from 
 the which, as men do of course seek to receive countenance 
 and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavour themselves by 
 way of amends, to be ahelp and ornament thereunto." And 
 Sir Edward Coke, differing as he did from Lord Bacon upon 
 all subjects, except the advancement of their noble profes- 
 sion, expresses the same sentiment almost in the same woids. 
 " If this," he says, " or any other of my works, may in any 
 
^54 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 OF JESTING. 
 
 It is g'ood to make a jest, but not to make a trade 
 of jesting. The Earl of Leicester knowing that 
 
 sort, by the goodness of Almighty God, who hath enabled me 
 hereunto, tend to some discharge of that great obligation of 
 duty wherein I am bound to my profession, I shall reap some 
 fruits from the tree of life, and I shall receive sufficient com- 
 pensation for all my labours.'* 
 
 Similar sentiments influenced Sir Matthew Hale, and Har- 
 vey, and Syndenham, 
 
 This arises out of the social part of our nature; thus beauti- 
 fully described in a MS. sermon in my possession : — There 
 is a part of human nature which draws man asunder from his 
 fellow and engages him with his own peculiar interests and 
 affairs ; which isolates him and arms him in his own behalf : 
 out of which grows the feeling of property, and personal right, 
 and also of justice ; and from the excess of which cometli 
 cunning and every form of malice and malignity. And to 
 work against this and hinder it from these fearful issues, there 
 is another part of human nature which draws him to his kind, 
 makes him thirst for fellowship and communion with kindred 
 spirits, and which binds him in a thousand associations, out 
 of which arise some of the most exquisite enjoyments of his 
 life. A principle of attraction and communication diverse 
 from and opposite to the other, by which he is carried from 
 himself, and made to have pleasure in the giving to others, 
 that which by his own personal industry he hath acquired. 
 Is knowledge that upon which he hath set his heart 1 Then 
 he removes himself from affairs, and shuts himself up from 
 company, and subjecteth youthful passions, and abstracteth 
 himself from places of youthful gaiety and folly, that he may 
 dig the mines of knowledge, which are richer than the mines 
 of gold; carrying on the merchandise of wisdom, which is 
 better than the merchandise of silver ; — and thereto he hath 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 255 
 
 Queen Elizabeth was much delighted to see a 
 gentleman dance well, brought the master of a 
 dancing school to dance before her. ^' Pish," said 
 the queen, it is his profession, I will not see 
 him." 
 
 Wanton jests make fools laugh, and wise men 
 frown. 
 
 the convenience of a college cell, within gates which are shut 
 betimes, as carefully as a besieged city, it being well thought 
 by the fathers and founders of learning that the outward world 
 is not more adverse to knowledge than to true religion. Here 
 he trims his midnight lamp, and paleth the bloom of his youth- 
 ful cheek; he stinteth himself of sleep, his books are his 
 silent companions ; the thoughts of the learned are his ban- 
 quet, — his inward man engrosses him, — his outward man 
 often altogether neglected, — health itself hardly cared for, 
 while he is passing through this chrysalis state of the mind, 
 and obtaining for his soul that plumage, which shall bear it 
 into the regions of thought and fancy, hitherto unexplored, 
 and reward him with discoveries hitherto unknown, and weave 
 a chaplet of laurel for his brow, and bequeath unto his name 
 an immortality of fame. But if 1 keep my eye on this book- 
 worm, and follow him onward through the more advanced 
 stage of knowledge, then I perceive the selfish, avaricious, 
 and monopolizing feeling which moved him to such sacrifice 
 of his pleasure and health, begin to abate as he becomes well 
 fraught and stored ; and as if God used his soul for a trans- 
 port vessel, which doubtless he doth, he is driven with his 
 spirit full of knowledge, to carry the same abroad, to commu- 
 nicate it to his fellows ; he no sooner discovers truth than he 
 hastens to reveal it ; he no sooner detects errors than he 
 hastens to warn the world of them,— he joins himself to the 
 societies of the learned,— he enters into fellowships, and aca- 
 demies, and colleges,— he meditates in his mind and stirs up 
 his thoughts, he writes books and communicates his gathered 
 knowledge to all mankind ; so that, in the first instance, while 
 there is nothing so avaricious as the spirit of knowledge, there 
 
256 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 Jest not with the two-edged sword of God's 
 word. Will nothing please thee to w^ash thy hands 
 in but the font, or to drink healths in but the 
 church chalice ?§ 
 
 Let not thy jests, like mummy, be made of dead 
 men's flesh. Abuse not any that are departed, for 
 to wrong their memories is to rob their ghosts of 
 their winding sheets. 
 
 Scoff not at the natural defects of any which are 
 
 is in the next instance nothing so generous. It reveals without 
 being put to the question. It bestows without being besought. 
 The more precious its discoveries, the more it hastens to make 
 them common. If, again, I consider the pursuit of wealth, 
 then I perceive a like correspondence of the selfish and the 
 social. The merchant and tradesman are indefatigable, 
 making the most of every occasion, and driving every bargain 
 with as much nicety as if their all was at stake. They mea- 
 sure with exactness, — they weigh out scrupulously. They 
 gather up the remnants of things and suffer nothing to be lost, 
 — they introduce an economy of time into their business, 
 almost as if every day were the last ; — they lay off the several 
 branches, each to a several hand, and there they ply at their 
 departments with a haste and with an accuracy, which nothing 
 can surpass. Their books are kept like the book of fate ; 
 every man's account is there as if it were the book of divine 
 remembrance : — not an error through the whole can escape 
 their view, and when the balance is struck it turns out as just 
 and exact to the uttermost farthing. And to see the house in 
 the work of accumulation, you would suppose every one a 
 niggard and a miser who could part with nothing, and who 
 could not bear that anything should be lost. But this is only 
 half the man ; to know him wholly you must see the other 
 half likewise in action. Follow him from his workshop to his 
 house, and you will see a spirit of profusion equalled only by 
 the spirit of accumulation, and often to his cost not equalled 
 by that. Here is generosity in every form. It is lavished 
 on elegancies of the house, on attendants, on equipage, on 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 257 
 
 not in their power to amend. Oh ! 'tis cruelty to 
 beat a cripple with his own crutches. 
 
 No time to break jests when the heart-strings are 
 about to be broken. 
 
 He that will lose his friend for a jest, deserves to 
 die a beggar by the bargain. 
 
 OF TRAVELLING. 
 
 Travel not early before thy judgment be risen ; 
 lest thou observest rather shows than substance. 
 
 Get the language (in part) without which key 
 thou shalt unlock little of moment. 
 
 sensual enjoyments, on magnificent schemes of pleasure, on 
 chanties, on subscriptions, on every profuse, liberal, and 
 noble undertaking. Insomuch that these men who in the 
 morning gathered with a hundred hands, in the evening 
 scatter with a hundred hands that which they gathered ; and 
 are under the providence of God but instruments for changing 
 the current of his beneficence, for gathering it where otherwise 
 it would be wasted, and bestowing it where otherwise it would 
 not be had. He gathered it at a thousand fountains, as the 
 streams which come out of the recesses of a thousand solitudes 
 are gathered into one lake ; then he dispenseth it through the 
 fertile places of society, and setteth in action, or engageth a 
 thousand departments of business, just as if you should sluice 
 oflP that lake into a thousand rills, with each of which to 
 fertilize a productive field, or give force to the wheel of some 
 more active machine. E. I. 
 
 § As for jest, there be certain things which ought to be 
 privileged from it ; namely, religion, matters of state, great 
 persons, any man's present business of importance, and any 
 case that deserveth pity. — lord bacon. 
 
 S 
 
258 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 Know most of the rooms of thy native country 
 before thou goest over the threshold thereof. 
 
 Travel not beyond the Alps. Mr. Ascham did 
 thank God that he was but nine days in Italy, 
 wherein 4ie saw in one city (Venice) more liberty 
 to sin than in London he ever heard of in nine 
 years, t 
 
 To travel from the sun is uncomfortable. Yet the 
 northern parts with much ice have some crystal. 
 
 If thou wilt see much in a little, travel the Low 
 Countries. Holland is all Europe in an Amster- 
 dam print. 
 
 t I was once in Italy myself ; but T thank God my abode 
 vhere was but nine days ; and yet I saw in that little time 
 in one city, more liberty to sin, than ever I heard tell of in 
 our noble city of London in nine years. I saw, it was there 
 as free to sin, not only without all punishment, but also with- 
 out any man's marking, as it is free in the city of London, to 
 choose without all blame, whether a man list to wear shoe or 
 pantofle. And good cause why : for being unlike in truth of 
 religion, they must needs be unlike in honesty of living. For, 
 blessed be Christ, in our city of London, commonly the com- 
 mandments of God be m.ore diligently taught, and the service 
 of God more reverently used, and that daily in many private 
 men's houses, than they be in Italy once a week in their com- 
 mon churches: where making ceremonies to delight the eye^ 
 and vain sounds to please the ear j do quite thrust out of the 
 churches all service of God in spirit and in truth. Yea, the 
 Lord Mayor of London, being but a civil officer, is commonly 
 for his time more diligent in punishing sin, the bent enemy 
 against God and good order, than all the bloody inquisitors in 
 Italy be in seven years. For their care and charge is, not to 
 punish sin, not to amend manners, not to purge doctrine, but 
 only to watch and oversee that Christ's true religion set no sure 
 footing where the Pope has any jurisdiction. — ascham. 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 259 
 
 Be wise in choosing objects, diligent in mark- 
 ing, careful in remembering of them. Yet herein 
 men much follow their own humours. One asked 
 a barber who never before had been at the court, 
 what he saw there ? Oh," said he, the kino- 
 was excellently well trimmed !" 
 
 Labour to distil and unite into thyself the scat- 
 tered perfections of several nations. Many weed 
 foreign countries, bringing home Dutch drunken- 
 ness, Spanish pride, French wantonness, and Italian 
 Atheism ; as for the good herbs, Dutch industry, 
 Spanish loyalty, French courtesy, and Italian fru- 
 gality, these they leave behind them ; others bring 
 home just nothing ; and, because they singled not 
 themselves from their countrymen, though some 
 years beyond see, were never out of England. 
 
 OF COMPANY. 
 
 Company is one of the greatest pleasures of the 
 nature of man. 
 
 It is unnatural for a man to court and hug soli- 
 tariness. Yet a desart is better than a debauched 
 companion. The Nazarites who might drink no 
 wine were also forbidden to eat grapes whereof wine 
 is made. 
 
 If thou be cast into bad company, like Hercules, 
 thou must sleep with thy club in thine hand and 
 stand on thy guard ; like the river Dee in Merio- 
 nethshire, in Wales, which running through Pimble 
 
260 SELECTIONS 
 
 Mere, remains entire, and mingles not her streams 
 with the waters of the lake. 
 
 The company he keeps is the comment by help 
 whereof men expound the most close and mystical 
 man. Caesar came thus to discern his two daugh- 
 ters' inclinations, for being" once at a public show, 
 where much people was present, he observed that 
 the grave senators talked with Livia, but loose 
 youngsters and riotous persons with Julia. 
 
 OF MEMORY. 
 
 It is the treasure-house of the mind, wherein the 
 monuments thereof are kept and preserved. Plato 
 makes it the mother of the Muses. Aristotle sets 
 it in one degree further, making experience the 
 mother of arts, memory the parent of experience. 
 Philosophers place it in the rear of the head ; and 
 it seems the mine of memory lies there, because 
 there naturally men dig for it, scratching it when 
 they are at a loss. This again is twofold ; one, the 
 simple retention of things : the other, a regaining 
 them when forgotten. 
 
 Brute creatures equal if not exceed men in a 
 bare retentive memory. Through how many laby- 
 rinths of woods, without other clue of thread than 
 natural instinct, doth the hunted hare return to her 
 mouse ? How doth the little bee, flying into several 
 meadows and gardens, sipping of many cups, yet 
 never intoxicated, through an ocean (as I may say) 
 of air, steadily steer herself home, without help of 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 261 
 
 card or compass. Bat these cannot play an after- 
 game, and recover what they have forgotten, which 
 is done by the mediation of discourse. 
 
 Artificial memory is rather a trick than an art, 
 and more for the gain of the teacher than profit of 
 the learners. Like the tossing of a pike, which is no 
 part of the postures and motions thereof, and is 
 rather for ostentation than use, to shew the strength 
 and nimbleness of the arm, and is often used by 
 wandering soldiers, as an introduction to be^r. Un-. 
 derstand it of the artificial rules which at this day 
 are delivered by memory mountebanks; for sure 
 an art thereof may be made (wherein as yet the 
 world is defective) and that no more destructive 
 to natural memory than spectacles are to eyes, 
 which girls in Holland wear from twelve years of 
 age. But till this be found out, let us observe these 
 plain rules. 
 
 First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou de* 
 sirest to remember. What wonder is it if agitation 
 of business jog that out of thy head, which was 
 there rather tacked than fastened ? whereas those 
 notions which get in by violenta possessio," will 
 abide there till ejectio firma,'' sickness, or ex- 
 treme age, dispossess them. It is best knocking 
 in the nail over night, and clinching it the next 
 morning. 
 
 Overburthen not thy memory to make so faith- 
 ful a servant a slave. Remember, Atlas was weary. 
 Have as much reason as a camel, to rise when 
 thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a purse, if 
 it be over full that it cannot shut, all will drop out 
 
262 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 of it : take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed 
 on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite 
 of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof. Beza's 
 case was peculiar and memorable ; being above 
 fourscore years of age, he perfectly could say by 
 heart any Greek chapter in St. Paul's epistles, or 
 any thing else which he had learnt long before, 
 but forgot whatsoever was newly told him ; his 
 memory, like an inn, retaining old guests, but 
 having no room to entertain new. 
 
 Spoil not thy memory by thine own jealousy, 
 nor make it bad by suspecting it. How canst thou 
 find that true which thou wilt not trust ? St. Au- 
 gustine tells us of his friend Simplicius, who being 
 asked, could tell all Virgil's verses backward and 
 forward, and yet the same party avowed to God, 
 that he knew not that he could do it till they did 
 try him. Sure there is concealed strength in men's 
 memories, which they take no notice of. 
 
 Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. 
 One will carry twice more weight trussed and 
 packed up in bundles, than when it lies untoward 
 flapping and hanging about his shoulders. Things 
 orderly fardled up under heads are most portable. 
 
 Adventure not all thy learning in one bottom, 
 but divide it betwixt thy memory and thy note- 
 books. He that with Bias carries all his learnino- 
 
 o 
 
 about him in his head, will utterly be beggared 
 and bankrupt, if a violent disease, a merciless 
 thief, should rob and strip him. I know some 
 have a common-place against common-place-books, 
 and yet perchance will privately make use of what 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 263 
 
 they publicly declaim against. A common-place- 
 book contains many notions in g-arrison, whence 
 the owner may draw out an army into the field on 
 competent warning. 
 
 Moderate diet and good air preserve memory ; 
 but what air is best I dare not define, when such 
 great ones differ. Some say a pure and subtle air 
 is best, another commends a thick and foggy air. 
 For the Pisans scited in the fens and marshes of 
 Arnus have excellent memories, as if the ^o^^y 
 air were a cap for their heads. 
 
 Thankfulness to God for it continues the me- 
 mory;* whereas some proud people have been 
 visited with such oblivion, that they have forgotten 
 
 * Dr. Fuller had an extraordinary memory. He could 
 name in order the signs on both sides the way from the be- 
 ginning of Paternoster- row at Ave-Maria-Lane to the bottom 
 of Cheapside. He could dictate to five several amanuenses 
 at the same time, and each on a different subject. The 
 doctor making a visit to the committee of sequestrators sitting 
 at Waltham, in Essex, they soon fell into a discourse and 
 commendation of his great memory ; to which he replied ; 
 ** 'Tistrue, gentlemen, that fame has given me the report of 
 a memorist, and, if you please, I will give you an experiment 
 of it.*' They all accepted the motion, and told him they 
 should look upon it as an obligation, praying him to begin. 
 " Gentlemen," says he, " I will give you an instance of my 
 memory in the particular business in which you are employed. 
 Your worships have thought fit to sequester an honest, but 
 poor cavalier parson, my neighbour, from his living, and 
 committed him to prison ; he has a large family of children, 
 and his circumstances are but indifferent ; if you will please 
 to release him out of prison, and restore him to his living, I 
 will never forget the kindness while I live V 
 
264 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 their own names. Staupitius^ tutor to Luther, and 
 a godly man, in a vain ostentation of his memory, 
 repeated Christ's genealogy by heart in his sermon, 
 but being out about the captivity of Babylon, I see, 
 saith he, God resisteth the proud, and so betook 
 himself to his book. 
 
 Abuse not thy memory to be sin's register, nor 
 make advantasre thereof for wickedness. Excel- 
 
 o 
 
 lently f Augustine, Quidam vero pessimi me- 
 moria sunt mirabili, qui tanto pejores sunt, quanta 
 minus possunt, quae male cogitant, oblivisci." 
 
 t Iti the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon, the subject of 
 memory is under the article Constituent Instances,'^ beau- 
 tifully analyzed. It may be thus exhibited : The Art of 
 Memory consists, 1st. In making a strong impression, 2nd. 
 In recalling the impression when made. 
 
 In the art of making strong impressions, the state of the 
 mind of the patient, and the conduct of the agent, are to be 
 duly regarded. The state of the patient's mind apt to receive 
 impressions, is when the mind is free, as in youth ; or when 
 the mind is exerted by some powerful cause excluding all 
 alien thoughts, as boys to remember the boundaries of a parish 
 are struck by the officer. The art of the agent in producing 
 strong impressions, depends, 1st. Upon variety of impression, 
 as by verse and prose ; algebraic and geometric proofs of 
 the same proposition : and 2ndly. Slowness of impression, as 
 great wits have short memories. 
 
 The art of recalling a given impression consists, 1st. In 
 cutting off infinity, as in hunting the fallow deer in a park 
 instead of a forest: and 2nd. By reducing intellectual to 
 sensible things : as the image of a huntsman pursuing a hare 
 for invention. 
 
 Infinity is cut off first by order : according to the 6th 
 maxim of Fuller. 2nd. By places for artificial memory : as 
 painted windows of birds, beasts, plants, men, &cc. for dif- 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 265 
 
 OF FANCY.* 
 
 It is an inward sense of the soul, for a while re- 
 taining and examining things brought in thither 
 by the common sense. It is the most boundless 
 and restless faculty of the soul ; for whilst the 
 understanding and the will are kept as it were in 
 " libera custodia," to their objects of verum et 
 bonum," the fancy is free from all engagements ; 
 it digs without spade, sails without ship, flies with- 
 out wings, builds without charges, fights without 
 bloodshed, in a moment striding from the centre 
 to the circumference of the world, by a kind of 
 omnipotence creating and annihilating things in 
 an instant ; and things divorced in nature are 
 married in fancy, as in a lawful place. It is also 
 most restless : whilst the senses are bound and 
 reason in a manner asleep, fancy like a sentinel 
 walks the round, ever working, never wearied. 
 The chief diseases of the fancy are, either that 
 the-y are too wild and high-soaring, or else too low 
 
 ferent sorts of natural history. 3rd. By technical memory, 
 according to maxim 2 of Fuller, as the word vibgyor for 
 the prismatic colours. 
 
 There are also some valuable observations upon memory 
 in Bacon's Advancement of Learning, where he divides the 
 science of the understanding into, 1. Invention. 2. Judgment. 
 3. Memory. 4. Delivery. 
 
 * See note IV. at the end on the Pleasures of Imagina- 
 tion. 
 
266 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and grovelling*, or else too desultory and over vo- 
 luble. Of the first, 
 
 1. If thy fancy be but a little too rank, age 
 itself will correct it. To lift too high is no fault 
 in a young horse, because with travelling he will 
 mend it for his own ease. Thus lofty fancies in 
 young men will come down of themselves, and in 
 process of time the overplus will shrink to be but 
 even measure. But if this will not do it, observe 
 these rules. 
 
