and opening all the veins in the body to subdue the lusts of the flesh, have found a remedy that God never thought of, and for the cure whereof nature hath laid in a stock of temperance and moderation, if it be carefully applied. It is a vulgar error, and is most produced and nourished in vulgar minds, that a man can shut himself up from approaching any vice, or shut out any vice from approaching him, except he shut himself up in the grave; that struggle and contention must last as long as the world lasts, let the scene lie where it will; and he who basely declines the campaign, that he may lie concealed and secure in a garrison town, meets with the same or greater dangers from the sickness, disease and mutinies, which naturally accompany those retreats, than he would have encountered in the thickest vollies of the field; and may properly enough be compared to that wary people, who, conscious to themselves of that want of courage and resolution that is necessary to resist the devil, and to make him fly from them, chuse rather to fly from him, and hide themselves in monasteries and places of solitude, and make vows of silence, that he may take no advantage of their words; and that they may be chaste, besides their vows, avoid the company of all women; and vow poverty, that they may be without ambition: whereas the devil is commonly too hard for them in those dull

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speculations, and suggests thoughts to them as full of wickedness, as the worst actions can be; and infuses a drowsiness and sottishness into their souls, a stupidity and lethargy into their understandings, that is more dangerous and pernicious to their bodies and their souls, than all their wanderings in the world could probably have proved.

The busy and industrious man hath still the light about him, his vices and his virtues are equally conspicuous; and it is no small or ineffectual provocation to the amendment of life, to find that his manners are taken notice of by all men, and condemned by most; which is a wholesome mortification: his wisdom and his piety make a greater and a better noise, and shine brightly in the view and to the benefit and information of good men, who delight to dress themselves in his glass, and transcribe his manners into their own. He doth not only plant and cultivate the principles of industry, magnanimity, and all heroical virtues in the minds of men, but mends and improves the soil where they should grow, by gentle and civil cautions and animadversions; and he very often lives to see the harvest and very good fruits gathered from his husbandry, to the great benefit of the church and He reads lectures, and gets children after he is dead by the propagation of his principles and his counsels, and the communication of his actions,

state.

and in the justice that is paid to his memory. If these flowers grow in the garden of contemplation, they are of the nature of those flowers which prosper only in the night, and disappear and close their leaves at the rising of the sun. We have very little testimony, very few records, of any notable fruit gathered from this dry tree of solitude; that their counsels have contributed much to that wisdom, which is necessary for the virtuous conduct of the affairs of this world; and the speculations which some of those pious men have produced towards our journey to the next, a wise preparation for which is the most necessary business of this life; without the least purpose to undervalue the pains they have taken, and for which they deserve great thanks, we may say, that even in that exercise, and to the purposes they design, the prescriptions for living well and profitably for ourselves and others, and of dying well for our own salvation and the example of others, the clear resolutions of weighty doubts, and the folly of those doubts which arise from the impotence of the understanding; the advice and determinations which we have received from the piety and industry of those who have been very conversant in the world, and much entangled in the affairs and transactions thereof, have another kind of sap and nourishment, carry in them another kind of conviction of the under

standing, and find another kind of irresistibleness from the affections and from the will, than the laboured conceptions of those collegiate and monastic persons; from whom we may as reasonably expect to receive the news of the court, as the most refined notions of any science; which can only spring, as to use and application, from frequent experience and solid observation, and from finding ourselves often deceived; which is a part of learning the other classis of men are very rarely versed

in.

It cannot be denied, that they who are embarked in the agitations of the world, obliged to attend and be present in the throngs and crowds of courts, to sustain the burthens of great offices and employments, or the envy and murmurs of being without them, or seeing other men possessed of them, who they think are in merit inferior to themselves, which make them complain of the justice of princes, and of the providence of God himself: I say, these men, and all who would be in the rank of these men, who have a wider prospect of good and evil, see the pleasant baits and temptations, and the grosser traps and gins that are laid to catch and surprise the several affections and appetites of idle and dissolute men; and therefore probably more of them. may be seized upon and corrupted by such allurements, than can be debauched in cloisters and inclo

sures, which are without such prospects. But it is a very great error to conclude from hence, that this exorbitancy in their inclinations, this depravedness of their judgment, or corruption of their manners with what vice soever, is the product of that course of life which they have addicted themselves to: whereas the course of life they have chosen is innocent and honourable, and only can be effectually prosecuted by excellent, at least well-qualified persons; and the vices which commonly first or last make them unsuccessful in it, proceed from the corruption and wickedness in their own nature, and which would break out with equal venom in any condition of life or in any profession; the malignity is in the man, brought with him, not found by him in the air in which he lives. He who is of licentious manners in a court, would with less cleanliness practise the like or as bad excesses in a convent; and he who is corrupt upon the bench, and receives bribes in cases of judicatory, would be as dishonest if he were a friar: he would corrupt women in his chair of confession; and give absolution in the greatest crimes, that he might be instructed in the most secret practices and mysteries of iniquity: if he be a great man, and inclined to rebellion, had he been a monk, he would have become an heretic, and disturbed the peace of his country with those uproars. And on the other