2. At no hand, to entertain any desire, or any fantastic, imaginative loves; though by shame, or disability, or other circumstance, they be restrained from act.

66

The middle ages of the church were not pleased that the adulteress should be put to death: but in the primitive ages, the civil laws, by which christians were then governed, gave leave to the wronged husband to kill his adulterous wife, if he took her in the fact: but because it was a privilege indulged to men, rather than a direct detestation of the crime, a consideration of the injury rather than of the uncleanness, therefore it was soon altered, but yet hath caused an inquiry, Whether is worse, the adultery of the man or the woman?

The resolution of which case, in order to our present affair, is thus: in respect of the person, the fault is greater in a man than in a woman, who is of a more pliant and easy spirit, and weaker understanding, and hath nothing to supply the unequal strengths of men, but the defensative of a passive nature and armour of modesty, which is the natural ornament of that sex. "And it is unjust that the man should demand chastity and severity from his wife, which himself will not observe towards her,k" said the good emperor Antoninus: it is as if the man should persuade his wife to fight against those enemies, to which he had yielded himself a prisoner. 2. In respect of the effects and evil consequents, the adultery of the woman is worse, as bringing bastardy into a family, and disinherisons or great injuries to the lawful children, and infinite violations of peace, and murders, and divorces, and all the effects of rage and madness. 3. But in respect of the crime, and as relating to God, they are equal, intolerable, and damnable: and since it is no more permitted to men to have many wives, than to women to have many husbands, and that in this respect their privilege is equal, their sin is so too. And this is the case of the question in christianity. And the church anciently refused to admit such persons to the holy communion, until they had done seven years' penances in fasting, in sackcloth, in severe inflictions and instruments of charity and sorrow, according to the discipline of those ages.

3. To have a chaste eye and hand: m for it is all one with what part of the body we commit adultery: and if a man lets his eye loose, and enjoys the lust of that, he is an adulterer. "Look not upon a woman to lust after her." And supposing all the other members restrained, yet if the eye be permitted to lust, the man can no otherwise be called chaste, than he can be called severe and mortified, that sits all day long seeing plays and revellings, and out of greediness to fill his eye neglects his belly. There are some vessels, which if you offer to lift by the belly or bottom, you cannot stir them, but are soon removed, if you take them by the ears. It matters not with which of your members you are taken and carried off from your duty and severity.

4. To have a heart and mind chaste and pure; that is, detesting all uncleanness; disliking all its motions, past actions, circumstances, likenesses, discourses: and this ought to be the chastity of virgins and widows, of old persons and eunuchs especially, and generally of all men, according to their several necessities.

5. To discourse chastely and purely;" with great care declining all indecencies of language, chastening the tongue, and restraining it with grace, as vapours of wine are restrained with a bunch of myrrh.

:

6. To disapprove by an after-act all involuntary and natural pollutions for if a man delights in having suffered any natural pollution, and with pleasure remembers it, he chooses that, which was in itself involuntary; and that which, being natural, was innocent, becoming voluntary, is made sinful.

7. They that have performed these duties and parts of chastity, will certainly abstain from all exterior actions of uncleanness, those noon-day and midnight devils, those lawless and ungodly worshippings of shame and uncleanness, whose birth is in trouble, whose growth is in folly, and whose end is in shame.

But besides these general acts of chastity, which are common to all states of men and women, there are some few things proper to the severals.

Acts of Virginal Chastity.

Acts of Chastity in general.

in angelical employment: for in the same degree that virgins live more spiritually than other persons, in the same degree is their virginity a more excel

Patellas luxuriæ oculos, dixit Isidorus. 'AXyndóvas ávIpúTov, alius quidam.

m Time videre unde possis cadere, et noli fieri perverså simplicitate securus.-ST. AUG.

Sp. Minucius Pontifex Posthumium monuit, ne verbis vitæ castimoniam non æquantibus uteretur.-PLUT. de cap. ex inim. utilit.

lent state. But else it is no better than that of involuntary or constrained eunuchs; a misery and a trouble, or else a mere privation, as much without excellency as without mixture.