 2. Take part always with thy judgment against 
 thy fancy in anything wherein they shall dissent. 
 If thou suspectest thy conceits too luxuriant, 
 herein account thy suspicion a legal conviction, 
 and damn whatsoever thou doubtestof. Warily 
 Tully, bene monent, qui vetant quicquam facere, 
 de quo dubitas, aequum sit an iniquum." 
 
 3. Take the advice of a faithful friend, and 
 submit thy inventions to his censure. When thou 
 pennest an oration, let him have the power of in- 
 dex expurgatorius," to expunge what he pleaseth ; 
 and do not thou, like a fond mother, cry if the 
 child of thy brain be corrected for playing the 
 wanton. Mark the arguments and reasons of his 
 alterations, why that phrase least proper, this pas- 
 sage more cautious and advised, and after a while 
 thou shalt perform the place in thine own person, 
 and not go out of thyself for a censurer. If thy 
 fancy be too low and humble, 
 
 4. Let thy judgment be king but not tyrant over 
 it, to condemn harmless, yea, commendable con- 
 ceits. Some for fear their orations should giggle 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 267 
 
 will not let them smile. Give it also liberty to 
 rove, for it will not be extravagant. There is no 
 danger that weak folks if they walk abroad will 
 straggle far, as wanting strength. 
 
 5, Acquaint thyself with reading poets, for there 
 fancy is in her throne ; and in time the sparks of 
 the author's wit will catch hold on the reader, and 
 inflame him with love, liking, and desire of imi- 
 tation. I confess there is more required to teach 
 one to write than to see a copy : however, there 
 is a secret force of fascination in reading poems 
 to raise and provoke fancy. If thy fancy be over 
 voluble, then 
 
 6. Whip this vagrant home to the first object 
 wherein it should be selected. Indeed nimbleness 
 is the perfection of this faculty, but levity the bane 
 of it. Great is the difference betwixt a swift horse 
 and a skittish, that will stand on no ground. Such 
 is the ubiquitary fancy, which will keep long re- 
 sidence on no one subject, but is so courteous to 
 strangers that it ever welcomes that conceit most 
 which comes last ; and new species supplant the 
 old ones, before seriously considered. If this be 
 the fault of the fancy, I say, whip it home to the 
 first object, wherein it should be settled. This do 
 as often as occasion requires, and by degrees the 
 fugitive servant will learn to abide by his work 
 without running away. 
 
 Acquaint thyself by degrees with hard and knotty 
 studies, as school-divinity, which will clog thy 
 over nimble fancy. True, at the first it will be as 
 welcome to thee as a prison, and their very solu- 
 
268 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 tions will seem knots unto thee. But take not 
 too much at once, lest thy brain turn ed^e. Taste 
 it first as a potion for physic, and by degrees thou 
 shalt drink it as beer for thirst : practice will make 
 it pleasant. Mathematics are also good for this 
 purpose : if beginning to try a conclusion, thou 
 must make an end, lest thou loseth thy pains that 
 are past, and must proceed seriously and exactly. 
 I meddle not with those Bedlam-fancies, all whose 
 conceits are antique, but leave them for the phy- 
 sician to purge with hellebore.* 
 
 * Upon the art of obtaining mastery over the mind, which 
 is of such importance in the conduct of the understanding, 
 there are various observations in Lord Bacon's works, as 
 follows : 
 
 Let the mind be daily employed upon some subjects from 
 \vhich it is averse. 
 
 Bear ever toward the contrary of that whereunto you are 
 by nature inclined, that you may bring the mind straight 
 from its warp. Like as when we row against the stream, or 
 when we make a crooked wand straight, by bending it the 
 contrary way. 
 
 INSTANTLY STUDY WHEN THE DISPOSITION TO STUDY 
 APPEARS. 
 
 As in the improvement of the understanding, the mind 
 ought always to be employed on some subject from which it 
 is averse, that it may obtain the mastery over itself : so two 
 seasons are chiefly to be observed, the one when the mind is 
 best disposed to a business, the other when it is worst, that by 
 the one, we may be well forward on our way : by the latter 
 we may by a strenuous contention work out the knots and 
 stonds of the mind, and make it pliant for other occasions. 
 
 ENGAGE IN STUDIES OPPOSITE TO THE FAVOURITE PURSUIT. 
 
 Histories make men wise : poetry, witty ; the mathema- 
 tics, subtle: natural philosophy, deep ; moral, grave j logic. 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 269 
 
 To clothe low-creeping matter with high-flown 
 language is not fine fancy, but flat foolery. It 
 rather loads than raises a wren, to fasten the fea- 
 thers of an ostrich to her wings. Some men's 
 speeches are like the high mountains in Ireland, 
 having a dirty bog in the top of them : the very 
 
 and rhetoric, able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores." 
 Nay, there is no stond or impediment in the wit, but may be 
 wrought out by fit studies. Like as diseases of the body 
 may have appropriated exercises; bowling is good for the 
 stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle 
 walking for the stomach ; riding for the head and the like. 
 So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study mathematics ; 
 for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so 
 little, he must begin again, tf his wit be not apt to distin- 
 guish or find differences, let him study the schoolmen ; for 
 they are Cymini sectores." If he be not apt to beat over 
 matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate 
 another, let him study the lawyers' cases ; so every defect of 
 the mind may have a special receipt. 
 
 STUDY BY TIME. 
 
 In studies whatsoever a man commandeth upon himself 
 let him set hours for it ; but whatsoever is agreeable to his 
 nature, let him take no care for any set hours, for his thoughts 
 will fly to it of themselves. 
 
 Dr. Johnson said, " If a man never has an eager desire 
 for instruction, he should prescribe a task for himself: if he 
 has a science to learn, he must regularly and resolutely ad- 
 vance." 
 
 FORM THE HABIT OF FIXEDNESS. 
 
 Burke always read a book as if he were never to see it 
 again. Newton used to say, that if there were any difference 
 between him and other men, it consisted in his fixing his eye 
 steadily on the object which he had in view, and waiting pa- 
 tiently for every idea as it presented itself, without wandering 
 or hurrying. 
 
270 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ridge of them in high words having nothing of 
 worth, but what rather stalls than delights the au- 
 ditor.* 
 
 Fine fancies in manufactures invent engines 
 rather pretty than useful ; and commonly one trade 
 is too narrow for them. They are better to pro- 
 
 ENGAGE IN STUDIES THAT WILL NOT ADMIT MENTAL 
 ABERRATION, 
 
 Men do not sufficiently understand the excellent use of the 
 pure mathematics, in that they do remedy and cure many 
 defects in the wit and faculties intellectual. For if the' wit 
 be too dull, they sharpen it ; if too wandering, they fix it ; if 
 too inherent in the sense, they abstract it. So that as tennis 
 is a game of no use in itself, but of great use in respect it 
 maketh a quick eye and a body ready to put into all postures ; 
 so in the mathematics, that use which is collateral and in- 
 tervenient is no less worthy than that which is principal and 
 intended. 
 
 This is to be exactly observed, that not only exceeding 
 great progression may be made in those studies, to which a 
 man is swayed by a natural proclivity : but also that there 
 may be found, in studies properly selected for that purpose, 
 cures and remedies to promote such kind of knowledge to the 
 impressions whereof a man may, by some imperfection of 
 nature, be most unapt and insufficient. As for example, if a 
 man be bird-witted, that is, quickly carried away, and hath 
 not patient faculty of attention ; the mathematics give a remedy 
 thereunto ; wherein, if the wit be caught away but for a mo- 
 ment, the demonstration is new to begin. 
 
 * See Wordsworth's Preface to his Lyrical Ballads, in 
 which he says, Long as 1 have detained my reader, I hope 
 he will permit me to caution him against a mode of false 
 criticism which has been applied to poetry, in which the 
 language closely I'esembles that of life and nature. Such 
 verses have been triumphed over in parodies, of which Dr, 
 Johnson's stanza is a fair specimen : — 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 271 
 
 ject new ways than to prosecute old, and are rather 
 skilful in many mysteries than thriving in one. 
 They affect not voluminous inventions, wherein 
 many years must constantly be spent to perfect 
 them ; except there be in them variety of pleasant 
 employment. 
 
 '* I put my hat upon my head 
 And walked into the Strand, 
 And there I met another man 
 Whose hat was in his hand." 
 Immediately under these lines I "will place one of the most 
 justly-admired stanzas of the " Babes in the Wood : " 
 
 These pretty babes with hand in hand 
 Went wandering up and down ; 
 But never more they saw the man 
 Approaching from the town." 
 
 In both these stanzas the words, and the order of the words, 
 in no respect differ from the most unimpassioned conversa- 
 tion. There are words in both, for example, the Strand," 
 and the Town," connected with none but the most familiar 
 ideas ; yet the one stanza we admit as admirable, and the 
 other as a fair exampj^ of the superlatively contemptible. 
 Whence arises this difference ? not from the metre, not from 
 the language, not from the order of the words : but the matter 
 expressed in Dr. Johnson's stanza is coniemptible. The 
 proper method of treating trivial and simple verses, to which 
 Dr. Johnson's stanza would be a fair parallelism, is not to 
 say, this is a bad kind of poetry : or this is not poetry ; but 
 this wants sense j it is neither interesting in itself, nor ca» 
 lead to anything interesting : the images neither originate 
 in tliat sane state of feeling which arises out of thought, nor 
 can excite thought or feeling in the reader. This is the only 
 sensible manner of dealing with such verses. Why trouble 
 yourself about the species till you have previously decided 
 upon the genus? why take pains to prove that an ape is not 
 a Newton, when it is self-evident that he is not a man. 
 
272 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 Imagination (the work of the fancy) hath pro- 
 duced real effects. Many serious and sad examples 
 hereof may be produced : I will only insist on a 
 merry one. A gentleman having led a company of 
 children beyond their usual journey, they began to 
 be weary, and jointly cried to him to carry them ; 
 which, because of their multitude, he could not do, 
 but told them he would provide them horses to ride 
 on. Then cutting little wands out of the hedge 
 as nags, for them, and a great stake as a gelding 
 for himself; thus mounted, fancy put mettle into 
 their legs, and they came cheerfully home. 
 
 Fancy runs most furiously when a guilty con- 
 science drives it. One that owed much money, 
 and had many creditors, as he walked London streets 
 in the evening, a tenterhook catched his cloak. 
 
 At whose suit V said he, conceiving some bailiff 
 had arrested him. Thus guilty consciences are 
 afraid where no fear is, and count every creature 
 they meet a Serjeant sent from God to punish 
 them. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Gravity is the ballast of the soul. 
 
 Learning hath gained most by those books by 
 which the printers have lost. 
 
 He shall be immortal who liveth till he be stoned 
 by one without fault. 
 
 Is there no way to bring home a wandering sheep 
 but by worrying him to death ? 
 
FROM DR. FULLER. 
 
 r273 
 
 Contentment consisteth not in adding more fuel, 
 but in taking away some fire. 
 
 It is the worst clandestine marriage when God 
 is not invited to it. 
 
 Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness 
 in the married state. Look not therein for con- 
 tentment greater than God will give, or a creature 
 in this world can receive, namely, to be free from 
 all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill 
 Olympus, wholly clear, without clouds. Remem- 
 ber the nightingales which sing only some months 
 in the spring, but commonly are silent when they 
 have hatched their eggs, as if their mirth were 
 turned into care for their young ones. 
 
 Neither choose all, nor not at all for beauty. 
 They tell us of a floating island in Scotland ; but 
 sure no wise pilot will cast anchor there. 
 
 Moderation is the silken string running through 
 the pearl-chain of all virtues. 
 
274 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 SECTION VIII. 
 
 SIR THOMAS BROWN. 
 
 1 WONDER and admire his entireness in every subject that 
 is before him. He follows it, he never wanders from it, and 
 he has no occasion to' wander ; for whatever happens to be 
 the subject, he metamorphoses all nature into it. In that 
 treatise on some urns dug up in Norfolk, how earthy, how 
 redolent of graves and sepulchres is every line ! You have 
 now dark mould, now a thigh-bone, now a skull, then a bit 
 of a mouldered coffin, a fragment of an old tomb-stone with 
 moss in its " Hie jacet," a ghost or a winding sheet, or the 
 echo of a funeral psalm wafted on a November wind ; and 
 the gayest thing you shall meet with shall be a silver nail or 
 a gilt * Anno Domini,' from a perished coffin top.'' — C. L. 
 
 THE PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC. 
 
 There is between us one common name and ap- 
 pellation, one faith and necessary body of principles 
 common to us both ; and therefore I am not scru- 
 pulous to converse and live with them, to enter 
 their churches in defect of ours, and either pray 
 with them or for them ; I could never perceive 
 any rational consequence from those many texts 
 which prohibit the children of Israel to pollute 
 themselves with the temples of the Heathens, we 
 being all Christians and not divided by such de- 
 tested impieties as might profane our prayers or 
 
FROM SIR THOMAS BROWN. 275 
 
 the place wherein we make them, or that a resolved 
 conscience may not adore her Creator anywhere, 
 especially in places devoted to his service : where, 
 if their devotions offend him, mine may please 
 him ; if theirs profane it, mine may hallow it; 
 holy water and crucifix (dangerous to the common 
 people) deceive not my judgment nor abuse my de- 
 votion at all : I am, I confess, naturally inclined 
 to that, which misguided zeal terms superstition ; 
 my common conversation I do acknowledge aus- 
 tere ; my behaviour full of rigour, sometimes not 
 without morosity ; yet at my devotion 1 love to use 
 the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with all 
 those outward and sensible motions, which may 
 ■express or promote my invisible devotion. I should 
 violate my own arm rather than a church, nor wil- 
 lingly deface the memory of saint or martyr. At 
 the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with 
 my hat, but scarce with the. thought or memory of 
 my Saviour ; I cannot laugh at, but rather pity 
 the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the 
 miserable condition of friars ; for though misplaced 
 in circumstances, there is something in it of de- 
 votion. I could never hear the Ave Maria bell 
 without an elevation, or think it a sufficient war- 
 rant, because they erred in one circumstance, for 
 me to err in all, that is, in silence and dumb con- 
 tempt ; whilst therefore they direct their devotions 
 to her, I offered mine to God, and rectify the errors 
 of their prayers by rightly ordering mine own. 
 
 I could never divide myself from any man upon 
 the difference of an opinion ; or be angry with his 
 
276 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 judgment for not agreeing- with me in that, from 
 which perhaps, within a few days, I should dissent 
 myself. 
 
 It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall upon 
 those popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs of 
 the Bishop of Rome, to whom as a temporal prince, 
 we owe the duty of good language ; I confess 
 there is cause of passion between us ; by his sen- 
 tence I stand excommunicated, heretic is the best 
 language he affords me, yet can no ear witness I 
 ever returned to him the name of antichrist, man 
 of sin, or whore of Babylon ; it is the method of 
 charity to suffer without reaction : those usual 
 satires, and invectives of the pulpit may perchance 
 produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose ears are 
 opener to rhetoric than logic, yet do they in no wise 
 confirm the faith of wiser believers, who know that 
 a good cause needs not to be patroned by passion, 
 but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute. 
 
 THE STUDENT. 
 
 The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but 
 studied and contemplated by man : 'tis the debt of 
 our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we 
 pay for not being beasts ; without this the world 
 is still as though it had not been, or as it was be- 
 fore the sixth day when as yet there was not a 
 creature that could conceive, or say there was a 
 world. The wisdom of God receives small honour 
 from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, 
 
FROM Sill THOMAS BROWN. 277 
 
 and with a gross rusticity admire his works : those 
 highly magnify him whose judicious enquiry into 
 his acts, and dehberate research into his creatures, 
 return the duty of a devout and learned admira- 
 tion.* 
 
 DEFORMITY. 
 
 I HOLD there is general beauty in the works of 
 God, and therefore no deformity in any kind or 
 species of creature whatsoever; I cannot tell by 
 what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant 
 ugly, they being created in those outward shapes 
 and figures which best express those actions of 
 their inward forms. And having past that gene- 
 ral visitation of God, who saw that all that he had 
 made was good, that is, conformable to his will, 
 which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order 
 and beauty ; there is no deformity but in monstro- 
 sity, wherein, notwithstanding there is a kind of 
 beauty, nature so ingeniously contriving the irre- 
 gular parts, as they become sometimes more re- 
 markable than the principal fabric. To speak yet 
 more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or 
 misshapen, but the chaos ; wherein notwithstand- 
 
 * Man is placed on this stage of the world, to view the 
 several natures and actions of the creatures not idly as they 
 view us. 
 
 The things," says Boyle, for which I hold life valu- 
 able are the satisfaction that accrues from the improvemfent 
 of knowledge and the exercise of piety." 
 
278 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ing, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, be- 
 cause no form, nor was it yet impregnant by the 
 voice of God.f 
 
 t An Emperor of Germany coming by chance, on a Sunday, 
 into a church, found there a most misshapen priest pene 
 porientum naturae," insomuch as the Emperor scorned and 
 contemned him. But when he heard him read those words 
 in the service, " For it is he that hath made us, and not we 
 ourselves," the Emperor checked his own proud thoughts, and 
 made enquiry into the quality and condition of the man : and 
 finding him, on examination, most learned and devout, he 
 made him Archbishop of Colen, which place he did excel- 
 lently discharge. — Fuller's Holy State, 
 
 in Love's Labour's Lost, there is the following dialogue 
 between Rosalind and Biron : 
 
 Ros, Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Biron, 
 Before I saw you ; and the world's large tongue 
 Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks ; 
 Full of comparisons and wounding flouts. 
 Which you on all estates will execute. 
 That lie within the mercy of your wit : 
 To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, 
 And there withal to win me, if you please, 
 Without the which I am not to be won ; 
 You shall this twelve-month term from day to day 
 Visit the speechless sick, and still converse 
 With groaning wretches : and your task shall be. 
 With all the fierce endeavour of your wit, 
 To enforce the pained impotent to smile. 
 
 Biron. To move wild laughter in the throat of death ! 
 It cannot be, it is impossible : 
 Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. 
 . Ros. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit. 
 Whose influence is begot of that loose grace, 
 Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools : 
 " A jest's prosperity lies in the ear 
 Of him that hears it ; never in the tongue 
 Of him that makes it." 
 
FROM SIR THOMAS BROWN. 
 
 270 
 
 NATURE AND ART. 
 
 Nature is not at variance with art; nor art with 
 nature ; they being both the servants of the pro- 
 vidence of God. Art is the perfection of nature ; 
 were the world now as it was the sixth day, there 
 were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, 
 and art another. In brief, all things are artificial, 
 for nature is the art of God.* 
 
 When Dr. Franklin attended the Privy Council^, during 
 the struggle between America and England, as the represen- 
 tative of the province of Massachusetts, Mr. Wedderburn 
 (afterwards Lord Loughborough) inveighed against him in 
 the severest language. At the sallies of his wit, all the 
 members of the council, the president himself (Lord Gower) 
 not excepted, frequently laughed outright. No person be- 
 longing to the council behaved with decent gravity except 
 Lord North. Di . Franklin told Mr. Lee, one of his counsel, 
 after the business was concluded, that he was indifferent to 
 Mr. Wedderburn's speech, but that he was indeed sincerely 
 sorry to see the Lords of the council behave so indecently. 
 
 They showed," he added, " that the coarsest language can 
 be grateful to the politest ear." 
 
 In the very clothes which he wore before the Privy Coun- 
 cil when he was insulted, he afterwards signed the treaties of 
 commerce and alliance. 
 * Perdita, For I have heard it said, 
 
 There is an art, which in their piedness shares 
 
 With great creating nature. 
 Pol. Say there be. 
 
