"The tongue of the wise is health," Prov. xii. 18 And are we grateful enough for this precious jewel, in a voluntary endeavour to drive this health from us, at least to impair it; to dry this marrow which he hath given us as comfort and strength to our bones? Mortification may be very seasonable, sometimes necessary; it leaves the root unhurt, and preserves even the sap, and only dries up or pulls away some ebullition or excrescence from the too much heat thereof; and it may be nature itself is the best judge of the season, and of the proportion, when this mortification ought to be applied; it is first sensible of its own rankness, and of any ill humour that invades it, and hates all excesses as much as it doth the effects of them, pain and sickness. If we do not corrupt the integrity of our nature by our own ill manners and ill conversation, nature will always be a very good counsellor and a very good physician to us; but this consternation, this maceration, by perplexing all the faculties of nature, and enervating the strength of it, is a saucy contradiction of God's wisdom in the creation, and appointing those offices to be performed by cold and weakness for which he assigned warmth and heat; and if piety and prayer be the result of a devout mind, there should be as much care taken to support the health and vigour of that mind, as to cherish the body for the strong

est exercise or encounter; and we may as reasonably believe, that a man can wrestle best when he is in a fit of a quartan ague, as that he can pray most effectually when his limbs are rotting with cold, and his spirits failing for want of bread. They who will impose a severity, and exercise a discipline upon themselves, which nature doth abhor and God doth not command, ought to do it at their own charges, and can neither expect reward in heaven nor reverence upon earth for their folly; and a quis requisivit may put them to a blush in one place, as it will do in the other. He who affects poverty, and prefers sickness before health that he may be devout, may as well pray for the plague, that he may have good company. No man will deny, that fasting is a pious and religious practice, but it is as physic, not as diet; he that fasts too much doth not fast at all, for no man can be said to fast who is not able to eat; and it is worth the observation, that in that religious exercise the physician is allowed a judicatory above the bishop, and he can dispense with it for the health of his patient, though the church enjoins it so tender and compassionate is divinity and religion to preserve, and cherish, and cultivate that comfort of human life, health; whilst those who profess religion are so merciless and tyrannical, that they will not dispense with a man, who by his rule is bound

to fish, to eat flesh for the recovery of his health or preservation of his life; and the pope himself, who dispenses with all other vows, dissolves all contracts, and absolves all perjuries, dispenses with adulteries, and legitimates bastards, cannot give a poor Carthusian leave to eat a chicken, though it would redeem him from the grave. What this kind of pageantry, these stratagems of supererogation may amount to in heaven, God only knows but we do not know that he hath forbidden us on earth to be as merry in the consideration of them, as it is lawful for us to be at other spectacles of vanity and levity. If I intended this discourse for any other purpose, than the informing and exercising my own understanding, I would not observe (because the observation may do hurt) that fasting, which was commanded and enjoined with so many inconvenient circumstances under the law, is no gospel-duty, no precept enjoined: we shall find it sometimes, not very often, commended in some devout persons who used it according to the law, when our Saviour himself and his apostles were strict observers of the law; but in all the New Testament not once positively enjoined to be practised, as all other Christian duties are: because it cannot, it ought not to be used but according to the constitution and temper of men's bodies; and to oblige all men to fast alike, is

as unreasonable as to command them to wear the same clothes, or to keep the same diet.

Let us see now whether their other vow, of chastity, bear better fruit than that of poverty; whether it be more lawful, more necessary, than the other. That chastity is a Christian duty required of all men, and enjoined to all men, is not nor cannot be denied by any Christian; and the chastity of the marriage-bed is as much chastity as the chastity of a virgin, and as commendable and as meritorious; to which our vow in baptism and our vow in marriage as much oblige us as any other vow can do. If the commandment of God doth not restrain us, it is not probable that a vow will do it; and if the true intention and meaning. of this vow may be judged by the natural comment of the actions of most who take it, it is to be interpreted as an oath against what is lawful, and in our power to do, rather than to restrain us from what is unlawful; and if it were not for the sophism and dissimulation of interpreting an oath in a sense contrary to theirs who administer it, he doth much better comply with his vow of chastity, who marries, and commits no other trespass against it than in marriage, than he that lets himself loose to the remedies of fornication and adultery, which all the world knows are too much indulged by those, and not more by any than those, who have taken a vow

of chastity: nor do very many of their casuists dissemble the determining, that fornication is a much less sin than marriage, and give such a reason for it as may induce us to believe, that the end of the vow is only against marriage, and not against the other; for they say, he that falls into that sin by the impetuosity of nature, hath committed only one sin that repentance absolves him from; but he who marries lives in a constant course of sinning, that excludes repentance: and so by this subtlety they presume to make that an unpardonable sin, which was instituted by God himself as a proper and natural remedy against sin; and permit the other, (for excusing in those cases is permitting,) which God Almighty hath pronounced damnation upon. If there be not some such purpose of delusion, why a vow to be chaste, rather than a particular vow for the observation of the other nine commandments, if a vow be a good expedient towards the keeping them? We should think that every sin hath too much weight in itself, to be made more heavy by our own inventions: no man can pretend that chastity is more a virtue, to have more of merit, by being preserved under a vow, than if it were upon the pure impulsion of grace and virtue; but, on the contrary, if it be violated, the sin is much greater, by the addition of that of perjury to the other