2. Virgins must contend for a singular modesty; whose first part must be an ignorance in the distinction of sexes, or their proper instruments; or if they accidentally be instructed in that, it must be supplied with an inadvertency or neglect of all thoughts and remembrances of such difference; and the following parts of it must be pious and chaste thoughts, holy language, and modest carriage.

3. Virgins must be retired and unpublic: for all freedom and looseness of society is a violence done to virginity, not in its natural, but in its moral capacity; that is, it loses part of its severity, strictness, and opportunity of advantages, by publishing that person, whose work is religion, whose company is angels, whose thoughts must dwell in heaven, and separate from all mixtures of the world.

4. Virgins have a peculiar obligation to charity: for this is the virginity of the soul; as purity, integrity, and separation is of the body: which doctrine we are taught by St. Peter: "Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." For a virgin, that consecrates her body to God, and pollutes her spirit with rage, or impatience, or inordinate anger, gives him what he most hates, a most foul and defiled soul.

5. These rules are necessary for virgins, that offer that state to God, and mean not to enter into the state of marriage: for they that only wait the opportunity of a convenient change, are to steer themselves by the general rules of chastity.

Rules for Widows or vidual Chastity. For widows, the fontinel of whose desires hath been opened by the former permissions of the marriage-bed, they must remember,

1. That God hath now restrained the former license, bound up their eyes and shut up their heart into a narrower compass, and hath given them sorrow to be a bridle to their desires. A widow must be a mourner; and she that is not, cannot so well secure the chastity of her proper state.

2. It is against public honesty to marry another man, so long as she is with child by her former husband and of the same fame it is, in a lesser proportion, to marry within the year of mourning; but anciently it was infamous for her to marry, till by common account the body was dissolved into its first principle of earth.

3. A widow must restrain her memory and her fancy, not recalling or recounting her former permissions and freer licenses with any present delight; for then she opens that sluice, which her husband's death and her own sorrow have shut up.

• 1 Pet. i. 22.

P Nisi fundamenta stirpis jacta sint probè, Miseros necesse est esse deinceps posteros.-EURIP.

9 Non debemus eodem amico uti et adulatore; nec eâdem uti uxore et scorto.-PLUT. conjug. præcept.

4. A widow, that desires her widowhood should be a state pleasing to God, must spend her time as devoted virgins should, in fastings, and prayers, and charity.

5. A widow must forbid herself to use those temporal solaces, which in her former estate were innocent, but now are dangerous.

Rules for married persons, or matrimonial Chastity. Concerning married persons, besides the keeping of their mutual faith and contract with each other, these particulars are useful to be observed.P

1. Although their mutual endearments are safe within the protection of marriage, yet they that have wives or husbands must be as though they had them not; that is, they must have an affection greater to each other than they have to any person in the world, but not greater than they have to God; but that they be ready to part with all interest in each other's person rather than sin against God.

2. In their permissions and license, they must be sure to observe the order of nature, and the ends of God. "He is an ill husband, that uses his wife as a man treats a harlot," having no other end but pleasure. Concerning which our best rule is, that although in this, as in eating and drinking, there is an appetite to be satisfied, which cannot be done without pleasing that desire; yet since that desire and satisfaction was intended by nature for other ends, they should never be separate from those ends, but always be joined with all or one of these ends, "with a desire of children, or to avoid fornication, or to lighten and ease the cares and sadnesses of household affairs, or to endear each other;" but never with a purpose, either in act or desire, to separate the sensuality from these ends which hallow it. Onan did separate his act from its proper end, and so ordered his embraces that his wife should not conceive, and God punished him.

3. Married persons must keep such modesty and decency of treating each other, that they never force themselves into high and violent lasts, with arts and misbecoming devices; always remembering, that those mixtures are most innocent, which are most simple and most natural, most orderly and most safe.