 Yet nature is made better by no mean. 
 
 But nature makes that mean ; 
 
 So over that art, which you say adds to nature, 
 
 Is an art that nature makes ; you see, sweet maid. 
 
 We marry a gentle scyon to the wildest stock, 
 
280 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 CHARITY. 
 
 I HOLD not so narrow a conceit of this virtue, as 
 to conceive that to give alms, is only to be cha- 
 ritable, or think a piece of liberality can compre- 
 hend the total of charity; divinity hath wisely 
 divided the act thereof into many branches, and 
 hath taught us in this narrow way, many paths 
 unto goodness ; as many ways as we may do good, 
 so many ways we may be charitable ; there are 
 infirmities not only of body, but of soul and for- 
 tunes, which do require the merciful hand of our 
 abilities. I cannot contemn a man for ignorance, 
 but behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus. 
 
 And make conceive a bark of baser kind 
 
 By bud of nobler race. This is an art 
 
 Which does mend nature, change it rather; but 
 
 The art itself is nature. Winter's Tale. 
 
 Natural History is subject to a threefold division. For 
 nature is either free and displaying herself in her ordinary 
 course, as in the heavens, living creatures, plants, and the 
 universal furniture of the world : — or put out of her usual 
 course, as in the monsters : — or she is compressed and fash- 
 ioned, and as it were, new cast, as in artificial operations. An 
 opinion hath, however, long time gone current, as if art were 
 some different thing from nature, and artificial from natural. 
 From this mistake, this inconvenience arises, that many 
 writers of natural history think they have quit themselves 
 sufficiently if they have compiled a history of creatures, or of 
 plants, or of minerals ; the experiments of mechanical arts 
 past over in silence. But there is yet a more subtle deceit 
 which secretly steals into the minds of men ; namely, that 
 
FROM SIR THOMAS BROWN. 
 
 281 
 
 It is no greater charity to clothe his body, than 
 apparel the nakedness of his soul. It is an ho- 
 nourable object to see the reasons of other men 
 wear our liveries, and their borrowed understand- 
 ings do homage to the bounty of ours ; it is the 
 cheapest way of beneficence, and like the natural 
 charity of the sun, illuminates another without 
 obscuring itself. To be reserved and caitiff in this 
 part of goodness, is the sordidest piece of covetous- 
 ness, and more contemptible than the pecuniary 
 avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I 
 am obliged by the duty of my condition, I make 
 not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure of 
 knowledge ; I intend no monopoly, but a commu- 
 nity in learning I study not for my own sake only, 
 but for theirs that study not for themselves. 
 
 art should be reputed a kind of additament only to nature, 
 whose virtue is this, that it can indeed either perfect nature 
 inchoate, or repair it when it is decayed, or set it at liberty 
 from impediments ; but not quite alter, transmute, or shake 
 it in the foundations : which erroneous conceit hath brought 
 in a too hasty despair upon men's enterprises. But on the 
 contrary, this certain truth should be thoroughly settled in 
 the minds of men, that artificials differ not from natural in 
 form and essence ; but in the efficient only ; for man hath no 
 power over nature save only in her motion ; that is, to mingle 
 or put together natural bodies, and to separate or put them 
 asunder ; wherefore where there is apposition and separation 
 of bodies natural conjoining (as they term it) active with 
 passive, man may do all things : this not done, he can do 
 nothing. — bacon. 
 
282 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 RASH JUDGMENT. 
 
 No man can justly censure or condemn another, 
 because indeed no man truly knows another. This 
 T perceive in myself, for I am in the dark to all 
 the world, and my nearest friends behold me but 
 in a cloud ; those that know me but superficially 
 think less of me than I do of myself ; those of my 
 near acquaintance think more : God, who truly 
 knows me, knows that I am nothing, for he only 
 beholds me, and all the world, who looks not on 
 us through a derived ray, or a trajection of a sen- 
 sible species, but beholds the substance without 
 the helps of accidents, and the forms of things, 
 as we their operations. Further, no man can judge 
 
 t See Ante 154, in note, where there is an extract from 
 Wordsworth, upon rash judgments and the sneers of selfish 
 men." 
 
 What we oft do best. 
 By sick interpreters, or weak ones, is 
 Not ours, or not allowed : what worst, as oft 
 Hitting a grosser quality, is cried up 
 For our best act. — Henry VIII. Act 1. Scene 4. 
 
 See Barrow's Sermon against detraction ; Sermon xix. 
 See also his Sermon xx. against Rash Judgment," which 
 he says is 
 
 1. Impious. 
 
 2. Unjust. 
 
 3. Uncharitable. 
 
 4. Foolish and Vain. 
 
 5. Productive of Evil. 
 
 An honest and charitable mind dispose th us, when we see 
 
FROM SIR THOMAS BROWN. 283 
 
 another, because no man knows himself, for we 
 censure others but as they disagree from that 
 humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and 
 commend others but for that wherein they seem to 
 quadrate and consent with us. So that in con- 
 clusion, all is but that we all condemn, self-love. f 
 
 PRIDE. 
 
 1 THANK God, amongst those millions of vices I 
 do inherit and hold from Adam, I have escaped 
 one, and that a mortal enemy to charity, the first 
 and father sin, not only of man, but of the devil, 
 pride ; a vice whose name is comprehended in a 
 monosyllable, but in its nature not circumscribed 
 
 any man endued with good qualities, and pursuing a tenor of 
 good practice, to esteem such a person, to commend him, to 
 interpret what he doth to the best, not to suspect any ill of 
 him or to seek any exception against him ; it inclineth us, 
 when we see any action materially good, to yield it simply 
 due approbation and praise, without searching for or sur- 
 mising any defect in the cause or principle whence itcometh, 
 in the design or end to which it tendeth, in the way or man- 
 ner of performing it. A good man would be sorry to have 
 any good thing spoiled, as to find a crack in a fair building, 
 a flaw in a fine jewel, a canker in a goodly flower, is grievous 
 to any indifferent man : so would it be displeasing to him to 
 observe defects in a worthy person, or commendable action. 
 
 The sensorious humour, as it argueth ill nature to be pre- 
 dominant (a vulturous nature which easily smelleth out, and 
 hastily flieth toward, and greedily feedeth on carrion) so it 
 signifieth bad conscience ! for he that knoweth evil of himself 
 
284 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 with a world ; I have escaped it in a condition that 
 can hardly avoid it; those petty acquisitions and 
 reputed perfections that advance and elevate the 
 conceits of other men, add no feathers into mine ; 
 I have seen a grammarian tour and plume himself 
 over a single line in Horace, and shew more pride 
 in the construction of one ode, than the author 
 in the composure of the whole book. For my own 
 part, besides the jargon and patois of several pro- 
 vinces, I understand no less than six languages ; 
 yet I protest I have no higher conceit of myself, 
 than had our fathers before the confusion of Babel, 
 when there was but one language in the world, and 
 none to boast himself either linguist or critic. I 
 have not only seen several countries, beheld the 
 nature of their climes, the chorography of their 
 provinces ; topography of their cities, but under- 
 stood their several laws, customs and policies ; yet 
 
 is most prone to suspect, and most quick to pronounce ill con- 
 cerning others, so it breedeth and fostereth such ill dispositions : 
 it debaucheth the minds of men, rendering them dim and 
 doltish in apprehending their own faults, negligent and heed- 
 less in regard to their own hearts and ways, apt to please and 
 comfort themselves in the evils, real or imaginary, of their neigh- 
 bours ; which to do is a very barbarous and brutish practice, 
 
 BARROW. 
 
 A truly great man is considerate before he condemns, and 
 hesitates when compelled to censure. He. knows that in all 
 censure of others there is something of self-approbation. He 
 knows that, exalted into the situation of a judge, it is difficult 
 to walk humbly. He remembers that it is the nature of hu- 
 man weakness to inflate its trifling acts into matters of vast 
 importance. " The school-boy who caught a tame rabbit, 
 
FROM SIR THOMAS BROWN. 
 
 285 
 
 cannot all this persuade the dulness of my spirit unfo 
 such an opinion of myself, as I behold in nimbler 
 and conceited heads, that never looked a degree 
 beyond their nests. I know the names, and some- 
 Avhat more, of all the constellations in my horizon ; 
 yet I have seen a prating mariner that could only 
 name the pointers and the North star, out-talk me, 
 and conceit himself a whole sphere above me. I 
 know most of the plants of my country, and of those 
 about me ; yet methinks I do not know so many as 
 when I did but know a hundred, and had scarcely 
 ever simpled further than Cheapside ; for indeed 
 heads of capacity, and such as are not full with a 
 handful, or easy measure of knowledge, think they 
 know nothing, till they know all ; which being im- 
 possible, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates, 
 and only know they know not anything. t 
 
 thought himself a mighty sportsman." He is also fearful that 
 he may mislead others : that he may awaken intemperate zeal : 
 that he may administer to envy and malice, and at last that a 
 subject deeply considered, and by him cautiously stated, may 
 prove a step for restless vanity, which would lift itself into 
 notice, or a text for the cant which confounds goodness with 
 the talk of goodness. — A. M. 
 
 Does not the tendency to Rash Judgment, which would 
 crucify merit, really originate in the respect for merit, from the 
 pain attendant upon the consciousness of being excelled ? 
 
 X SOLILOQUIES OF THE OLD PHILOSOPHER AND THE 
 YOUNG LADY. 
 
 Alas !" exclaimed a silver-headed sage, how narrow is 
 the utmost extent of human knowledge ! how circumscribed 
 the sphere of intellectual exertion ! I have spent my life in 
 acquiring knowledge, but how little do I know ! The farther 
 
286 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 THE INVISIBLE WORLD. 
 
 Now there is another part of charity, which is the 
 basis and pillar of this, and that is the love of God, 
 
 I at^inpt to penetrate the secrets of nature, the more I am 
 bewildered and benighted. Beyond a certain limit all is but 
 confusion or conjecture : so that the advantage of the learned 
 over the ignorant consists greatly in having ascertained how 
 little is to be known. 
 
 It is true that I can measure the sun, and compute the 
 distances of the planets ; I can calculate their periodical 
 movements ; and even ascertain the laws by which they per- 
 form their sublime revolutions : but with regard to their con- 
 struction, to the beings which inhabit them, of their condition 
 and circumstances, v/hether natural or moral, what do I know 
 more than the clown 1 
 
 "Delighting to examine the economy of nature in our own 
 world, I have analyzed the elements ; and have given names 
 to their component parts. And yet, should I not be as much 
 at a loss to explain the burning of fire, or to account for the 
 liquid quality of water, as the vulgar who use and enjoy them 
 without thought or examination 1 
 
 ** I remark that all bodies, unsupported, fall to the ground ; 
 and I am taught to account for this by the law of gravitation. 
 But what have I gained here more than a term 1 Does it 
 convey to my mind any idea of the nature of that mysterious 
 and invisible chain, which draws all things to a common 
 centre ? I observed the effect, I give a name to the cause, 
 but can I explain or comprehend it ? 
 
 *' Pursuing the tract of the naturalist, I have learned to 
 distinguish the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms : 
 and to divide these into their distinct tribes and families : — 
 but can I tell, after all this toil, wiience a single blade of 
 grass derives its vitality 1 — Could the most minute researches 
 enable me to discover the exquisite pencil that paints and 
 
FROM SIR THOMAS BROWN. 
 
 287 
 
 for whom we love our neighbour ; for this I think 
 charity, to love God for himself, and our neigh- 
 bour for God. All that is truly amiable, is God, 
 or as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a 
 
 fringes the flower of the field 1 — have I ever detected the se- 
 cret that gives their brilliant dye to the ruby and the emerald, 
 or the art that enamels the delicate shell 7 
 
 I observe the sagacity of animals ; I call it instinct, and 
 speculate upon its various degrees of approximation to the 
 reason of man. But, after all, I know as little of the cogita- 
 tions of the brute as he does of mine. When I see a flight of 
 birds overhead, performing their evolutions, or steering their 
 course to some distant settlement, their signals and cries are 
 as unintelligible tome as are the learned languages to the un- 
 lettered mechanic ; I understand as little of their policy and 
 laws as they do of Blackstone's Commentaries. 
 
 ** But leaving the material creation, my thoughts have 
 often ascended to loftier subjects, and indulged in metaphy- 
 sical speculation. And here, while I easily perceive in my- 
 self the two distinct qualities of matter and mind, I am baffled 
 in every attempt to comprehend their mutual dependance and 
 mysterious connection. When my hand moves in obedience 
 to my will, have I the most distant conception of the manner 
 in which the volition is either communicated or understood ? 
 Thus in the exercise of one of the most simple and ordinary 
 actions, 1 am perplexed and confounded, if I attempt to ac- 
 count for it. 
 
 " Again, how many years of my life were devoted to the 
 acquisition of those languages, by the means of which I might 
 explore the records of remote ages, and become familiar with 
 the learning and literature of other times ! and what have I 
 gathered from these but the mortifying fact, that man has 
 ever been struggling with his own impotence, and vainly en- 
 deavouring to overleap the bounds which limit his anxious in* 
 quiries ? 
 
 " Alas ! then, what have I gained by my laborious re- 
 searches but a humiliating conviction of my weakness and 
 
288 ^ SELECTIONS 
 
 reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is it strange 
 that we should place affection on that which is in- 
 visible ; all that we truly love is thus ; what we 
 
 ignorance ? of how little has man, at his best estate, to boast 1 
 what folly in him to glory in his contracted powers, or to 
 value himself upon his imperfect acquisitions t 
 
 ** Well ! " exclaimed a young lady, just returned from 
 school, my education is at last finished : indeed it would be 
 strange, if, after five years' hard application, any thing were 
 left incomplete. Happily that is all over now ; and I have 
 nothing to do, but to exercise my various accomplishments. 
 
 Let me see ! — as to French, I am mistress of that, and 
 speak it, if possible, with more fluency than English. Italian 
 I can read with ease, and pronounce very well : as well at 
 least, and better, than any of my friends ; and that is all one 
 need wish for in Italian. Music I have learned till I am 
 perfectly sick of it. But, now that we have a grand piano, it 
 will be delightful to play when we have company. I must 
 still continue to practise a little ; — the only thing, 1 think, 
 that I need now to improve myself in. And then there are my 
 Italian songs ! which every body allows I sing with taste, and 
 as it is what so few people can pretend to, I am particularly 
 glad that I can. 
 
 My drawings are universally admired ; especially the 
 shells and flowers ; which are beautiful, certainly ; besides 
 this, I have a decided taste in all kinds of fancy ornaments. 
 
 " And then my dancing and waltzing ! in which our master 
 himself owned that he could take me no further ! — just the 
 figure for it certainly ; it would be unpardonable if I did not 
 excel. 
 
 As to common things, geography, and history, and poe- 
 try, and philosophy, thank my stars, I have got through them 
 all ! so that I may consider myself not only perfectly accom- 
 plished, but also thoroughly well informed. 
 
 " Well, to be sure, how much have I fagged through ; the 
 only wonder is that one head can contain it all J. T. 
 
FROM SIR THOMAS BKOAVN. 
 
 289 
 
 adore under affection of our senses deserves not 
 the honour of so pure a title. Thus we adore 
 virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible. 
 Thus that part of our noble friends that we love, 
 is not that part that we embrace, but that insen- 
 sible part that our arms cannot embrace. God 
 being' all goodness, can love nothing but himself; 
 he loves us but for that part, which is as it were 
 himself, and the traduction of his Holy Spirit. 
 Let us call to assize the loves of our parents, the 
 affection of our wives and children, and they are 
 all dumb shows and dreams without reality, truth, 
 or constancy. 
 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 Ma N is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, pompons 
 in the grave. 
 
 It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can 
 throw at a man to tell him that he is at the end of 
 his being. 
 
 Were the happiness of the next world as closely 
 apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a 
 martyrdom to live; and unto such as consider 
 none hereafter, it must be more than death to die, 
 which makes us amazed at their audacities that 
 durst be nothing, and return to their chaos again. 
 
 To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their 
 production, to exist in their names and predica- 
 ment of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old 
 expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. 
 But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true 
 
 u 
 
290 
 
 SELECTIONS. 
 
 belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, 
 which being not only a hope but an evidence in 
 noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's 
 church-yard, as in the sands of Egypt ; ready to 
 be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as 
 content with six feet as the moles of Adrianus.* 
 
 HAPPINESS. 
 
 That wherein God himself is happy, the holy 
 angels are happy, in whose defect the devils are 
 unhappy : that dare I call happiness : whatsoever 
 conduceth unto this, may with an easy metaphor 
 deserve that name ; whatsoever else the world 
 terms happiness, is to me a story out of Pliny ; an 
 apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no 
 more of happiness than the name. Bless me in 
 this life with but peace of my conscience, com- 
 mand of my affections, the love of thyself and my 
 dearest friends : and I shall be happy enough to 
 pity Caesar. These are, O Lord, the humble de- 
 sires of my most reasonable ambition, and all I 
 dare call happiness on earth ; wherein I set no 
 rule or limit to thy hand or providence, dispose of 
 me according to the wisdom of thy pleasure. Thy 
 will be done though in my own undoing. 
 
 * Urn-Burial. 
 
291 
 
 SECTION IX. 
 MILTON. 
 
 Wherever I find a man despising the false estimates of the 
 vulgar, and daring to aspire, in sentiment, in language, and 
 in conduct, to what the highest wisdom through all ages has 
 sanctioned as most excellent, to him I unite myself by a sort 
 of necessary attachment : and, if I am so formed by nature 
 or destiny, that, by no exertion or labour of my own, I can 
 attain this summit of worth and honour, yet no power of hea- 
 ven or earth shall hinder me from looking with affection and 
 reverence upon those who have thoroughly attained this glory, 
 or appear engaged in the successful pursuit of it. — Letter to 
 Deodati, 
 
 OF EDUCATION. 
 
 And seeing every nation affords not experience 
 and tradition enough for all kind of learnings 
 therefore we are chiefly taught the languages of 
 those people who have at any time been most in- 
 dustrious after wisdom : so that language is but 
 the instrument conveying to us things useful to he 
 known. And though a linguist should pride him- 
 self to have all the tongues that Babel cleft the 
 world into, yet, if he have not studied the solid 
 things in them as well as the words and lexicons, 
 he were nothing so much to be esteemed a learned 
 man, as any yeoman or tradesman competently 
 
292 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 wise in his mother dialect only. Hence appear 
 the many mistakes which have made learning- ge- 
 nerally so unpleasing" and so unsuccessful ; first, 
 we do amiss to spend seven or eight years merely 
 in scraping together so much miserable Latin and 
 Greek, as might be learned otherwise easily and 
 delightfully in one year.* 
 
 And that which casts our proficiency therein so 
 much behind, is our time lost partly in too oft idle 
 vacancies given both to schools and universities ; 
 partly in a preposterous exaction, forcing the empty 
 wits of children to compose themes, verses, and 
 orations, which are the acts of ripest judgment, t 
 and the final work of a head filled by long reading 
 and observing, with elegant maxims and copious 
 invention. These are not matters to be wrunof 
 from poor striplings, like blood out of the nose, oi* | 
 the plucking of untimely fruit ; besides the ill habit 
 which they get of wretched barbarising against the 
 Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored An- 
 glicisms, odious to be read, yet not to be avoided 
 without a well continued and judicious conversing 
 among pure authors digested, which they scarce 
 
 * Is it not better to have ten ideas in one language, than 
 one idea in ten 1 
 
 t It is a usual practice (but in my opinion somewhat 
 preposterous) that scholars in the universities are too early 
 entered in logic and rhetoric ; arts indeed fitter for graduates 
 than children and novices, — the untimely and unripe acces- 
 sion to these arts, hath drawn on, by necessary consequence, 
 a watery and superficiary delivery and handling thereof, as is 
 fitted indeed to the capacities of children. — Bacon's Ad- 
 vancement of Learning, 
 
FROM MILTON. 
 
