conspiracy continues, the best men will have need of good friends and powerful vindicators, which must be procured by private correspondences as well as public justice, and by private obligations as an evident inclination and propensity to oblige; for whatever secret veneration virtue hath for itself even from the worst men, it seldom finds protection from the best.

We cannot be too jealous, we cannot suspect ourselves too much to labour under this disease, which cleaves the closer to us by our belief or confidence that we are quite without it. We may very properly say of pride as the philosopher said of flattery, Apertis et propitiis auribus recipitur et in præcordia ima descendit; eo ipso gratiosa quod lædit; it tickles when it hurts us, and administers some kind of pleasure and delight when it is even ready to destroy us. Few men are displeased to hear themselves well spoken of, though it be to themselves; and many proud men feel a kind of satisfaction in being treated with respect upon their death-bed, of which there have been many instances. Nor can those deliberate directions for the form and method of the funeral, the provision for mourners, and the structure of a tomb, flow from any thing in those seasons, but from the remainder of that pride that will not expire before us. Whatever lawful custom and decency require,

they who outlive us will provide for our memory. It is very hard, at the same time, to think of the pomp of a funeral, and humbly enough of the carcase that is to be interred, of the company it is to keep in the grave, and of the progeny of worms that is to increase out of it. To conclude; without the sovereign influence of God's extraordinary and immediate grace, men do very rarely put off all the trappings of their pride, till they who are about them put on their winding-sheet.

OF ANGER.

Montpellier, 1669.

"HE that is slow to anger is better than the mighty," is an observation as ancient as Solomon's time, (Prov. xvi. 32.) and hath been confirmed in all ages since: he that can abstain from it, is master of most men, and seldom fails of any design he proposes to himself. A man that is undisturbed in what he goes about, will rarely be disappointed of his end: whereas, on the contrary, anger is the most impotent passion that accompanies the mind of man; it effects nothing it goes about; and hurts the man who is possessed by it more than any other against whom it is directed. It exposes him to laughter and contempt, without any return in

satisfaction and content, as most of the other passions do; it is a barren and unfruitful vice, and only torments him who nourishes it. The philosopher thought it so useless a passion, that he could not tell to what service to apply it; he would by no means suffer it in battles or actions of war, where one might believe it might be of most advantage, and carry men to the utmost daring, which is often very successful, and hath brought great and unexpected things to pass; but he found that it did naturally degenerate into rashness, Et pericula dum inferre vult non cavet; and that the prevalent temper in those enterprizes was, that qui se diù multumque circumspexit, et rexit, et ex lento, et destinato provexit, which anger will never permit him. And surely, if it be not seasonable in those angry contentions, it is much more inconvenient in the more calm seasons of business and conversation: in business he rejects all that is proposed by other men, and superciliously determines that his own advice is to be followed; in conversation he is full of unpeaceable contradictions, and impatient at being contradicted; so that, though upon some considerations, he be endured in company, he is never desired or wished for. "An angry man (if you believe Solomon) stirreth up strife;" he cannot only not be a friend, but not suffer others to be so it is not possible for him to be at peace

with others, when he hath a perpetual war with himself; people who are not like him, cannot or will not live with him; and if he be with those who are like him, neither of them can live long. Seneca thinks it a notable argument to men to avoid and suppress it, non moderationis causa sed sanitatis, because ingentis iræ exitus furor est; but the truth is, he doth anger too much honour who calls it madness, which, being a distemper of the brain, and a total absence of all reason, is innocent in all the ill effects it may produce; whereas anger is an affected madness compounded of pride and folly, and an intention to do commonly more mischief than it can bring to pass: and without doubt of all passions which naturally disturb the mind of man, it is most in our power to extinguish, at least to suppress and correct, our anger.

That we may not flatter ourselves with an imagination that anger may be commendable in us, and seem to have something of injunction to support it in scripture itself, we shall find it with a restriction that quickly convinces us, that it is not of kin to our anger: "Be angry, but sin not." If we are sure that our anger is only on God's behalf, for some indignity done to him in the neglect of his service, or for the practice of some vice or wickedness that he hath prohibited: if we are offended, and feel some commotions within us,

in seeing loose and indecent things done, and in hearing lascivious and prophane things spoken; and break out into sharp and angry reprehensions and advice, where we may well do it; we shall never be ashamed of that anger: if we can be angry and charitable together, and be willing to do good to him with whom we are most angry, we shall have no cause to repent our anger, nor others to condemn it. But we have too much cause to doubt, that this warrantable anger will not give us content and delight enough to be affected with it; it will do us no good because it will do others no hurt, and so will give us no credit with other men. We shall do very well, if we do restrain and suppress and extinguish all other anger, and are only transported with this. If we do not, and are angry only to grieve and terrify others, and therefore angry that they may be grieved and terrified, and not for any thing that they have done amiss, but because we would not have had them done it; or if we suffer no bounds or limits to be prescribed to our anger, be the cause of it never so just and reasonable, by decency, reason, and justice; our passion is thereby the more unjustifiable, by the countenance we would draw to it from divinity, and ought to be the more carefully extinguished and extirpated by our shame and by our repent

ance.