4. It is a duty of matrimonial chastity, to be restrained and temperate in the use of their lawful pleasures: concerning which, although no universal rule can antecedently be given to all persons, any more than to all bodies one proportion of meat and drink; yet married persons are to estimate the degree of their license according to the following proportions. 1. That it be moderate, so as to consist with health. 2. That it be so ordered as not to be too expensive of time, that precious opportunity of working out our salvation. 3. That when duty is demanded, it be always paid (so far as is in our powers and election) according to the foregoing

Non rectè est ab Herodoto dictum, simul cum tunicâ mulierem verecundiam exuere. Quæ nam casta est, posità veste, verecundiam ejus loco induit, maximèque verecundia conjuges tesserâ maximi invicem amoris utuntur.- PLUT. conjug. præcept.

5. Fly from all occasions, temptations, loosenesses of company, balls and revellings, indecent mixtures of wanton dancings, idle talk, private society with strange women, starings upon a beauteous face, the company of women that are singers, amorous gestures, garish and wanton dresses, feasts and liberty, banquets and perfumes, wine and strong drinks, which are made to persecute chastity; some of these being the very prologues to lust, and the most innocent of them being but like condited or pickled mushrooms, which if carefully corrected, and seldom tasted, may be harmless, but can never do good: ever remembering, that it is easier to die for chastity than to live with it; and the hangman could not extort a consent from some persons, from whom a lover would have entreated it. For the glory of chastity will easily overcome the rudeness of fear and violence; but easiness and softness and smooth temptations creep in, and, like the sun, make a maiden lay by her veil and robe, which persecution, like the northern wind, makes her hold fast and clap close about her.

6. He that will secure his chastity, must first cure his pride and his rage. For oftentimes lust is the punishment of a proud man," to tame the vanity of his pride by the shame and affronts of unchastity; and the same intemperate heat that makes anger, does enkindle lust.

7. If thou beest assaulted with an unclean spirit, trust not thyself alone; but run forth into company, whose reverence and modesty may suppress, or whose society may divert thy thoughts: and a perpetual witness of thy conversation is of especial use against this vice, which evaporates in the open air, like camphire, being impatient of light and wit

to reprove and cast out the unclean spirit. For beside the blessings of prayer by way of reward, it hath a natural virtue to restrain this vice: because a prayer against it is an unwillingness to act it; and so long as we heartily pray against it, our desires are secured, and then this devil hath no power. This was St. Paul's other remedy: "For this cause I besought the Lord thrice." And there is much reason and much advantage in the use of this instrument; because the main thing, that in this affair is to be secured, is a man's mind.b He that goes about to cure lust by bodily exercises alone (as St. Paul's phrase is) or mortifications, shall find them sometimes instrumental to it, and incitations of sudden desires, but always insufficient and of little profit: but he that hath a chaste mind, shall find his body apt enough to take laws; and let it do its worst, it cannot make a sin, and in its greatest violence can but produce a little natural uneasiness, not so much trouble as a severe fasting-day, or a hard night's lodging upon boards. If a man be hungry, he must eat; and if he be thirsty, he must drink in some convenient time, or else he dies: but if the body be rebellious, so the mind be chaste, let it do its worst, if you resolve perfectly not to satisfy it, you can receive no great evil by it. Therefore the proper cure is by application to the spirit, and securities of the mind, which can no way so well be secured as by frequent and fervent prayers, and sober resolution, and severe discourses. Therefore,

9. Hither bring in succour from consideration of the Divine presence, and of his holy angels, meditation of death, and the passions of Christ upon the cross, imitations of his purities, and of the Virgin Mary his unspotted and holy mother, and of such eminent saints, who, in their generations, were burning and shining lights, unmingled with such uncleanness, which defile the soul, and who now follow the Lamb whithersoever he goes.

C

10. These remedies are of universal efficacy in all cases extraordinary and violent; but in ordinary and common, the remedy, which God hath provided, that is, honourable marriage, hath a natural efficacy, besides a virtue by Divine blessing, to cure the inconveniences, which otherwise might afflict persons temperate and sober.

For 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 accidents abroad, our many sins and our seldom virtues, are as so many arguments to make our souls dwell low in the deep valleys of humility.