 293 
 
 taste ; whereas, if after some preparatory grounds 
 of speech by their certain forms got into memory, 
 they were led to the praxis thereof in some chosen 
 short book lessoned thoroughly to them, they 
 might then forthwith proceed to learn the substance 
 of good things, and arts in due order, which would 
 bring the whole language quickly into their power. 
 This I take to be the most rational and most pro- 
 fitable way of learning languages, and whereby 
 we may best hope to give account to God of our 
 youth spent herein. 
 
 And for the usual method of teaching arts, I 
 deem it to be an old error of universities, not yet 
 well recovered from the scholastic grossness of bar- 
 barous ages, that instead of beginning with arts 
 most easy, (and those be such as are most obvious 
 to the sense,) they present their young- unmatri- 
 culated novices at first coming with the most in- 
 tellective abstractions of logic and metaphysics, so 
 that they having but newly left those grammatic 
 flats and shallows where they stuck unreasonably 
 to learn a few^ words with lamentable construction, 
 and now on the sudden transported under another 
 climate to be tossed and turmoiled with their un- 
 ballasted wits in fathomless and unquiet deeps of 
 controversy, do for the most part grow into hatred 
 and contempt of learning, mocked and deluded all 
 this while with ragged notions and babblements, 
 while they expected worthy and delightful know- 
 ledge ; till poverty or youthful years call them im- 
 portunately their several ways, and hasten them 
 with the sway of friends, either to an ambitious 
 
294 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and mercenary, or ignorantly zealous divinity : 
 some allured to the trade of law, grounding" their 
 purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contem- 
 plation of justice and equity, which was never 
 taught them ; but on the promising and pleasing 
 thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions, and 
 flowing fees : others betake them to state affairs, 
 with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true gene- 
 rous breeding, that flattery and courtshifts, and 
 tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest 
 points of wisdom ; instilling their barren hearts 
 with a conscientious slavery; if, as I rather think, 
 it be not feigned. Others, lastly, of a more deli- 
 cious and airy spirit, retire themselves (knowing 
 no better) to the enjoyments of ease and luxury, 
 living out their days in feasts and jollity ; which 
 indeed is the wisest and the safest course of all 
 these, unless they were with more integrity under- 
 taken. And these are the errors, and these are 
 the fruits of mispending our prime youth at schools 
 and universities as we do, either in learning mere 
 words, or such things chiefly as were better un- 
 learned. 
 
 I shall detain you now no longer in the demon- 
 stration of what we should not do, but straight 
 conduct you to a hill side, where I will point you 
 out the right path of a virtuous and noble educa- 
 tion; laborious indeed at the first ascent, but else 
 so smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and 
 melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of 
 Orpheus was not more charming. I doubt not but 
 ye shall have more ado to drive our dullest and la~ 
 
FROM MILTON. 
 
 295 
 
 ziest youth, our stocks and stubs, from the infinite 
 desire of such a happy nurture, than we have now 
 to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest 
 wits to that asinine feast of sow thistles and bram- 
 bles, which is commonly set before them as all the 
 food and entertainment of their tenderest and most 
 docible age. 
 
 I call therefore a complete and generous educa- 
 tion, that which fits a man to perform justly, skil- 
 fully and magnanimously all the offices, both pri- 
 vate and public, of peace and war. And how all 
 this may be done between tw^elve and one and 
 twenty, less time than is now bestowed in pure 
 trifling at grammar and sophistry, is to be thus or- 
 dered, &c. Szc* 
 
 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ERROR 
 AND TRUTH. 
 
 Good and evil we know in the field of this world 
 grow up together almost inseparably: and the 
 knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven 
 with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning 
 resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those 
 confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche 
 as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, 
 were not more intermixed.! 
 
 * From Milton's Letter to Master Hartlib. 
 
 t We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, who 
 write what men do, and not what they ought to do ; for it is 
 not possible to join serpentine wisdom with columbine mno- 
 
296 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 ACTIVE VIRTUE. 
 
 I CANNOT praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue 
 unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out 
 and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, 
 where that immortal garland is to be run for, not 
 
 cency, except men knew exactly all the conditions of the ser- 
 pent ; his baseness and going upon his belly : his volubility, 
 and lubricity ; his envy and sting. 
 
 Tlie connection between truth and error, or rather how 
 error leads to truth, may be seen in tracing the drogress of 
 any invention, as the steam engine ; or of any science, of 
 astronomy for instance, of which there is to any person desi- 
 rous to see how light arises out of darkness, a very interesting 
 delineation in the posthumous works of Adam Smith. 
 
 Yet surely to alchemy this right is due, that it may be 
 compared to the husbandman, whereof ^sop makes the fable ; 
 that, when he died, told his sons, that he had left unto them 
 gold buried, under ground in his vineyard : and they digged 
 over all the ground, and gold they found none : but by reason 
 of their stirring and digging the mould about the roots of the 
 vines, they had a great vintage the year following ; so assu- 
 redly the search and stir to make gold hath brought to light 
 a great number of good and fruitful inventions and experi- 
 ments, as well for the disclosing of nature, as for the use of 
 man's life. — bacon. 
 
 Good and ill are universally intermingled and confounded ; 
 — happiness and misery, wisdom and folly, virtue and vice. 
 Nothing is pure and entirely of a piece. All advantages are 
 attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation 
 prevails in all conditions of being and existence. And it is 
 scarce possible for us by our most chimerical wishes, to form 
 the idea of a station or situation altogether desirable. The 
 draughts of life, according to the poet's fiction, are always 
 mixed from vessels on each hand of Jupiter : or if any cup 
 be presented altogether pure, it is drawn only, as the same 
 poet tells us, from the left-handed vessel. — hume. 
 
 Truth is often covered with heaps of idle and unprofitable 
 
FROM MILTON. 
 
 297 
 
 without dust and heat. This was the reason why 
 our sage and serious poet, Spenser, describing true 
 temperance under the person of Guion, brings him 
 in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon 
 and the bower of earthly bliss, that he might see 
 and know and yet abstain.* 
 
 traditions : yet may it be worth our while to seek for a few 
 truths under a whole heap of rubbish. — bishop taylor. 
 
 Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to 
 suffer it to stagnate ; these waters must be troubled before 
 they can exert their virtues. — burke. 
 
 There are errors which no wise man will treat with rude- 
 ness while there is a probability that they may be the refrac- 
 tion of some great truth as yet below the horizon. 
 
 COLERIDGE. 
 
 * Pythagoras, being asked by Hiero what he was, an- 
 swered : If Hiero were ever at the Olympian games, he knew 
 the manner, that some came to try their fortunes for the prizes ; 
 some as merchants to utter their commodities; some to make 
 good cheer and be merry, and to meet their friends ; and some 
 came to look on ; and that he was one of them that came to 
 look on : but men should know that, in this theatre of man's 
 life, it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on. 
 
 LORD BACON. 
 
 But according to Swift, even angels are not to be passive : 
 the royal arms of Lilliput are, he says, *' An angel lifting a 
 lame beggar from the earth." 
 
 Lord Bacon abounds with observations to the same effect : 
 he says, — " A contemplative life, which does not cast any 
 beam of heat or light upon human society, is not known to 
 divinity : and the necessity of advancing the public good, 
 censures that philosophy which flies perturbations. Philoso- 
 phy which introduces such a health of mind, as was that of 
 Herodicus in body, who did nothing all his life, but intend 
 his health. ' Sustine,' and not ' Abstine,' was the commen- 
 dation of Diogenes." 
 
 Philosophy censures the tenderness of some men, who retire 
 too easily from public life, to avoid indignity : but their solu- 
 
298 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 LIBERTY. 
 
 This is not the liberty which we can hope, that no 
 grievance ever should arise in the commonwealth, 
 
 tion ought not to be so line, that every thing may catch in it 
 and tear it. — lord bacon. 
 
 Are we not all passively kind, that is, do we not all, in a 
 greater or less degree, enjoy the pleasures of kindness ; and 
 does not the chief difference consist in active and passive 
 kindness. " The cause which I knew not, I searched out,'' 
 are the words of Job : — ** I was an hungred and ye gave me 
 meat ; I was thirsty and ye gave me drink ; I was a stranger 
 and ye took me in j naked and ye clothed me ; I was sick 
 and ye visited me ; I was in prison and ye came unto me," 
 is the language of Christianity. 
 
 Yet even this, this cold beneficence 
 
 Seizes my praise, when I reflect on those. 
 
 The sluggard pity's vision weaving tribe 
 
 Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched. 
 
 Nursing in some delicious solitude. 
 
 Their slothful loves and dainty sympathies. 
 
 COLERIDGF,. 
 
 Of the duty of activity Milton and Bacon are illustrious 
 examples ; Milton says, When that task of answering the 
 king's defence was enjoined me by public authority, being 
 both in an ill state of health, and the sight of one eye almost 
 gone already, the physicians openly predicting the loss of 
 both, if I undertook this labour ; yet nothing terrified by 
 their premonition, I did not long balance whether my duty 
 should be preferred to my eyes." 
 
 We all remember his noble sonnet descriptive of this blind- 
 ness : — 
 
 Cyriac, this three years day, these eyes, tho' clear 
 
 To outward view of blemish or of spot, 
 
 Bereft of sight, their seeing have forgot. 
 
 Nor to their idle orbs does day appear. 
 
 Or sun, or moon, or star, throughout the year, 
 
 Or man or woman. Yet I argue not 
 
FROM MILTON. 
 
 299 
 
 that let no man in this world expect; but when 
 complaints are freely heard, deeply considered, and 
 
 Against heaven's hand, or will, nor bate one jot 
 
 Of heart or hope ; but still bear up, and steer 
 
 Right onward. What supports me dost thou ask ? 
 
 The conscience, friend, to have lost them over-ply 'd 
 
 In liberty's defence, my nol>le task, 
 
 Whereof all Europe rings from side to side. 
 
 This thought miglit lead me thro' this world's vain mask, 
 
 Content, tho' blind, had I no other guide. 
 
 How deeply Milton felt the sacrifice which he made, may 
 be collected from the following effusion : — 
 
 With small willingness I endure to interrupt the pursuit 
 of no less hopes than those, and leave a calm and pleasing 
 solitariness, fed whh cheerful and confident thoughts, to 
 embark in a troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes, put 
 from beholding the bright countenance of truth, in the quiet 
 and still air of delightful studies, to come into the dim reflec- 
 tion of hollow antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, and there 
 be fain to club quotations with men whose learning and belief 
 lies in marginal stuffings. 
 
 So, too, Lord Bacon says, We judge also that mankind 
 may conceive some hopes from our example, which we offer, 
 not by way of ostentation, but because it may be useful. If 
 any one therefore should despair, let him consider a man as 
 much employed in civil affairs as any other of his age, a man 
 of no great share of health, who must therefore have lost much 
 time, and yet in this undertaking, he is the first that leads 
 the way, unassisted by any mortal, and steadfastly entering 
 the true path, that was absolutely untrod before, and sub- 
 mitting his mind to things, may somewhat have advanced the 
 design." 
 
 How beautifully does Lord Bacon warn us that we ought 
 not too soon to encounter the world. As the fable goes of 
 the basilisk, that if he see a man first the man dies ; but if a 
 man see him first the basilisk dies ; so it is with frauds, im- 
 postures and evil arts, — if a man discover them first, they 
 lose their power of doing hurt ; but if they are not seen, they 
 are dangerous." 
 
300 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 speedily reformed, then is the utmost bound of civil 
 liberty attained that wise men look for.* 
 
 LIBELS. 
 
 I DENY not, but that it is of the greatest concern- 
 ment in the church and commonwealth, to have a 
 vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well 
 as men ; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and 
 do sharpest justice on them as malefactors; for 
 books are not absolutely dead things, but do con- 
 tain a progeny of life in them to be as active as 
 that soul was whose progeny they are ; nay, they 
 do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and ex- 
 traction of that living intellect that bred them. 
 I know they are as lively, and as vigorously pro- 
 ductive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth ; and be- 
 ing sown up and down, may chance to spring up 
 armed men. 
 
 LICENSERS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 Lest some should persuade ye, lords and commons, 
 that these arguments of learned men's discourage- 
 ment at this your order are mere flourishes and 
 not real, I could recount what I have seen and 
 heard in other countries, where this kind of inqui- 
 
 * This is true liberty, when free-born men, 
 Having to advise the public, may speak free. 
 
FROM MILTON. 301 
 
 sition tyrannizes ; when I have sat among- their 
 learned men, (for that honour .1 had,) and been 
 counted happy to be born in such a place of philo- 
 sophic freedom, as they supposed Eng-land was, 
 while themselves did nothing but bemoan the ser- 
 vile condition into which learning among-st them 
 was brought ; that this was it which had damped 
 the glory of Italian wits ; that nothing had been 
 there written now these many years but flattery 
 and fustian. There it was that I found and visited 
 the famous Galileo grown old, a prisoner to the in- 
 quisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than 
 the fi anciscan and dominican licensers thought.* 
 
 ENGLAND AND LONDON. 
 
 Lords and commons of England ! consider what 
 nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the 
 governors : a nation not slow and dull, but of a 
 quick, ingenious and piercing spirit ; acute to in- 
 vent, subtle, and sinewy to discourse, not beneath 
 the reach of any point the highest that human ca- 
 pacity can soar to. Therefore the studies of learn- 
 ing in her deepest sciences have been so ancient 
 and so eminent among us, that writers of good an- 
 tiquity and able judgment have been persuaded 
 that even the school of Pythagoras and the Persian 
 wisdom, took beginning from the old philosophy 
 
 * Would not this be a fine subject for an artist? 
 
302 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 of this island. And that wise and civil Roman, 
 Julius Agricola, who g'overned once here for 
 Caesar, preferred the natural wits of Britain, before 
 the laboured studies of the French. Behold now 
 this vast city ; a city of refuge, the mansion-house 
 of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his 
 protection ; the shop of war hath not there more 
 anvils and hammers waking-, to fashion out the 
 plates and instruments of armed justice in defence 
 of beleagured truth, than there be pens and heads 
 there, sitting* by their studious lamps, musing, 
 searching, revolving new notions and ideas, where- 
 with to present, as with their homage and their 
 fealty, the approaching reformation ; others as fast 
 reading, trying all things, assenting to the force 
 of reason and convincement. What could a man 
 require more from a nation so pliant and so prone 
 to seek after knowledge ? What wants there to 
 such a towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and 
 faithful labourers, to make a knowing people, a 
 nation of prophets, of sages and of worthies ? we 
 reckon more than five months yet to harvest ; 
 there need not be five weeks had we but eyes to 
 lift up, the fields are white already. 
 
 REFORM. 
 
 Metiiinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant 
 nation rousing herself like a strong' man after 
 sleep, and shaking her invincible locks ; methinks 
 I see her as an eagle maing her mighty youth^ 
 
FROM MILTON. 
 
 303 
 
 and kindling her dazzled eyes at the full mid-day 
 beam : purging and unsealing her long abused 
 sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance ; 
 while the whole noise of timorous and flockincr 
 
 o 
 
 birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter 
 about, amazed at w^hat she means, and in their 
 envious gabble would prognosticate a year of sects 
 and schisms. 
 
 Error supports custom, custom countenances 
 error : and these two between them would perse- 
 cute and chase away all truth and solid wisdom 
 out of human life ; were it not that God, rather 
 than man, once in many ages calls together the 
 prudent and religious counsels of men, deputed 
 to repress the encroachments, and to work off the 
 inveterate blots and obscurities wrought upon our 
 minds by the subtle insinuating of error and cus- 
 tom ; who, with the numerous and vulgar train of 
 their followers, make it their chief design to envy 
 and cry down the industry of free reasoning under 
 the terms of humour and innovation ; as if the 
 womb of teeming Truth were to be closed up, if 
 she presume to bring forth aught that sorts not 
 with their unchewed notions and suppositions.! 
 
 t Of prejudice it has been truly said, that it has the sin- 
 gular ability of accommodating itself to all the possible 
 varieties of the human mind. Some passions and vices are 
 but thinly scattered among mankind, and find only here and 
 there a fitness of reception. But prejudice, like the spider, 
 makes every where its home. It has neither taste nor choice 
 of place, and all that it requires is room. There is scarcely 
 a situation, except fire and water, in which a spider will not 
 live. So let the mind be as naked as the walls of an empty 
 
304 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 Marriage is a covenant, the very being whereof 
 consists not in a forced cohabitation, and coun- 
 terfeit performance of duties, but in unfeigned love 
 and peace ; and of matrimonial love, no doubt but 
 that was chiefly meant, which by the ancient sag-es 
 was thus parabled : that Love, if he be not tx^ in 
 born, yet hath a brother wondrous like him, called 
 Anteros; whom while he seeks all about, his chance 
 is to meet with many false and feigning desires, 
 that wander singly up and down in his likeness ; 
 by them in their borrowed garb. Love, though not 
 wholly blind, as poets wrong him, yet having but 
 one eye, as being born an archer aiming, and that 
 eye not the quickest in this dark region here be- 
 low, which is not Love's proper sphere, partly out 
 of the simplicity and credulity which is native to 
 him, often deceived, embraces and consorts him 
 with these obvious and suborned striplings, as if 
 they were his mother's own sons ; for so he thinks 
 them, while they subtilly keep themselves most 
 
 and forsaken tenement, gloomy as a dungeon, or ornamented 
 with the richest abilities of thinking ; let it be hot, cold, dark 
 or light, lonely or inhabited, still prejudice, if undisturbed, 
 will fill it with cobwebs, and live like the spider, where there 
 seems nothing to live on. If the one prepares her food by 
 poisoning it to her palate and her use, the other does the 
 sam.e ; and as several of our passions are strongly characte- 
 rised by the animal world, prejudice may be denorijinated 
 the spider of the mind. 
 
FROM MILTON. 3Q5 
 
 on his blind side. But after a while, as his man- 
 ner IS, when soaring up into the high tower of his 
 apogaeum, above the shadow of the earth, he darts 
 out the direct rays of his then most piercing eye- 
 sight upon the impostures, and trim disguises, that 
 were used with him, and discerns that this is not 
 his genuine brother as he imagined : he has no 
 longer the power to hold fellowship with such a 
 personated mate ; for straight his arrows lose their 
 golden heads, and shed their purple feathers, his 
 silken braids untwine, and slip their knots, 'and 
 that original and fiery virtue given him by fate, 
 all on a sudden goes out, and leaves him undeified 
 and despoiled of all his force ; till finding Anteros 
 at last, he kindles and repairs the almost faded 
 ammunition of his deity by the reflection of a 
 coequal and homogeneal fire. This is a deep and 
 serious verity, shewing us that love in marriage 
 cannot live nor subsist unless it be mutual ; and 
 where love cannot be, there can be left of wedlock 
 nothing but the empty husk of an outside matri- 
 mony, as undelightful and unpleasing to God as 
 any other kind of hypocrisy. 
 
 GOVERNMENT. 
 
 I CANNOT better liken the state and person of a 
 king than to that mighty Nazarite, Samson ; who 
 being disciplined from his birth in the precepts 
 and practice of temperance and sobriety, without 
 
306 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 the strong drink of injurious and excessive desires, 
 grows up to a noble strength and perfection with 
 those his illustrious and sunny locks and laws, 
 waving" and curling about his godlike shoulders. 
 And while he keeps them about him undiminished 
 and unshorn, he may with the jawbone of an ass, 
 that is, with the word of his meanest officer, sup- 
 press and put to confusion thousands of those that 
 rise against his just power.* 
 
 THE POET'S MORNING. 
 
 My morning haunts are, where they should be, 
 at home ; not sleeping, or concocting the surfeits 
 of an irregular feast, but up and stirring ; in win- 
 ter, often ere the sound of any bell awake men to 
 
 * Dr. Symmons, in his Life of Milton, says, — Abstinence 
 in diet was one of Milton's favourite virtues j which he prac- 
 tised invariably through life, and availed himself of every 
 opportunity to recommend in his writings. 
 
 O madness ! to think use of strongest wines 
 And strongest drinks our chief support of health, 
 When God, with these forbidden, made choice to rear 
 His mighty champion, strong above compare. 
 Whose drink was only from the liquid brook. 
 
 Samson Agonistes, 
 
 When the Angel of the Lord appeared unto the wife of 
 Manoah, and promised that she who was now childless, 
 should bear a son, he gave to her this strong injunction, 
 ^ *Now therefore beware, I pray thee, drink not wine, nor 
 strong drink.*' And when Manoah besought the heavenly 
 messenger that he would vouchsafe to shew him " how to 
 
FROM MILTON. 
 
 307 
 
 labour or to devotion ; in summer, as oft with the 
 bird that first rises, or not much tardier, to read 
 good authors, or cause them to be read till the at- 
 tention be weary, or memory have its full freight. 
 
 PARADISE LOST. 
 
 A WORK not to be raised from the heat of youth 
 or the vapours of wine, like that which flows from 
 the pen of some vulgar amorist, nor to be obtained 
 by the invocation of Dame Memory and her Syren 
 daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal 
 Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and know- 
 ledge, and sends out his seraphim, with the hal- 
 lowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips 
 of whom he pleases. f 
 
 order the child," the angel of the Lord answered, *' of all 
 that I have said to the woman let her beware." 
 
 *' She may not eat of any thing that cometh of the vine, 
 nor drink wine, nor strong drink." 
 
 And the woman bare a son, and called his name Samson, 
 and the child grew, and the Lord blessed him. — Judges xiii. 
 
 t And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 
 Before all temples, the upright heart and pure, 
 Instruct me — what in me is dark 
 Illumine, vv^hat low, raise and support. — milton. 
 
 Father of light and life ! thou good supreme, 
 O teach me what is good ! teach me thyself ; 
 Save me from folly, vanity, and vice, 
 From every low pursuit ! and feed my soul, 
 With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure, 
 Sacred, substantial, never fading bliss.— Thomson. 
 
308 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 SECTION X. 
 LORD BACON. 
 
 Mkn have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge 
 sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite ; 
 sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; 
 sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to 
 enable them to victory of wit and contradiction ; and most 
 times for lucre and profession ; and seldom sincerely to give 
 a true account of their gift of reason to the benefit and use of 
 man. As if there were sought in knowledge a couch where- 
 upon to rest a searching and restless spirit ; or a terrace for 
 a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a 
 fair prospect ; or a tower of state for a proud mind to raise 
 itself upon ; or a fort or commanding ground for strife and 
 contention : or a shop for profit or sale ; and not a rich store- 
 house for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's 
 estate. — Advancement of Learning, 
 
 UNIVERSITIES. 
 
 As water, whether it be the dew of heaven or the 
 springs of the earth, doth scatter and lose itself in 
 the ground, except it be collected into some recep- 
 tacle, where it may by union comfort and sustain 
 itself; and, for that cause, the industry of man 
 hath framed and made spring-heads, conduits, cis- 
 terns, and pools ; which men have accustomed 
 likewise to beautify and adorn with accomplish- 
 ments of magnificence and state, as well as of use 
 
FROM BACOM. 
 
 309 
 
 and necessity. So knowledge, whether it descend 
 from divine inspiration or spring from human 
 sense, would soon perish and vanish to oblivion, 
 if it were not preserved in books, traditions, con- 
 ferences, and places appointed, as universities, 
 colleges, and schools for the receipt and comforting* 
 the same. 
 
 LIBRARIES.* 
 
 Libraries are as the shrines where all the relics 
 of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that 
 without delusion or imposture, are preserved and 
 reposed. 
 
 PATENT AND LATENT VICE. 
 
 In the law of the leprosy it is said, If the white- 
 ness overspread the flesh, the patient may pass 
 abroad for clean : but if there be any whole flesh 
 remaining, he is to be shut up for unclean. One 
 of the rabbins noteth a principle of moral philo- 
 
 * Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden, after being 
 mewed up in it the whole of one year, said, " I no sooner 
 come into the library but I bolt the door after me, excluding 
 lust, ambition, avarice, and all such vices, whose nurse is 
 idleness, the mother of ignorance and melancholy herself; 
 and in the very lap of eternity, amidst so many divine souls, 
 I take my seat with so lofty a spirit and such sweet content, 
 that I pity all the great and rich who know not this happi- 
 ness.'* 
 
310 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 sophy, that men abandoned to vice do not so much 
 corrupt manners as those that are half good and 
 half evil.* 
 
 PHILOSOPHIZING AND THEORIZING. 
 
 The wit and mind of man, if it work upon mat- 
 ter which is the contemplation of the creatures of 
 
 * Coleridge, in his Aids to Reflection, says, Where virtue 
 is, sensibility is the ornament and becoming attire of virtue. 
 On certain occasions it may almost be said to become virtue. 
 But sensibility and all the amiable qualities may likewise 
 become, and too often have become, the panders of vice and 
 the instruments of seduction. 
 
 So must it needs be v^ith all qualities that have their rise 
 only in parts and fragments of our nature. A man of warm 
 passions may sacrifice half his estate to rescue a friend from 
 prison ; for he is naturally sympathetic, and the more social 
 part of his nature happened to be uppermost. The same 
 man shall afterwards exhibit the same disregard of money in 
 an attempt to seduce that friend's wife or daughter. 
 
 ** All the evil achieved by Hobbs and the whole school of 
 materialists will appear inconsiderable if it be compared with 
 the mischief effected and occasioned by the sentimental phi- 
 losophy of Sterne and his numerous imitators. The vilest 
 appetites and the most remorseless inconstancy towards their 
 object, acquired the titles of the heart, the irresistible feel- 
 ings, the too tender sensibility ; and if the frosts of prudence, 
 the icy chains of human law, thaw^ed and vanished at the 
 genial warmth of human nature, who could help it ? It was 
 an amiable weakness ! 
 
 *' A bout this time too the profanation of the word love rose 
 to its height. The French naturalists, Buffon and others, 
 borrowed it from the sentimental novelists ; the Swedish 
 
FROM BACON. 
 
 311 
 
 God, worketh according to the stuff, and is limited 
 thereby ; but if it work upon itself, as the spider 
 worketh his web, then it is endless and brings forth 
 indeed cobwebs of learning, admirable for the 
 fineness of thread and work, but of no substance 
 or profit. 
 
 and English philosophers took the contagion : and the Muse 
 of science condescended to seek admission into the saloons of 
 fashion and frivolity, rouged like a harlot, and with the har- 
 lot's wanton leer. I know not how the annals of guilt could 
 be better forced into the service of virtue, than by such a 
 comment on the present paragraph, as would be afforded by 
 a selection from the sentimental correspondence produced in 
 courts of justice within the last thirty years, fairly translated 
 into the true meaning of the w^ords, and the actual object and 
 purpose of the infamous writers. Do you in good earnest aim 
 at dignity of character? By all the treasures of a peaceful 
 mind, by all the charms of an open countenance, I conjure 
 you, O youth ! turn away from those who live in the twilight 
 between vice and virtue. Are not reason, discrimination, 
 law, and deliberate choice, the distinguishing characters of 
 humanity 1 can aught then worthy of a human being pro- 
 ceed from a habit of soul, which would exclude all these and 
 (to borrow a metaphor from Paganism) prefer the den of 
 Trophonius to the temple and oracles of the God of light? 
 can any thing manly, I say, proceed from those, who for 
 law and light would substitute shapeless feelings, senti- 
 ments, im.pulses, which as far as they differ from the vital 
 workin«ys in the brute animals own the difference of their 
 former connexion with the proper virtues of humanity; as 
 Dendrites derive the outlines, that constitute their value 
 above other clay-stones, from the casual neighbourhood and 
 pressure of the plants, the names of which they assume ; 
 Remember, that love itself in its highest earthly bearing, as 
 the ground of the marriage union, becomes love by an in- 
 ward fiat of the will, by a completing and sealing act of 
 
312 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 LOGICAL AND MATHEMATICAL PARTS 
 OF MIND. 
 
 The logical part of men's minds is often good ; 
 but the mathematical part nothing worth ; that is, 
 they can judge well of the mode of attaining any 
 end, but cannot estimate the value of the end 
 itself.* 
 
 moral election, and lays claim to permanence only under the 
 form of duty." 
 
 Do we not differ chiefly in our sensibility, and may not 
 sensibility be thus contemplated ] 
 
 1. Rightly directed, or virtue. 
 
 2. Wrongly directed, or vice. 
 
 3. Sentimentality, or vice under the guise of virtue. 
 
 Oft he bends 
 His turret crest, and sleek enamelled neck. 
 Fawning, and licks the ground. 
 
 * There is the very same sentiment expressed by Hobbs in 
 his Introduction to the Leviathan. Hobbs was the friend of 
 Lord Bacon ; Aubrey says of him, " The Lord Chancellor 
 Bacon loved to converse with him. His lordship was a very 
 contemplative person, and was wont to contemplate in his de- 
 licious walks at Gorhambury and dictate to Mr. Bushel 1, or 
 some other of his gentlemen, that attended him with paper 
 ready to set down presently his thoughts. His lordship would 
 often say that he better liked Mr. Hobbs taking his thoughts 
 than any of the others, because he understood what he wrote, 
 which the others not understanding, my lord would many 
 times have a hard task to make sense of what they writ." 
 The following is the passage : 
 
 "For the similitude of the thoughts and passions of one 
 man, to the thoughts and passions of another, whosoever 
 seeketh unto himself and considereth what he doth, when he 
 does think, opine, reason, hope, fear, &c. and upon what 
 
FROM BACON. 
 
 313 
 
 ACTION AND CONTEMPLATION. 
 
 "That will indeed dignify and exalt knowledge, 
 if contemplation and action may be more nearly 
 and strongly conjoined and united together, than 
 they have been ; a conjunction like unto that of 
 the two highest planets, Saturn the planet of rest 
 
 grounds ; he shall thereby read and know, what are the 
 thoughts and passions of all other men, upon the like occa- 
 sions. I say the similitude of passions, which are the same 
 in all men, desire, fear, hope, &c. not the similitude of the 
 objects of the passions, which are the things desired, feared, 
 hoped, &c. for these the constitution, individual, and parti- 
 cular education do so vary, and they are so easy to be kept 
 from our knowledge, that the characters of man's heart, 
 blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, 
 counterfeiting and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him 
 that searcheth hearts." 
 
 Give e'en a fool the employment he desires. 
 
 And he soon finds the talent it requires.— cooper. 
 
 Look round the habitable world, how few 
 
 Know their own good, or knowing it pursue ; 
 
 How void of reason are our hopes and fears ! 
 
 What in the conduct of our life appears 
 
 So well design'd, so luckily begun, 
 
 But, when we have our wish, we wish undone. — dryde!^. 
 
 The architect of his own fortune should rightly use his 
 rule ; that is, he should form his mind to judge of the value 
 of things, and to prosecute the same substantially, not super- 
 ficially. 
 
 Virtue walks not in the high way, though she go per alta, 
 this is the strength and the blood to virtue, to contemn things 
 that be desired, and to neglect that which is feared. Why 
 should man be in love with his fetters though of goldr' bacon. 
 [ As a man thou hast nothing to commend thee to thyself, 
 
314 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 and contemplation, and Jupiter the planet of civil 
 society and action ; for no man can be so straitened 
 and oppressed with business and an active course, 
 of life, but may have many vacant times of leisure 
 whilst he expects the returns and tides of business. 
 It remaineth, therefore, to be inquired, how these 
 spaces and times of leisure should be filled up and 
 spent, whether in pleasures or study ; sensuality 
 or contemplation ; as was well answered by De- 
 mosthenes to ^schines, a man g-iven to pleasure, 
 who, when he was told by way of reproach that his 
 oratory did smell of the lamp, * Indeed,' said De- 
 but that only by which thou art a man, that is by what thou 
 choosest and refusest. — bishop taylor. 
 
 Men are most busy about that which is most remote, and 
 neglect that which is nearest and most essential to them ; for 
 the goods of the body neglecting those of the mind ; and for 
 the goods of fortune neglecting those of the body. They will 
 forfeit their conscience to please and serve their body, and 
 hazard their body to get and preserve the goods of fortune, 
 whereas they should follow a clean contrary order, hazarding 
 and neglecting their body, if need be, for the good of the mind, 
 and the goods of fortune for both. — du moulin. 
 
 Un philosophe regarde ce qu'on appelle un etat dans le 
 monde, comme les Tartares regardent les villes, c'est a dire, 
 comme un prison. C'est un cercle ou les idees se resserrent, 
 se concentrent en otant a Tame et a I'esprit leur etendue et 
 leur develop ement. L'homme sans etat est le seul homme 
 libre. 
 
 Alas! said an Indian, lamenting over his companion, he 
 was fed with train oil, and the bone of a bird ten inches long 
 hung through the gristle of his nose ; what could he want 
 more ? 
 
 This house is turned upside down, since Robin the ostler 
 died. Poor fellow never joyed since the price of oats rose, 
 it was the death of him, — Henry the IVth, Act 2, Scene 4, 
 
FROM BACON. 
 
 315 
 
 mosthenes, ' there is a great difference between the 
 things that you and I do by lamp-light.' "* 
 
 GOODNESS OF NATURE. 
 
 Neither is there only a habit of goodness directed 
 by right reason : but there is in some men, even in 
 nature, a disposition towards it ; as on the other 
 side there is a natural malignity. For there be 
 that in their nature do not affect the good of others. 
 The lighter sort of malignity turneth but to cross- 
 ness, or frowardness, or aptness to oppose, or dilE- 
 cileness, or the like ; but the deeper sort to envy 
 and mere mischief. Such men, in other men's 
 calamities, are as it were in season, and are ever 
 on the loading part ; not so good as the dogs that 
 licked Lazarus' sores, but like flies that are still 
 buzzing upon any thing that is raw ; Misanthropi, 
 that make it their practice to bring men to the 
 bough, and yet have never a tree for the purpose 
 in their garden, as Timon had. Such dispositions 
 
 * There are, says Dr. Chalmers, ** perhaps no two sets 
 of human beings, who comprehend less the movements, and 
 enter less into the cares and concerns of each other, than the 
 wide and busy public on the one hand ; and, on the other, 
 those men of close and studious retirement, whom the world 
 never hears of save when, from their thoughtful solitude, there 
 issues forth some splendid discovery to set the world on the 
 gaze of admiration." 
 
 Pragmatical men should know, that learning is not like 
 some small bird, as the lark, that can mount and sing and 
 please herself, and nothing else : but that she holds as well 
 of the hawk, that can soar aloft, and after that, when she sees 
 her time, can stoop and seize upon her prey.— -bacon. 
 
316 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 are the very errors of human nature, and yet they 
 are the fittest timber to make great politics of : 
 like to knee timber, that is good for ships that are 
 ordained to be tossed, but not for building houses 
 that shall stand firm. The parts and signs of good- 
 ness are many. If a man be gracious and courteous 
 to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, 
 and that his heart is no island cut off from other 
 lands, but a continent that joins to them. If he 
 be compassionate towards the afflictions of others, 
 it shows that his heart is like the noble tree that 
 is wounded itself when it gives the balm. If he 
 easily pardons and remits offences, it shows that 
 his mind is planted above, so that he cannot be 
 shot. If he be thankful for small benefits, it shows 
 that he weighs men's minds and not their trash. 
 But above all, if he have St. Paul's perfection, 
 that he would wish to be an anathema, from Christ 
 for the salvation of his brethi'en, it shows much of 
 a divine nature, and a kind of conformity with 
 Christ himself. 
 
 METHOD AND ARRANGEMENT. 
 
 As young men, when they knit and shape perfectly, 
 do seldom grow to a farther stature ; so knowledge, 
 while it is in aphorisms and observations it is in 
 growth ; but when it once is comprehended in 
 exact methods, it may perchance be farther polished 
 and illustrated, and accommodated for use and 
 practice ; but it increaseth no more in bulk and 
 substance. 
 
FROM BACON. 
 
 317 
 
 CONNECTION BETWEEN BODY AND MIND. 
 
 If any man of weak judgment do conceive that from 
 the union of the body and mind, the sovereignty of 
 the mind or its immortality should be doubted, let 
 him be admonished, that an infant in the mother s 
 womb, partakes of the accidents and symptoms of 
 the mother, but, in due season, is separated from 
 her. 
 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH. t 
 
 For a tablet or picture of smaller volume, in my 
 judgment the most excellent is that of Queen 
 Elizabeth ; a prince, that, if Plutarch were now 
 alive to write lives by parallels, would trouble him, 
 I think, for to find for her a parallel among women. 
 This lady was endued with learning in her sex sin- 
 gular, and rare even amongst masculine princes ; 
 whether we speak of learning, of language, or of 
 science modern or ancient, divinity or humanity ; 
 and unto the very last year of her life she accus- 
 tomed to appoint set hours for reading : scarcely 
 any young student in a university more daily or 
 more duly. As for her government, I assure my- 
 self I shall not exceed, if I do affirm that this part 
 of the island never had forty-five years of better 
 
 t See the Preface to Ascham's Schoolmaster. 
 
318 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 times ; and yet not through the calmness of the 
 season, but through the wisdom of her regimen. 
 
 For if there be considered on the one side the 
 truth of religion established ; the constant peace 
 and security ; the good administration of justice ; 
 the temperate use of the prerogative, not slackened, 
 nor much strained ; the flourishing state of learn- 
 ing, sortable to so excellent a patroness ; the con- 
 venient estate of wealth and means, both of crown 
 and subject; the habit of obedience, and the mo- 
 deration of discontents ; and there be considered 
 on the other side, the difference of religion, the 
 troubles of neighbour countries, the ambition of 
 Spain, and opposition of Rome ? and then, that 
 she was solitary and of herself ; these things, I 
 say, considered, as I could not have chosen an 
 instance so recent and so proper, so I suppose I 
 could not have chosen one more remarkable and 
 eminent to the purpose now in hand, which is con- 
 cerning the conjunction of learning in the prince 
 with felicity in the people. 
 
 UTILITY. 
 
 Aristotle thought young men not fit auditors of 
 moral philosophy : — it is not true also that young 
 men are much less fit auditors of politics than 
 morality, till they have been thoroughly seasoned 
 with religion, and the knowledge and manners of 
 duties? lest their judgments be corrupted, and 
 
FROM BACOX. 
 
 319 
 
 made apt to think that there are no true and solid 
 moral differences ; but that all is to be valued accord, 
 ing to utility and fortune. * 
 
 * Admitting that utility is the ultimate motive of moral 
 conduct, is it the proximate motive? why do we eat and 
 drink 1 why do we marry 1 why is the constable elated with 
 his employment 1 why is a lad anxious to be a soldier or a 
 sailor ? would the same anxiety exist if all the military were 
 dressed like quakers ? 
 
 Do we approve of noble actions, from the supposition that 
 they were performed from a calculation of utility, of Socrates, 
 for instance, or of Latimer 1 are our sentiments upon the 
 plains of Marathon and in the pass of Thermopyle, of the 
 same nature as when passing through a pin-manufactory 1 
 
 Is there not an aspiring to perfection with which all minds, 
 and particularly ardent minds, sympathize, undisturbed by 
 any calculations of utility? 
 