Arguments against Pride by way of consideration.

1. Our body is weak and impure, sending out more uncleanness from its several sinks than could be endured, if they were not necessary and natural: and we are forced to pass that through our mouths, which as soon as we see upon the ground, we loathe like rottenness and vomiting.

2. Our strength is inferior to that of many beasts, and our infirmities so many, that we are forced to dress and tend horses and asses, that they may help our needs, and relieve our wants.

3. Our beauty is in colour inferior to many flowers, and in proportion of parts it is no better than nothing; for even a dog hath parts as well proportioned and fitted to his purposes, and the designs of his nature, as we have; and when it is most florid and gay, three fits of an ague can change it into yellowness and leanness, and the hollowness and wrinkles of deformity.

4. Our learning is then best, when it teaches most humility: but to be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance in the world. For our learning is so long in getting, and so very imperfect, that the greatest clerk knows not the thousandth part of what he is ignorant; and knows so uncertainly what he seems to know, and knows no otherwise than a fool or a child, even what is told him or what he guesses at, that except those things which concern his duty, and which God hath revealed to him, which also every woman knows so far as is necessary, the most learned man hath nothing to be proud of, unless this be a sufficient argument to exalt him, that he uncertainly guesses at some more unnecessary thing than many others, who yet know all that concerns them, and mind other things more necessary for the needs of life and commonwealths.

5. He that is proud of riches, is a fool. For if he be exalted above his neighbours, because he hath more gold, how much inferior is he to a gold mine? How much is he to give place to a chain of pearl, or a knot of diamonds? For certainly that hath the greatest excellency, from whence he derives all his gallantry and pre-eminence over his neighbours.

6. If a man be exalted by reason of any excellence in his soul, he may please to remember, that all souls are equal; and their differing operations

7. He that is proud of his birth, is proud of the blessings of others, not of himself: for if his parents were more eminent in any circumstance than their neighbours, he is to thank God, and to rejoice in them; but still he may be a fool, or unfortunate, or deformed; and when himself was born, it was indifferent to him, whether his father were a king or a peasant, for he knew not any thing, nor chose any thing: and most commonly it is true, that he that boasts of his ancestors, who were the founders and raisers of a noble family, doth confess that he hath in himself a less virtue and a less honour, and therefore that he is degenerated.

8. Whatsoever other difference there is between thee and thy neighbour, if it be bad, it is thine own, but thou hast no reason to boast of thy misery and shame: if it be good, thou hast received it from God; and then thou art more obliged to pay duty and tribute, use and principal to him: and it were a strange folly for a man to be proud of being more in debt than another.

9. Remember what thou wert, before thou wert begotten. Nothing. What wert thou in the first regions of thy dwelling, before thy birth? Uncleanness. What wert thou for many years after? Weakness. What in all thy life? A great sinner. What in all thy excellencies? A mere debtor to God, to thy parents, to the earth, to all the creatures. But we may, if we please, use the method of the Platonists,d who reduce all the causes and arguments for humility, which we can take from ourselves, to these seven heads. 1. The spirit of a man is light and troublesome. 2. His body is brutish and sickly. 3. He is constant in his folly and error, and inconsistent in his manners and good purposes. 4. His labours are vain, intricate, and endless. 5. His fortune is changeable, but seldom pleasing, never perfect. 6. His wisdom comes not till he be ready to die, that is, till he be past using it. 7. His death is certain, always ready at the door, but never far off. Upon these or the like meditations if we dwell or frequently retire to them, we shall see nothing more reasonable than to be humble, and nothing more foolish than to be proud.

Acts or offices of Humility.

The grace of humility is exercised by these following rules.

1. Think not thyself better for any thing that happens to thee from without. For although thou mayest, by gifts bestowed upon thee, be better than another, as one horse is better than another, that is, of more use to others; yet as thou art a man, thou hast nothing to commend thee to thyself but that only, by which thou art a man, that is, by what thou choosest and refusest.

2. Humility consists not in railing against thyself, or wearing mean clothes, or going softly and d Apuleius de Demon. Socratis.