 Do we not dislike great minds attempting to regulate their 
 actions by calculations of utility ? Do we admire the intel- 
 ligent soldier who runs away, ** Relic ta non bene parmula." 
 The philosopher, who had a petition to Dionysius and no ear 
 given to him, fell down on his knees at the tyrant's feet ; 
 whereupon Dionysius staid, heard him, and granted his re- 
 quest; but a little after some person, tender of the power 
 and credit of philosophy, reproved Aristippus that he would 
 offer the profession of philosophy such an indignity as, for a 
 private suit, to fall at a tyrant's feet? To which he replied. 
 
 Is it my fault that he has his ears in his feet?'' Do we 
 approve of this ? 
 
 Do preceptors of the mind attempt to instruct by calcula- 
 tions of utility, like Jolter, in Smoliet's novel, who endea- 
 voured to persuade his pupil to make love by the rules of 
 geometry ? 
 
 If we attempt to act by a calculation of utility, as a proxi- 
 mate motive of conduct, will not the attempt thus to calcu- 
 late end in self-gratification ? When we reason under temp- 
 tation, are we not almost sure to err ? Did not Mr. Blifil 
 
320 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 PLEASURE OF POWER. 
 
 The honest and the just bounds of observation by 
 one person upon another extend no further but to 
 understand him sufficiently whereby not to give 
 him offence ; or whereby to be able to give faithful 
 counsel ; or whereby to stand upon reasonable 
 guard and caution with respect to a man's self ; 
 but to be speculative into another man, to the end 
 to know how to work him or wind him, or govern 
 him, proceedeth from a heart that is double and 
 cloven, and not entire and ingenuous. 
 
 Power to do good is the true and lawful end of 
 aspiring ; for good thoughts (though God accept 
 
 and Joseph Surface thus reason ? Agnus was the only word 
 which the wolf could make of all the letters of the alphabet. 
 
 Are not all general rules and laws, barriers fixed by society 
 to prevent this self-gratification 1 
 
 Is it not the distinguishing mark of a noble and generous 
 mind to act without any such calculations 1 
 
 Where you feel your honour grip, 
 Let that aye be your border : 
 Its slightest touches, instant pause. 
 
 Debar a' side pretences ; 
 And resolutely keep its laws. 
 
 Uncaring consequences. 
 
 If this note should be read by any young man who ima- 
 gines himself to be so benevolent as to prefer the interests of 
 others to his own, and so intelligent as to be capable, re- 
 gardless of general rules, to act upon the system of utility, 
 he. may be assured that there is nothing new in his opinions. 
 
FROM BACON. 
 
 321 
 
 them), yet towards men are little better than good 
 dreams, except they be put in act ; and that can- 
 not be without power and place, as the vantag-e 
 and commanding- ground. Merit and good works 
 is the end of man's motion : and conscience of the 
 same is the accomplishment of man's rest : for if 
 a man can be partaker of God's theatre, he shall 
 likewise be partaker of God's rest, " Et conversus 
 Deus, ut aspiceret opera, quae fecerunt manus suae, 
 vidit quod omnia essent bona nimis and then the 
 sabbath. 
 
 There have, at all times, been Utilitarians. To the objec- 
 tion made by divines to the advancement of learning that 
 " the aspiring to overmuch knowledge, was the original temp- 
 tation and sin, whereupon ensued the fall of man," Lord 
 Bacon says, It was not the pure knowledge of nature and 
 universality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did give 
 names unto other creatures in Paradise, as they were brought 
 before him, according unto their proprieties, which gave oc- 
 casion to the fall ; but it was the proud knowledge of good 
 and evil, with an intent in man to give law unto himself, and 
 to depend no more upon God's commandments, which was 
 the form of the temptation." See ante, 173, where South 
 speaks of the Utilitarians of his time, as philosophy speaks to 
 them at all times. See Joseph Andrews, book iii. c. 3, 
 where Fielding speaks of the Utilitarians, of his time, the 
 passage begins, ** This sort of life." See Robison's ac- 
 count of the lUuminati, a set of imagined philosophers, who 
 did, or were supposed to exist, during the French Revolu- 
 tion, let him there read the letters of Spartacus to Cato; but 
 particularly see a tract published by Mr. Green of Ipswich, 
 and Dr. Parr's Spital Sermon. 
 
 Y 
 
322 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 PLEASURE OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 The pleasure and delight of knowledge and learn- 
 ing far surpasseth all other in nature ; for shall 
 the pleasures of the affections so exceed the plea- 
 sures of the senses, as much as the obtaining of 
 desire or victory exceedeth a song or a dinner ? 
 and must not of consequence, the pleasures of the 
 intellect or understanding exceed the pleasures of 
 the affections ? We see in ail other pleasures there 
 is a satiety, and after they be used, their verdure 
 departeth ; J which sheweth well they be but deceits 
 of pleasure, and not pleasure, and that it was the 
 novelty which pleased and not the quality ; and 
 therefore Ave see that voluptuous men turn friars, 
 and ambitious princes turn melancholy ; but of 
 knowledge! there is no satiety, but satisfaction and 
 appetite are perpetually interchangeable ; and there- 
 fore appeareth to be good, in itself simply, without 
 fallacy or accident. Neither is that pleasure of 
 small efficacy and contentment to the mind of man, 
 which the poet Lucretius describeth elegantly ; 
 
 Suave mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis, &c. 
 It is a view of delight," gaith he, to stand 
 
 I Heaven and earth may pass away, but my words will 
 not pass away. 
 
 t A perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets. 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns. — coMUS. 
 
FROM BACON. 
 
 323 
 
 or walk upon the shore side, and to see a ship 
 tossed with tempest upon the sea, or to be in a 
 fortified tower, and to see two battles join upon a 
 plain. But it is a pleasure incomparable for the 
 mind of man to be settled, landed, and fortified in 
 the certainty of truth, and from thence to descry 
 and behold the errors, perturbations, labours, and 
 wandering's up and down of other men." So al- 
 w^ays that this prospect be with pity, and not with 
 swelling or pride. 
 
 LOVER OF TRUTH. 
 
 Our trumpet doth not summon, and encoura^^e 
 men to tear and rend one another with contradic- 
 tions; and, in a civil rage, to bear arms and wage 
 war against themselves ; but rather that, a peace 
 concluded between them, they may, with joint 
 forces, direct their strength against nature her- 
 self :* and take her high towers, and dismantle 
 
 * Diderot, in his Tract De ITnterpretatioa de la Na- 
 ture," says, ** L'interet de la v^rite demanderoit que ceux 
 qui r^flecliissent daignassent enfin s'associer a ceux qui se 
 remuent, afin que le speculative fut dispense de se donner 
 du mouvement ; que le manoeuvre eut en but danslesmouve- 
 mens infinis qu'il se donne ; que tons nos efforts se trouvassent 
 reunis et diriges en meme temps contre la resistance de la 
 nature ; et que, dans cette espece de ligne philosophique, 
 chacun fit le role qui lui convient." 
 
 Lloyd, in his Life of Wilson, says, " An argument of a 
 great capacity in a man of his great place, and greater em- 
 ployment J whose candour was yet equal with his parts,, in- 
 
324 
 
 SELECTIONS 
 
 her fortified holds, and thus enlarge the borders of 
 man's dominion, so far as Almighty God of his 
 goodness shall permit. 
 
 ON GOVERNMENT. 
 
 In Orpheus's theatre, all beasts and birds assem- 
 bled ; and forgetting their several appetites, some 
 of prey, some of game, some of quarrel, stood all 
 sociably together, listening unto the airs and ac- 
 cords of the harp ; the sound whereof no sooner 
 ceased, or was drowned by some louder noise, but 
 every beast returned to his own nature ; wherein 
 is aptly described the nature and condition of men. 
 
 genuously passing by the particular infirmities of those who 
 contributed anything to the advancement of a general learn- 
 ing ; judging it fitter that men of abilities should jointly en- 
 gage against ignorance and barbarism, than severally clash 
 with one another. 
 
 From a community of goods there must needs arise con- 
 tention, whose enjoyment should be greater, and from that 
 contention all kind of calamities must unavoidably ensue, 
 which, by the instinct of nature every man is taught to shun. 
 Having, therefore, thus arrived at two maxims of human 
 nature, the one arising from the concupiscible part, which 
 desires to appropriate to itself the use of those things in which 
 all others have a joint interest ; the other proceeding from 
 the rational, which teaches every man to fly a contra-natural 
 dissolution as the greatest mischief that can arrive to nature ; 
 which principles being laid down, I seem from them to have 
 demonstrated by a most evident connexion in this little work 
 of mine, first the absolute necessity of leagues and contracts, 
 and thence the rudiments both of moral and civil prudence. 
 
 HOBBS. 
 
FROM BACON. 
 
 325 
 
 who are full of savage and unreclaimed desires of 
 profit, of lust, of revenge : which, as long as they 
 g-ive ear to precepts, to laws, to religion, sweetly- 
 touched with eloquence and persuasion of books, 
 of sermons, of harangues, so long is society and 
 peace maintained ; but if these instruments be si- 
 lent, or sedition and tumult make them not audible, 
 all things dissolve into anarchy and confusion.* 
 
 * See ante, page 22. 
 
i 
 
NOTES. 
 
 NOTE I.— Text 54. 
 PLEASURES OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 
 
 See text, page 153, 154. and 216-17-18-19-20. 
 Mr. Bentham's Work upon the Principles of Morals and 
 Legislation, chap. v. contains a catalogue of the different 
 pleasures which we are capable of enjoying, and the different 
 pains to which we are exposed. Of all pleasures none are 
 more exquisite, none so permanent as the pleasures of the 
 understanding. See Bacon s observations in note, ante 153. 
 
 How charming is divine philosophy ! 
 Not harsh and crabbed as dull fools suppose ; 
 But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
 And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, 
 Where no crude surfeit reigns. COMUS. 
 
 Hume, in his Life, says, " My family, however, was not 
 rich, and being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, 
 according to the mode of my country, was of course very 
 slender ; my father, who passed for a man of parts, died 
 when I was an infant, leaving me with an elder brother and 
 a sister, under the care of our mother, a woman of singular 
 merit, who, though young and handsome, devoted herself en- 
 tirely to the rearing and educating of her children. I passed 
 through the ordinary course of education with success, and 
 was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has 
 been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of 
 my enjoyments. My studious disposition, my sobriety, and 
 my industry, gave my family a notion that the law was a 
 proper profession for me ; but I found an insurmountable 
 aversion to every thing but the pursuits of philosophy and 
 general learning, and while they fancied I was poring upon 
 Voet and Vinius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which 
 I was secretly devouring." 
 
 Ascham, speaking of Lady Jane Grey, Siays, " Before I 
 
328 
 
 NOTE I. 
 
 went into Germany I came to Broadgate, in Leicestershire, 
 to take my leave of the noble Lady Jane Grey, to whom I 
 was exceeding much beholding. Her parents, the Duke and 
 Duchess, with all the household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, 
 were hunting in the park. I found her in her chamber read- 
 ing Phaedon Platonis in Greek, and this with as much delight 
 as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccaccio. 
 After salutation and duty done, with some other talk, I asked 
 her * why she would lose such pastime in the park V smiling 
 she answered me, * I wisse all their sport in the park is but 
 a shadow to that pleasure that I iind in Plato. Alas ! good 
 folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant/ * And how 
 came you, Madam/ quoth I, * to this deep knowledge of 
 pleasure t and what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not 
 many women, but very few men have attained thereunto V 
 * 1 will tell you,' quoth she, ' and tell you a truth/" &c. 
 
 (See Sir T. Brown's observations, ante 276, " The Stu- 
 dent.") 
 
 Against the inconveniences and vexations of long life may 
 be set the pleasures of discovering truth, one of the greatest 
 pleasures that age affords. — dr. Johnson. 
 
 Middleton beautifully says, " I persuade myself that the 
 life and faculties of man, at the best but short and limited, 
 cannot be employed more rationally or laudably than in the 
 search of knowledge : and especially of that sort which re- 
 lates to our duty, and conduces to our happiness. In these 
 enquiries, therefore, wherever I perceive any glimmering of 
 truth before me, I readily pursue and endeavour to trace it 
 to its source, without any reserve or caution of pushing the 
 discovery too far, or opening too great a glare of it to the 
 public. I look upon the discovery of any thing which is true 
 as a valuable acquisition of society, which cannot possibly 
 hurt or obstruct the good effect of any other truth whatsoever : 
 for they all partake of one common essence, and necessarily 
 coincide with each other ; and like the drops of rain which 
 fall separately into the river, mix themselves at once with the 
 stream, and strengthen the general current." 
 
 Gibbon says, La lecture est la nourriture de I'esprit : 
 c'est par elle que nous connoissons notre Createur, ses ouv- 
 rages, et surtout, nous memes et nos semblables. 
 
 So Boyle says, " The things for which I hold life valu- 
 able are the satisfaction that accrues from the improvement 
 of knowledge and the exercise of piety. 
 
 (See page 204, On the Pleasures of Study and Con- 
 templation," by Bishop Hall.) 
 
 The following are observations bv Lord Bacon : As the 
 
NOTE I. 
 
 329 
 
 eye rejoices to receive the light, the ear to hear sweet music ; 
 so the mind, which is the man, rejoices to discover the 
 secret works, the varieties and beauties of nature. The in- 
 quiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing it; the 
 knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it ; and the be- 
 lief of truth, which is the enjoying it, is the sovereign good 
 of our nature. The unlearned man knows not what it is to 
 descend into himself or to call himself to account, or the 
 pleasure of that suavissima vita indies sentire se fieri me- 
 liorem." The mind of man doth wonderfully endeavour and 
 extremely covet that it may not be pensile ; but that it may 
 light upon something fixed and immoveable, on which, as on 
 a firmament, it may support itself in its swift motions and 
 disquisitions. Aristotle endeavours to prove that in- all mo- 
 tions of bodies there is some point quiescent ; and very ele- , 
 gantly expounds the fable of Atlas, who stood fixed and bore 
 up the heavens from falling, to be meant of the poles of the 
 world whereupon the conversion is accomplished. In like 
 manner, men do earnestly seek to have some Atlas or axis of 
 their cogitations within themselves, which may, in some mea- 
 sure, moderate the fluctuations and wheelings of the under- 
 standing, fearing it may be the falling of their heaven. 
 
 The discovery of the diflferent properties of creatures, and 
 the imposition of names was the occupation of Adam in 
 Paradise. 
 
 Knowledge is " pabulum animi," says Bacon ; and the 
 nature of man's appetites is as the Israelites in the desert, 
 who were weary of manna, and would fain have turned ad 
 ollas carnium." 
 
 See from the two following anecdotes the diflPerence between 
 the statesman who is so unwise as to neglect mtellectual im- 
 provement and the philosopher. The biographer of Sir Ro- 
 bert Walpole tells us that *^ though he had not forgotten his 
 classical attainments, he had little taste for literary occupa- 
 tion." Sir Robert once expressed his regret on this subject to 
 Mr. Fox in his library at Houghton, 1 wish,'* he said, " I 
 took as much delight in reading as you do, it would be the 
 means of alleviating many tedious hours in my present retire- 
 ment ; but to my misfortune, I derive no pleasure from such 
 pursuits." 
 
 One day, Lord Bacon was dictating to Dr. Rawley some 
 of the experiments in his Sylva. The same day, he had 
 sent a friend to court, to receive for him a fiival answer 
 touching the efl?ect of a grant which had been made him by 
 King James. He had hitherto only hope of it, and hope de- 
 ferred i and he was desirous to know the event of the matter. 
 
330 
 
 NOTE I. 
 
 and to be freed, one way or other, from the suspense of his 
 thoughts. His friend returning, told him plainly, that he 
 must thenceforth despair of that grant, how much soever his 
 fortunes needed it. * Be it so,' said his Lordship ; and then 
 he dismissed his friend very cheerfully, with thankful ac- 
 knowledgments of his service. His friend being gone, he 
 came straightway to Dr. Rawley, and said thus to him, 
 ' Well, sir, yon business won't go on, let us go on with this, 
 for this is in our power.' And then he dictated to him afresh, 
 for some hours, without the least hesitansie of speech, or dis- 
 cernible interruption of thought. 
 
 NOTE TI.— Text 133. 
 IDLE CURIOSITY. 
 
 This note contains a few observations upon — 
 
 1. Useful Knowledge. 
 
 2. Connection oetween Error and Truth. 
 
 3. Different Sorts of Knowledge. 
 
 4. All Knowledge is valuable. 
 
 5. Excessive Attachment to Particular Studies. 
 
 USEFUL KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 The utility of two species of knowledge is indisputable. 
 
 First — The knowledge by each member of Society, of that 
 subject or science by which he is to gain his subsistence, — 
 as by a lawyer, of law, or by a physician, of medicme — and 
 
 Secondly — The knowledge of ourselves. In the impor- 
 tance of knowledge of man, all authors, ancient and modern, 
 concur. Among the precepts or aphorisms admitted by ge- 
 neral consent, and inculcated by frequent repetition, there is 
 none more famous, among the masters of ancient wisdom, 
 than that compendious lesson, Be acquainted with thyself:" 
 — ascribed by some to an oracle, and by others to Chilo of 
 Lacedemon. Lord Bacon, in his entrance upon human phi- 
 losophy, says : — " Now let us come to that knowledge 
 whereunto the ancient oracle directeth us, which is the know- 
 ledge of ourselves ; which deserves the more accurate hand- 
 ling by how much it.toucheth us more nearly. This know- 
 ledge is to man the end and term of knowledge ; but of na- 
 ture herself, a portion only." 
 
NOTE II. 
 
 331 
 
 CONNECTION BETWEEN ERROR AND TRUTH. 
 
 This is noticed by many philosophers and divines, by 
 whom we are admonished, that Truth and Error, Good and 
 III, are constantly intermingled and confounded. 
 
 See ante 295. 
 
 " Good and evil," says Bishop Taylor, **in the field of this 
 world grow up together, almost inseparably, and the know- 
 ledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the know- 
 ledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly 
 to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were im- 
 posed upon Psyche, as an incessant labour to cull out and 
 sort asunder, were not more intermixed^" 
 
 The connection between truth and error, or rather how 
 error leads to truth, may be seen in tracing the progress of 
 any invention, as the steam-engine ; or of any science ; of 
 astronomy for instance, of which there is, to any person de- 
 sirous of seeing how light arises out of darkness, a very inte- 
 resting delineation in the posthumous works of Adam Smith. 
 
 CONNECTION BETWEEN DIFFERENT SORTS OF KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 Upon this subject the works of Bacon abound with obser- 
 vations. " The partition of science is not," he says, " like 
 several lines that meet in one angle ; but rather like branches 
 of trees that meet in one stem, which stem for some dimen- 
 sion and space is entire and continued before it break, and 
 part itself into arms and boughs." 
 
 In shewing this connection in another part of the work, he 
 says, The quavering upon a stop in music, gives the same 
 delight to the ear, that the playing of light upon the water, 
 or the sparkling of a diamond, gives to the eye." 
 
 ** Splendet tremulo sub lumine Pontus." 
 
 So the Persian magic, so much celebrated, consists chiefly 
 in this : to observe the respondency and the architectures, and 
 fabrics of things natural, and of things civil. Neither are all 
 these whereof we have spoken, and others of like nature, mere 
 similitudes only, as men of narrow observation may perchance 
 conceive, but one and the very same footsteps, and seals of 
 nature printed upon several subjects or matters. 
 
 Acting upon this opinion. Bacon predicts that the mode of 
 discovering the lav/ of the celestial bodies, will, from the uni- 
 formity of all the laws of nature, be by observing the laws of 
 bodies terrestrial. His words are : — 
 
 " Whoever shall reject the feigned divorces of superlunary 
 and sublunary bodies, and shall intentively observe the appe- 
 
332 
 
 NOTE II. 
 
 tences of matter, and the most universal passions, which in 
 either globe are exceeding potent, and transverberate the 
 universal nature of things, he shall receive clear information 
 concerning celestial matters from the things seen here with 
 us : and, contrariwise, from those motions which are practised 
 in heaven, he shall learn many observations which are now 
 latent, touching the motion of bodies here below, not only so 
 far as their inferior motions are moderated by superior, but in 
 regard they have a mutual intercourse by passions common 
 to them both." 
 
 We must openly profess," Bacon says, that our hopes 
 of discovering the truth with regard to the celestial bodies, 
 depends upon the observation of the common properties, or 
 the passions and appetites, of the matter of both states ; for 
 as to the separation that is supposed betwixt the etherial and 
 sublunary bodies, it seems to me no more than a fiction, and 
 a degree of superstition mixed with rashness, &c. Our 
 chiefest hope and dependance in the consideration of the ce- 
 lestial bodies is, therefore, placed in physical reasons, though 
 not such as are commonly so called ; but those laws which no 
 diversity of place or region can abolish, break through, dis- 
 turb, or alter." 
 
 So, too, Diderot says : " Et je dis, Heureux le Geom^tre en 
 qui une etude consommee des sciences abstraites n'aura point 
 afFoibli le goiit des beaux-arts, a qui Horace et Tacite soient 
 aussi familieres que Newton ; qui saura decouvrir les pro- 
 prietes d'une courbe, et sentir les beautes d'un poete : dont 
 Pesprit et les ouvrages seront de tous les temps, et qui aura 
 le m^rite de toutes les academies." 
 
 It is rather an interesting fact, that what Bacon theorised 
 Newton is said to have practised. The story is ) — " Newton 
 retired from the university to avoid the plague which raged 
 with great violence. Sitting under a tree in an orchard, an 
 apple fell upon his head. As there is motion, there must be 
 a force which produces it. Is this force of gravity confined 
 to the surface of the earth, or does it extend to the heavenly 
 bodies 
 
 Let this be a rule therefore," Bacon says, that all divi- 
 sions of knowledge be so accepted and applied, as may rather 
 design forth and distinguish sciences into parts than cut and 
 pull them asunder into pieces ; that so the continuance and 
 entireness of knowledge may ever be preserved. For the 
 contrary practice hath made particular sciences to become 
 barren, shallow and erroneous; while they have not been 
 nourished, maintained, and rectified, from the common foun- 
 tain and nursery. So we see Cicero the orator complained of 
 
NOTE II. 
 
 333 
 
 Socrates, and his school ; that he was the first that separated 
 philosophy and rhetoric : whereupon rhetoric became a verbal 
 and an empty art. And it is also evident, that the opinion 
 of Copernicus, touching the rotation of the earth (which now 
 is maintained) because it is not repugnant to the phenomena, 
 cannot be reversed by astronomical principles : yet by the 
 principles of natural philosophy, truly applied, it may. So 
 we see also that the science of medicine, if it be destitute and 
 forsaken of natural philosophy, it is not much better than 
 empirical practice. 
 
 ALL KNOWLEDGE IS VALUABLE. 
 
 As error may thus lead to truth, and as there is this union 
 between different sciences, it seems to follow that all know- 
 ledge is valuable, and that a well ordered mind may out of 
 every evil extract some good, with no other chemistry than 
 wisdom and serenity. 
 
 There is an interesting illustration of this position in a 
 sermon published by Dr. Ramsden, assistant professor of di- 
 vinity at Cambridge, who, in shewing the tendency of all 
 knowledge, to form the heart of a nation, says : 
 
 We will venture to say how in the mercy of God to man, 
 this heart comes to a nation, and how its exercise or affection 
 appears. It comes by priests, by lawgivers, by philosophers, 
 by schools, by education, by the nurse's care, the mother's 
 anxiety, the father's severe brow. It comes by letters, by 
 science, by every art, by sculpture, painting, and poetry ; by 
 the song on war, on peace, on domestic virtue, on a beloved 
 and magnanimous king ; by the Iliad, by the Odyssey, by tra- 
 gedy, by comedy. It comes by sympathy, by love, by the 
 marriage union, by friendship, generosity, meekness, tem- 
 perance, by virtue, and example of virtue. It comes by sen- 
 timents of chivalry, by romance, by music, by decorations and 
 magnificence of building, by the culture of the body, by com-, 
 fortable clothing, by fashions in dress, by luxury and com- 
 merce. It comes by the severity, the melancholy, the benig- 
 nity of the countenance j by rules of politeness, ceremonies, 
 formalities, solemnities. It comes by rites attendant on law, 
 by religion ; by the oath of ofl^ce, by the venerable assembly, 
 by the judge's procession and trumpets, by the disgrace and 
 punishment of crimes ; by public fasts, public prayer, by 
 meditation, by the Bible, by the consecration of churches, by 
 the sacred festival, by the cathedral's gloom and choir. 
 Whence the heart of a nation comes, we have, perhaps, suf- 
 ficiently explained. And it must appear to what most awful 
 obligation and duty we hold all those from whom this heart 
 
334 
 
 Is^OTE IT. 
 
 takes its nature ahd shape, our king, our princes, our nobles, 
 all vvho wear the badge of office or honour j all priests, judges, 
 senators, pleaders, interpreters of law, all instructors of 
 youth, all seminaries of education, all parents, all learned 
 men, all professors of science and art, all teachers of manners. 
 Upon them depends the fashion of the nation's heart. By 
 them is it to be chastised, refined and purified. By them is 
 the state to lose the character and title of the beast of prey. 
 By them are the iron scales to fall off, and a skin of youth, 
 beauty, freshness, and polish, to come upon it. By them 
 it is to be made so tame and gentle, as that a child may 
 lead it." 
 
 If there is any truth in these observations, there results a 
 rule of Lord Bacon's of considerable importance. Let not 
 the mind be fixed : but kept open to receive continual amend- 
 ment, that mind alone being in a perfect state for the acqui- 
 sition of knowledge which is capable at any time to acquire 
 any sort of knowledge ; the defects of the understanding from 
 this cause, being an inability at particular times, to acquire 
 knowledge ; or an inability to acquire particular sorts of 
 knowledge. He says, ** Certainly custom is most perfect 
 when it beginneth in young years; this we call education, 
 which is in efiect but an early custom. So we see in lan- 
 guages, the tongue is more pliant to all expressions and 
 sounds ; the joints are more supple to all feats of activity and 
 motions in youth than afterwards : for it is true, that late 
 learners cannot so well take the ply, except it be in some 
 minds that have not suflfered themselves to fix, but they kept 
 their minds open and prepared to receive continual amend- 
 ment, which is exceeding rare." 
 
 EXCKSSIVE ATTACHMENT TO PARTICULAR STUDIES, 
 
 " That diflferent men are attached to different studies is a 
 truth too obvious to require illustration. ' Attachment to 
 particular studies is,' says Lord Bacon, * an idol of the un- 
 derstanding :' * men,' he says, ' are fond of particular sciences 
 and studies, either because they believe themselves the au- 
 thors and inventors thereof, or because they have bestowed 
 much pains upon thein, and principally applied themselves 
 thereto."' 
 
335 
 
 NOTE III.—Text 140. 
 
 CAUSE AND EFFECT. 
 
 I. There is through all nature a regular succession of 
 events. 
 
 If a spark be put to gunpowder it will explode. If a stone 
 strike a pane of glass it vi^ill break ; if ice be exposed to heat 
 it will melt. It is thus we see that certain events regularly 
 succeed each other in the inanimate world, and there is the 
 same succession of events in bodies animate. 
 
 Take a frozen snake with some of the snow around it and 
 place it before a small fire ; take a lupin ar any other seed 
 and place it early in the month of May in the ground, or 
 take some new laid eggs and place them in due warmth, and 
 you may perceive the snake to move, to open its eyes, and' 
 soon to quit the snow in which it was shrouded : the lupin 
 will rise above the surface of the earth, and you will see 
 branches and leaves and flowers : the egg will open and a 
 small bird appear. It is thus we see that there is a regular 
 sequence of events by the action of inanimate upon animate 
 bodies. 
 
 There is the same sequence of events attendant upon the 
 action of animate bodies on each other : of mind upon mind. 
 Take, for instance, the effect of distress upon the female 
 mind. In some book of Travels, I think it is Mungo Park's 
 in Africa, he says, I never when in distress and misery 
 applied for relief to a female without finding pity, and if she 
 had the power, assistance." Griffith in his Travels, says, — 
 
 " On the northern side of the plain we had just entered, 
 was a large encampment of these people, composed of brown 
 and white tents, which, though low and small, wore an as- 
 pect even of comfort as well as regularity. Being in abso- 
 lute want of milk, I determined to solicit the assistance of 
 these Turcomans. Approaching the tent therefore with gra- 
 dual step and apparent indifference, I passed several without 
 observing any probability of succeeding ; children only were 
 to be seen near the spot where I was, and men with their 
 flocks at a certain distance. Advancing still further, I saw 
 a woman at the entrance of a small tent, occupied in domes- 
 tic employment : convinced that an appeal to the feelings of 
 the female sex, offered with decency by a man distressed 
 with hunger, would not be rejected, I held out my wooden 
 bowl, and reversing it, made a salutation according to the 
 forms of the country, urging my suit by gestures. The kind 
 
336 
 
 NOTE III. 
 
 Turcomaiinee covered her face precipitately and retired within 
 the tent, — she was alone, I did not advance a step, until that 
 curiosity which it were ungracious in me to disapprove, 
 induced her to peep from behind her coarse retreat. She 
 saw me unassuming : my inverted bowl still explained my 
 wants, and a salutation repeated seemed to be addressed to 
 her hospitality. The timidity of her sex, the usages of her 
 country, and even the fear of danger, gave waj' to the bene- 
 volence of her heart. She went to the tent again, returned 
 speedily with a bowl of milk, and advancing towards me with 
 a glance more than half averted, filled my bowl to the brim 
 and vanished." 
 
 IIo All the order and happiness in the world depends upon 
 the regular sequence of events. 
 
 All things that are, have some operation not violent or 
 casual. Neither doth any thing ever begin to exercise the 
 same, without some fore-conceived end for which it worketh. 
 And the end which it worketh for is not obtained unless the 
 work be also fit to obtain it by. For unto every end every 
 operation will not serve. That which doth assign unto each 
 thing the kind, that which doth moderate the force and 
 power, that which appoints the form and measure of working, 
 the same we term a law. So that no certain end could ever 
 be attained, unless the actions whereby it is attained were re- 
 gular, that is to say, made suitable, fit, and correspondent 
 unto their end, by some canon rule of law. — hooker's eccle- 
 siastical POLITIE. 
 
 The blessings which result from the regular sequence of 
 events will be evident by a moment's consideration of the 
 misery attendant upon an interruption of this regularity; — 
 suppose, for instance, that calculating upon the nutritious 
 effects )f food it was to have the effect of poison, or that 
 sugar had the effect of arsenic ; or that fire, instead of exhi- 
 larating by a genial warmth, had the violent effects of gun- 
 powder ; or that, at the moment of attack, gunpowder ceased 
 to be inflammable, is it not obvious what misery must re- 
 sult? 
 
 III. Our power depends upon our knowledge of the sequence 
 of events. 
 
 Archimedes by his knowledge of optics was enabled to 
 burn the Roman fleet before Syracuse, and baffle the un- 
 ceasing efforts of Marcellus to take the town. — An Athenian 
 admiral delayed till evening to attack, on the coast of Attica, 
 a Lacedemonian fleet, which was disposed in a circle, be- 
 
NOTE III. 
 
 337 
 
 cause he knew that an evening breeze always sprung up from 
 the land. The breeze arose, the circle was disordered, and 
 at that moment he made his onset. The Athenian captives 
 by repeating the strains of Euripides were enabled to charm 
 their masters into a grant of their liberty. 
 
 IV. When two events, both of which are perceptible, fclloio 
 each other vnthout any connection between them,, and the cause 
 of the succeeding event is latent ^ there is a tendency to ascribe 
 the succeeding event to the improper cause. 
 
 The anecdote from Bishop Latimer as to Tenderden steeple 
 is an instance of this species of error, ante 139. 
 
 A common instance of this species of error is in the love- 
 note of the spider, called the death watch. Sitting by the 
 bed of a sick or dying friend, when all is still, the noise of 
 the spider is heard a short time, perhaps, before the death of 
 the sufferer; and the events are, therefore, supposed to be 
 connected. Astrology is, perhaps, founded upon this delu- 
 sion. 
 
 V. When the connection of events is unknown, Ignorance 
 refers the event to what is called Chance and Superstition, 
 which is ignorance in another form, to the immediate agency of 
 some superior benevolent or malevolent being : but Philosophy 
 endeavours to discover the antecedent in the chain of events. 
 
 See the anecdote respecting the Spectre of the Broken, in 
 note, ante 222, as to the different conclusions of ignorance 
 and philosophy. 
 
 Dr. Arnot, in his work on Physics, says, It happened 
 once on board a ship sailing along the coast of Brazil, 100 
 miles from land, that the persons walking on deck, when 
 passing a particular spot, heard most distinctly the sounds 
 of bells, varying as in human rejoicings. All on board list- 
 ened and were convinced; but the phenomenon was mys- 
 terious and inexplicable." The different ideas which this 
 would excite in the minds of ignorance and intelligence may 
 be easily conceived. Some months afterwards," continues 
 Dr. Arnot, it was ascertained that, at the time of observation 
 the bells of the city of St. Salvador, on the Brazilian coast, 
 had been ringing on the occasion of a festival : the sound 
 therefore, favoured by a gentle wind, had travelled over 
 100 miles of smooth water; and striking the wide-spread 
 sail of the ship, rendered concave by a gentle breeze, had 
 been brought to a focus, and rendered perceptible." Of the 
 consternation occasioned in uninformed minds by lightning 
 we are all aware. How different is the effect upon unin- 
 
 z 
 
338 
 
 NOTE III. 
 
 formed minds, and upon the mind of the philosopher in his 
 quiet retreat. Dr. Franklin, speaking of conductors, says, 
 A rod was fixed to the top of my chimney, and extended 
 about nine feet above it. From the foot of this rod, a wire 
 the thickness of a goose-quill came through a covered glass 
 tube in the roof, and down through the well of the staircase ; 
 the lower end connected with the iron spear of a lamp. On 
 the staircase opposite to my chamber door the wire was 
 divided ; the ends separated about six inches, a little bell 
 on each end, and between the bells a little brass ball sus- 
 pended by a silk thread, to play between and strike the bells 
 when clouds passed with electricity in them." Instances of 
 the same nature may with a little observation be constantly 
 discovered. Dreams are to the ignorant, often objects of 
 terror ; to the intelligent they are evidence of some diseased 
 state of the body, or agitated state of the mind. 
 
 VI. Ignorance, hy stopping at second causes has a tendency, 
 forgetting the prime cause to be sceptical ; but philosophy looks 
 through to the cause of all things. 
 
 " Looks through Nature, up to Nature's God." 
 
 Lord Bacon says, "For certain it is that God worketh 
 nothing in nature but by second causes ; and if they would 
 have it otherwise believed it is mere imposture, as it were, in 
 favour towards God : and nothing else but to offer to the Au- 
 thor of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie. But farther, it is 
 an assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a little 
 or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline the mind 
 of man to atheism, but a farther proceeding therein doth 
 bring the mind back again to religion ; for in the entrance of 
 philosophy, when the second causes, which are next unto 
 the senses, do offer themselves to the mind of m,an, if it dwell 
 and stay there, it may induce some oblivion of the highest 
 cause ; but when a man passeth on further, and seeth the 
 dependence of causes and the works of Providence : then, 
 according to the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe 
 that the highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to the 
 foot of Jupiter's chair." 
 
 And to the same effect, David Hume in his general corol- 
 lary at the conclusion of his Essays, says, " Though the 
 stupidity of men, barbarous and uninstructed, be so great, 
 that they may not see a sovereign author in the more obvious 
 works of nature, to which they are so much familiarized, yet 
 it scarce seems possible, that any one of good understanding 
 should reject the idea, when once it is suggested to him. A 
 purpose, an intention, a design, is evident in every thing ; 
 
NOTE III. 
 
 339 
 
 and when our comprehension is so far enlarged as to con- 
 template the first rise of this visible system, we must adopt, 
 with the strongest conviction, the idea of some intelligent 
 cause or author. 
 
 So, too, Browne, in his beautifuF work on Cause and 
 Effect, says, '* Wherever we turn our eyes, to the earth, to 
 the heavens, to the myriads of bemgs that live and move 
 around us, or to those more than myriads of worlds, which 
 seem themselves almost like animate inhabitants of the in- 
 finity through which they range ; above us, beneath us, on 
 every side, we discover with a certainty that admits not of 
 doubt, intelligence and design, that must have preceded the 
 existence of every thing which exists." The power of the 
 Omnipotent is indeed so transcendent in itself, that the loftiest 
 imagery and language which we can borrow from a few pass- 
 ing events in the boundlessness of nature, must be feeble to 
 express its force and universahty. 
 
 Tt seems, therefore, that 
 
 1. There is through all nature a regular sequence of 
 events. 
 
 2. All the order and happiness in the world depends upon 
 the regular sequence of events. 
 
 3. Our power depends upon our knowledge of the sequence 
 of events, 
 
 4. When two events, both of which are perceptible, follow 
 each other without any connection between them, and the 
 cause of the succeeding event is latent, there is a tendency 
 to ascribe the succeeding event to the improper cause. 
 
 5. When the connection of events is unknown, Ignorance 
 refers the event to what is called ** Chance and Supersti- 
 tion, which is ignorance in another form, to the immediate 
 agency of some superior benevolent or malevolent being: 
 but Philosophy endeavours to discover the antecedent in the 
 chain of events. 
 
 6. Ignorance, by stopping at second causes, has a tendency, 
 forgetting the prime cause, to be sceptical : but philosophy 
 looks through to the cause of all things. 
 
.?40 
 
 NOTE IV.~Text265. 
 
 PLEASURES OF IMAGINATION. 
 
 I. The mind aspires to perfection. 
 Tins world is inferior to the soul, by reason whereof there is, 
 agreeable to the spirit of man, a more ample greatness, a 
 more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety than can 
 be found in the nature of things. — bacon. 
 
 The soul during her confinement within this prison of the 
 body, is doomed by fate to undergo a severe penance. For 
 her native seat is in heaven ; and it is with reluctance that she 
 is forced down from those celestial mansions into these lower 
 regions, where all is foreign and repugnant to her divine nature. 
 But the gods, 1 am pursuaded, have thus widely disseminated 
 immortal spirits, and clothed them with human bodies, that 
 there might be a race of intelligent creatures, not only to have 
 dominion over this our earth, but to contemplate the host of 
 heaven, and imitate in their moral conduct the same beautiful 
 order and uniformity, so conspicuous in those splendid orbs, 
 
 CICERO. 
 
 This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, ennobling 
 of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we 
 call learning, under what name soever it come forth, or to 
 what immediate end soever it be directed, the final end is to 
 lead and draw us to as high a perfection, as our degenerate 
 souls, made worse by their clay-lodgings, can be capable of. 
 Some give themselves to astronomy ; some to be natural and 
 supernatural philosophers ; some an admirable delight drew 
 to music ; and some the certainty of demonstration to the 
 mathematics ; but all, one and other, having this scope to 
 know, and by knowledge to lift up the mind from the dun- 
 geon of the body, to the enjoying his own divine essence. 
 
 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 
 
 If there be a radical propensity in our nature to do that which 
 is wrong, there is on the other hand a counteracting power 
 within it, or an impulse by means of the action of the Divine 
 spirit upon our minds, which urges us to do that which is 
 right. If the voice of temptation, clothed in musical and se- 
 ducing accents, charms us one way, the voice of holiness 
 speaking to us from within in a solemn and powerful manner, 
 commands us another. Does one man obtain a victory over 
 his corrupt affections? an immediate perception of pleasure, 
 like the feeling of a revi^ard divinely conferred upon him, is 
 
NOTK IV. 
 
 341 
 
 noticed. Does another fall prostrate beneath their power ? a 
 painful feeling, and such as pronounces to him the sentence 
 of reproof, and punishment is found to follow. 
 
 Whatever the Deity may have bestowed upon me in other 
 respects, he has certainly inspired me, if any ever were in- 
 spired, with a passion for the good and fair. Nor did Ceres, 
 according to the fable, ever seek her daughter Proserpine with 
 such unceasing solicitude, as I have sought this perfect model 
 of the beautiful in all the forms and appearances of thinj^s I 
 am wont, day and night, to continue my search ; and I foU 
 low in the way in which you go before. 
 
 Milton's letter to deodati. 
 
 The highborn soul 
 Disdains to rest her heaven- aspiring wing 
 Beneath its native quarry. Tir'd of earth 
 And this diurnal scene, she springs aloft. — akenside. 
 
 Our hearts ne'er bow but to superior worth. 
 No ever fail of their allegiance there. — young. 
 
 Though I have lost 
 Much lustre of my native brightness — lost 
 To be beloved of God — I have not lost 
 To love, at least contemplate and admire, 
 What I see excellent in good, or fair, 
 Or virtuous. — milton. 
 Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 
 Of noble natures : 
 
 In spite of all. 
 Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 
 From our dark spn-its. — keats. 
 
 IT. Does not the mind delight in the Invisible and the Oh' 
 scure 1 
 
 See ante, pages 286, 7, 8, 9. 
 
 Ask the faithful youth, 
 Why the cold urn of her whom long he loved 
 So often fills his arms ; so often draws 
 His lonely footsteps at the silent hour, 
 To pay the mournful tribute of his tears 1 
 Oh ! he will tell thee, that the wealth of worlds 
 Should ne'er seduce his bosom to forego 
 That sacred hour, when, stealing from the noise 
 Of care and envy, sweet remembrance soothes 
 With virtue's kindest looks his aching breast. 
 And turns his tears to rapture. 
 
 III. Does not the Mind delight in its creative Powers — of 
 
342 
 
 NOTE IV. 
 
 Imitation, — of Extension, — of Personification, — of Combina- 
 tion, &c. t 
 
 Do not the pleasures of imagijiation enable the mind to in- 
 dulge its delight in aspiring to perfection ? 
 In regions mild of calm and serene air, 
 Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot, 
 Which men call earth, and with low thoughted care 
 Confined, and pestered in this pinfold here. 
 Strive to keep up a frail and feverish being, See. 
 
 Do not the pleasures of imagination enable the wind to in- 
 dulge its love of the invisible, and its creative powers ? 
 There is a spirit within us, which arrays 
 The thing we dote upon with colourings 
 Richer than roses — brighter than the beams 
 Of the clear sun at morning, when he flings 
 His shower of light upon the peach, or plays 
 With the green leaves of June, and strives to dart 
 Into some great forest's heart, 
 And scare the Sylvan from voluptuous dreams. 
 
 BARRY CORiNWALL. 
 
 ON THE NIGHTINGALE. 
 
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
 Perhaps the self-same sono^ that found a path 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for homo, 
 She stood in tears amid the alien corn. keats. 
 
 SATURN, 
 
 Deep in the shady sadness of ai vale 
 
 Far sunken from the healthy breath of morni 
 
 Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star. 
 
 Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone. 
 
 Still as the silence round about his lair ; 
 
 Forest on forest hung about his head 
 
 Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there. 
 
 Not so much life as on a summer's day 
 
 Robs not one light seed from the featherM grass, 
 
 But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. keats. 
 
 It is a stormy night, and the wild sea. 
 That sounds for ever, now upon the beach 
 Is pouiing all its power. Each after each. 
 The hurrying waves cry out rejoicingly. 
 
NOTE IV. 
 
 343 
 
 And, crowding onwards, seem as they would reach 
 
 The height I tread upon. The winds are high, 
 
 And the quick lightnings shoot along the sky, 
 
 At intervals. It is an hour to teach 
 
 Vain man his insignificance ; and yet. 
 
 Though all the elements in their might have met. 
 
 At every pause comes ringing on my ear 
 
 A sterner murmur, and I seem to hear 
 
 The voice of Silence, sounding from her throne 
 
 Of darkness mightier than all — but all alone — 
 
 BARRY CORNWALL. 
 
 Two voices are there ; one is of the sea. 
 
 One of the mountains ; each a mighty voice : 
 
 In both from age to age thou didst rejoice. 
 
 They were thy chosen music, liberty ! 
 
 There came a tyrant and with holy glee 
 
 Thou fought'st against him ; but hast vainly striven : 
 
 Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art driven. 
 
 Where not a torrent murmur's heard by thee. 
 
 Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft : 
 
 Then cleave, O cleave to that which still is left ; 
 
 For high soul'd maid, what sorrow would it be 
 
 That mountain floods should thunder as before. 
 
 And ocean bellow from his rocky shore. 
 
 And neither awful voice be heard by thee ! 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Does Fiction exceed Reality? 
 Bacon, speaking of Magic, says, " Surely he shall not 
 much err, who shall say, that this kind of magic is as far 
 differing in truth of nature, from such a knowledge as we 
 require, as the Books of the Jests of Arthur of Britain, or of 
 Hugh of Burdeaux, differs from Caesar's Commentaries in 
 truth of story. For it is manifest, that Caesar did greater 
 things * de vero,' than they durst feign of their Heroes ; but 
 he did them not in that fabulous manner." And, in his No- 
 vum Organum, Art. 87, after having mentioned various vain 
 imaginations, he says, *' l"he truth is, there seems to be the 
 same diflference in the doctrines of philosophy, between these 
 vanities, and the real arts ; as there is between the historical 
 narrations of the exploits of Julius Caisar, or Alexander the 
 Great, and the achievements of Amadis de Gaul, or Arthur 
 of Britain. For those celebrated emperors are found, in fact, 
 to have accomplished greater things, than the other shadowy 
 heroes are even feigned to have done ; and yet this by such 
 means as are no way fabulous or monstrous." 
 
344 
 
 NOTE IV. 
 
 William Wordsworth, in his preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 
 says, '* Whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even 
 the greatest poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt but that 
 the language which it will suggest to him, must, in liveliness 
 and truth, fall far short of that which is uttered by men in 
 real life, under the actual pressure of those passions, certain 
 shadows of which the Poet thus produces, or feels to be pro- 
 duced, in himself." 
 
 In a modern novel there is the following passage : — 
 '* Were a thousandth part of the living romances of the time 
 to be given to the world, those inventions which have stag- 
 gered credulity would be pronounced tame and insipid, and 
 all would declare what every one can vouch from his own 
 experience, that romance is the mere commonplace of life, 
 and, like some of the general phenomena of nature, is incre- 
 dible only to those who do not examine into that which forms 
 the very essence of their own being." 
 
 Which are the greatest, the pleasures of imagination or of 
 reality ? 
 
 In the address to the reader in the Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon 
 thus concludes : '* This work of Natural History is the world, 
 as God made it, and not as men have made it, for it hath no- 
 thing of imagination." 
 
 That there are pleasures of imagination, who can doubt? 
 Who can think, without delight, of the Lady in Comus, or of 
 Ariel? 
 
 Where the bee sucks, there suck I, 
 In a cowslip's bell I lie. 
 
 So far from doubting the existence of these pleasures, it is 
 obvious that they are so intense, as, without the greatest cau- 
 tion, to absorb and mislead the mind. 
 
 ** Great pleasures," says Philosophy, *' are only for extra- 
 ordinary occasions." ** May I," says the old maxim, " be 
 wise enough to write one poem, and wise enough not to write 
 more than one." 
 
 I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy — 
 The sleepless soul that perished in his pride : 
 
 Of him who walked in glory and in joy. 
 
 Following his plough along the mountain side. 
 By our own spirits we are deified : 
 
 We poets, in our youth, begin in gladness. 
 
 But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness. 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 The question, therefore, is not whether there are pleasures 
 of imagination, or whether these pleasures, when properly 
 
NOTE IV. 
 
 345 
 
 directed, that is when they are real, are not exquisite, but 
 whetlier, when excessive or erroneous, they are not exceeded 
 by the real dehghts of the same nature for which they are 
 substituted. 
 
 Are not the delights of true more exquisite than the de- 
 lights of false religion, of the Christian than of the Turk 1 
 Are not the delights of real affection and love more exquisite 
 than all such delights conceived by imagination 1 Take any 
 specimen of imaginary love, and contrast it with reality. 
 Take, for instance, the milkmaid's song from Marlowe : 
 
 We will sit upon the rocks. 
 And see the shepherds feed our flocks 
 By shallow rivers, to whose falls 
 Melodious birds sing madrigals. 
 
 And I will make thee beds of roses. 
 And twine a thousand fragrant posies : 
 A belt of straw and ivy buds. 
 With coral clasps and amber studs. 
 
 Coiiti ast this with the description of real affection : 
 
 For five campaigns 
 
 Did my sweet Lucy know 
 Each hardship and each toil 
 
 We soldiers undergo. ^ 
 Nor ever did she murmur, 
 
 Or at her fate repine, 
 She thought not of her sorrow, 
 
 But how to lessen mine : 
 In hunger, or hard marching, 
 ^ Whate'er the ill might be, 
 
 In her I found a friend. 
 
 Who ne'er deserted me : 
 And in my tent when wounded, 
 
 And when I sickening lay. 
 Oft from my brow, with trembling hand, 
 
 She wiped the damps away. 
 And when this heart, my Lucy, 
 Shall cease to beat for thee, &c. 
 
 Can this reality be contrasted with the fiction from Mar- 
 lowe, without acknowledging the truth of Sir W. Raleigh's 
 answer : 
 
 Thy belt of straw and ivy buds, 
 Thy coral clasps and amber studs, 
 All these in me no means can move 
 To come to thee and be thy love. 
 
346 
 
 NOTE IV. 
 
 What should we talk of dainties then, 
 Of better meat than's fit for men 1 
 These are but vain, that's only good, 
 Which God has blest, and sent for food. 
 
 Again, let any imagination exceed the grief of a family as 
 described in the following verse from an old song : 
 
 His mother from the window look'd, 
 
 W^ith all the longings of a mother — 
 His little sister, weeping, walk'd 
 
 The green wood path to meet her brother. 
 They sought him east, they sought him west. 
 
 They sought him all the forest thorough ; 
 They only saw the cloud of night. 
 
 They only heard the roar of Yarrow !" 
 
 Take again the pleasures of kindness. We all remember 
 the account in the beginning of Tom Jones, of Mr. Allwor- 
 thy's return from London, when he retired much fatigued to 
 his chamber. Here, having spent some minutes on his 
 knees, a custom which he never broke through on any ac- 
 count, he was preparing to step into bed, when, upon open- 
 ing the clothes, to his great surprise, he beheld an infant, 
 wrapt up in some coarse linen, in a sweet and profound sleep, 
 between his sheets.'^ The servants were summoned. When 
 Mrs. Deborah came into the room, and was acquainted by 
 her master with the finding the little infant, her consterna- 
 tion was rather greater than his had been ; nor could she re- 
 frain from crying out, with great horror of accent as well as 
 look, " My good sir ! what's to be done ? If I might be so 
 bold as to give my advice, I would have it put in a basket, 
 and sent out and laid at the churchwarden's door. It is a 
 good night, only a little rainy and windy ; and, if it was well 
 wrapt up, and put in a warm basket, it is two to one but it 
 lives till it is found in the morning." Mr. AUworthy had 
 now got one of his fingers into the infant's hand, which by its 
 gentle pressure seeming to implore his assistance, out-pleaded 
 the eloquence of Mrs. Deborah. 
 
 Let any imaginary pleasure of kindness be contrasted with 
 this ; or if this be supposed imaginary, take the following ex- 
 tract from an account published some years since by a per- 
 son who, at midnight, was intrusted in London with a respite 
 for two men, who were to be executed in the country, at the 
 distance of sixty miles, the next morning at eight o'clock. 
 He says, " The horse-guards' clock struck eleven as I entered 
 W' hitehall ; before twelve o'clock I, with the respite in my 
 
NOTE IV. 
 
 347 
 
 pocket, was in a post-chaise on my road ; between five and 
 six in the morning, just at the dawn of day, I was within 
 fourteen miles of Huntingdon. The sun rose in all its splen- 
 dour ; and it was not, I thought, the last time that it would 
 rise upon these poor men." 
 
 Let any Poet describe the joy of this traveller. It is the 
 same with every other pleasure which we are formed to en- 
 joy. The creations of man are not better than the creating 
 of the Almighty. 
 
 Effect of the Progress of Knowledge upon Imagination, 
 
 By the progress of knowledge erroneous notions are eradi- 
 cated. The stream is filtered. The atmosphere is purified. 
 Vain fears and vain imaginations are dissipated : false no- 
 tions of pleasure are destroyed, and real delights increased. 
 
 Effect of the Progress of Knowledge upon Imagination 
 in General, 
 
 As the pleasures of imagination are very prevalent, and 
 much cultivated during youth, so, if we consider mankind as 
 one great individual, advancing in age perpetually, it seems 
 natural to expect, that in the infancy of knowledge, in the 
 early ages of the world, the taste of mankind would turn 
 much upon the pleasures of this class. And agreeably to this 
 it may be observed, that music, painting, and poetry, were 
 much admired in ancient times ; and the two last brought to 
 great perfection. — hartly. 
 
 Ignorance and credulity have ever been companions, and 
 have misled and enslaved mankind ; philosophy has in all 
 ages endeavoured to oppose their progress, and to loosen the 
 shackles they had imposed ; philosophers have on this ac- 
 count been called unbelievers : unbelievers of what? of the 
 fictions of fancy, of witchcraft, hobgoblins, apparitions, vam- 
 pires, fairies ; of the influence of stars on human actions, mi- 
 racles wrought by the bones of saints, the flights of ominous 
 birds, the predictions from the bowels of dying animals, ex- 
 pounders of dreams, fortune-tellers, conjurors, modern pro- 
 phets, necromancy, chieromancy, animal magnetism, metallic 
 tractors, with endless variety of folly ? These they have dis- 
 believed and despised, but have ever bowed their heads to 
 truth and nature. — darvvin's zoonomia. 
 
 It cannot be concealed, however, that the progress of 
 knowledge and refinement has a tendency to circumscribe the 
 limits of the imagination, and to clip the wings of poetry. 
 
348 
 
 NOTE IV. 
 
 The province of the imagination is principally visionary, the 
 unknown and undefined : the understanding restores things 
 ' to their natural boundaries, and strips them of their fanciful 
 pretensions. — hazlet. 
 
 Kiiovjledge diminishes the Pains of Imagination. 
 
 See ante 220, and the note. 
 See also ante 166, as to Sorrow^. 
 
 Knowledge regulates the Pleasures of Imagination, 
 
 Do not all charms fly 
 
 At the mere touch of cold philosophy ? 
 There was an awful rainbow, once in heaven : 
 W e know her woof, her texture : she is given 
 In the dull catalogue of common things. 
 Philosophy will clip an angel's wings, 
 Conquer all mysteries by rule and line. 
 Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine, 
 Unweave a rainbow : • 
 
 So says the poet, ought it not to be — Does not folly fly 
 at the mere sight of sweet philosophy :" take for instance the 
 very image which the poet has selected. Has the man of 
 science less pleasure in contemplating this beauty of nature 
 than is enjoyed by ignorance? 
 
 Akenside, in his poem on the Imagination, says — 
 
 Nor ever yet 
 
 The melting rainbow's vernal tinctur'd hues 
 To me have shone so pleasing, as when first 
 The hand of science pointed out the path 
 In which the sun-beams gleaming from the west 
 Fall on the watery cloud. 
 
 So, too, Wordsworth says — 
 
 My heart leaps up when I behold 
 
 A rainbow in the sky : 
 So was it when my life began : 
 
 So is it now I am a man ; 
 So be it when I shall grow old, 6cc. 
 
 Of the miseries attendant upon acting on imaginations, as 
 if they were realities, life abounds with instances. How truly 
 does Sir W. Raleigh say, in answer to the sweet ballad, 
 *' Come live with me and be my love :" 
 
 Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, 
 
 Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies 
 
 Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten. 
 
 In folly ripe, in reason rotten. 
 
NOTE IV. 
 
 349 
 
 The most common source of misery from this species of 
 delusion is in marriage, of which there is an admirable des- 
 cription by Dr. Johnson in his Rasselas, the passage begins, 
 ** What can be expected." In a very interesting novel, en- 
 titled Marriage, there is the following dialogue between the 
 couple. Douglas saw the storm gathering on the brow of 
 his capricious wife, and clasping her in his arms : — " Are 
 you indeed so changed, my Julia, that you have forgot the 
 time when you used to declare, you would prefer a desert 
 with your Henry, to a throne with another?'' 
 
 ** No, certainly, not changed: but — I — I did not very 
 well know then what a desert was ; or at least, I had formed 
 rather a different idea of it.'' ** What was your idea of a 
 desert?" said her husband, laughing; " do tell me, love?" 
 " Oh ! 1 had fancied it a beautiful place, full of roses and 
 myrtles, and smooth green turf, and murmuring rivulets, and 
 though very retired, not absolutely out of the world, where 
 one could occasionally see one's friends and give dtjemici 
 and fetes champetres." 
 
 Such are the miseries resulting from erroneous notions re- 
 specting love : misery of the same nature, although less in 
 degree, attends erroneous notions respecting fi iendship. The 
 advantages of friendship are peace in the affections, counsel 
 in judgment, and assistance in distress ; the heart, the hand, 
 the head.* Is it a cause of astonishment that disappoint- 
 ments attend most youthful friendships ? 
 
 Those truths are not confined to our affections, but extend 
 to every event in life, when we venture to act either by sup- 
 posing, non-existencies to be existencies ; or by omitting to 
 take into consideration the want of some real cause of com- 
 fort. How truly is this described by Cowper in the story of 
 the Peasant's Nest, in the Task : 
 
 Oft have I wish'd the peaceful covert mine. 
 Here I have said at least 1 should possess 
 The poet's treasure — silence, and indulge 
 The dreams of fancy tranquil and secure ; 
 Vain thought, the dweller in that still retreat 
 Dearly obtains the refuge it affords. 
 Its elevated scite forbids the wretch 
 To drink sweet waters of the crystal well, 
 He dips his bowl into the weedy ditch. 
 And heavy laden brings his beverage home ; 
 So farewell envy of the peasant's nest. 
 
 * See ante 71 and 76. 
 
350 
 
 NOTE IV. 
 
 Let us think for a moment of the sweet poet, Robert Burns, 
 whose life was passed 
 
 So sweetly in the morning 
 Young fancy's rays the hills adorning. 
 
 but when addressing us from his grave in his epitaph, he says, 
 
 The poor inhabitant below 
 
 Was quick to learn and wise to know, 
 
 And keenly felt the friendly glow 
 
 And softer flame ; 
 But thoughtless follies laid him low 
 
 And stain'd his name. 
 Reader, attend, whether thy soul 
 Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole. 
 Or darkling grubs this earthly hole, 
 
 In low pursuit, 
 Know, prudent, cautious, self-controL 
 
 Is wisdom's root. 
 
 Let us, therefore, enjoy the pleasures of imagination, but be 
 not unmindful of their limits. Let us not be 
 
 Misled by fancy's meteor ray. 
 
 By passion driv'n ; 
 Although the light that leads astray 
 
 Is light from heaven. 
 
 THE EXD. 
 
 C. Whittiugham, Tooks Court, Chancery Lane. 
 
GETTY CENTER LIBRARY