year's affliction than in the whole course of our prosperous fortunes, we are so far from a habit of patience, and so weary of our sufferings, that we are even ready to exchange our innocence to change our condition.

There was never an age, in which men underwent greater trials by adversity, and I fear scarce an age in which there was a less stock of patience to bear it ; never more tribulation, never less glorying in tribulation. We are all ready enough to magnify our sufferings, and our merit in those sufferings, to make the world believe we have undergone them out of our piety to God, and devotion to his worship; out of our allegiance to our sovereign lord the king, and because we would not consent to the violation of that, and the wresting his rights from him by violence; out of our tender affection to our native country, and because we would not consent that should be subject to the exorbitant lawless power of ambitious wicked men; the suffering for either of which causes (and we would have it believed we suffer jointly for them all) entitles us justly to the merit of martyrdom; yet we are so far from comforting and delighting ourselves with the conscience of having performed our duty, and from the enjoying that ease and quiet which naturally results from innocence, that we rather murmur and censure and reproach God Al

mighty, for giving the trophies we have deserved to those who have oppressed us; and study nothing more, than stratagems to impose upon that conscience we are weary of, and to barter away our innocence, that we may be capable of overtaking those in their prosperous wickedness, from whom we would be thought to have fled for conscience sake; and instead of a confident attending and waiting God's time to vindicate himself and us (for if our sufferings proceeded from those grounds and principles we pretend, it were so much his own cause that we should be sure of his vindication) we make excuses for the little good we have done, and even renounce it by professing to be for it; sorry and that we may be sure to find no check from our reason, when we have prevailed with our conscience, we corrupt and bribe our understandings with fallacious argumentations, and argue ourselves into a liking of our stupidity, as if we did nothing but what God required at our hands; we say, God expects we should help ourselves, and by natural means endeavour to remove from us those afflictions and calamities which the power of ill men has brought upon us; that God doth assist and bless those endeavours: on the other hand, if we sit still, and without any industry of our own look for supernatural deliverance, we presume to put God to a miracle, which he will

work for us, and that he will countenance our lethargic laziness. Having by this argumentation brought ourselves to an activity, we must then guide ourselves by what is possible, and what is practicable, that is, by such rules and mediums as they have set down, with whom our transactions must be admitted. When we are then in any straits, which before our setting out we would not foresee, we have a maxim at hand to carry us on, Of two evils the least is to be chosen. If we can prevent this mischief, which seems to us greater, though we are guilty of another which seems less, all is well: especially if our formal and temporary and dissembled consent to this or that ill act, enables us or gives us a probable hope (which is a flattery we much delight ourselves, and are always furnished with) of undoing or reversing those mischiefs, which for the present we are not, or think ourselves not able to prevent. And having thus speciously reduced the practice of Christianity to the notions of civil prudence and worldly policy, we insensibly run into all the guilt we have hitherto with damage and loss avoided, and renounce all the obligations of piety and religion by our odious apostacy. It is true, God expects we should perform all on our parts that is lawful to be done for our own behoof; but when we have done that, he will have us rely on him for our deliverance, how

distant soever it seems from us, rather than attempt to deliver ourselves by any means not agreeable to his precise pleasure.. Neither can there be so stupid a reliance upon a miracle, as that God should suffer us to preserve or redeem ourselves by ill and crooked arts, and contribute his blessings upon such a preservation; which would be more miraculous, than what seems to them most wonderful. There cannot be a more mischievous position than that we should be always doing, always endeavouring to help ourselves. He that hath lost his way in a dark night, and all the marks by which he should guide himself, and know whether he be in the way or not, cannot do so wisely as to sit still till the morning; especially if he travel upon such uneven ground and precipices, that the least mistake in footing may prove fatal to him and it will be the same in our other journey; if we are benighted in our understandings, and so no path to tread in but where thorns and briars and snakes are in our way, and where the least deviation from the right track will lead us into labyrinths, from whence we cannot be safely disentangled, it will become us, how bleak and stormy soever the night is, how grievous and pressing soever our adversity is, to have patience till the light appears, that we may have a full prospect of our way, and of all that lies in our way. If the malice

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and power of enemies oppress us, and drive us to those exigents, that there appears to us no expe→ dient to avoid utter ruin, but submitting and concurring with their wickedness, we ought to believe that either God will convert their hearts, or find some other as extraordinary way to deliver us; and if he does not, that then our ruin is necessary, and that he will make it more happy to us than our deliverance would be. We have no such liberty left us to chuse one evil, under pretence that we avoid a greater by so doing. It may be a good rule in matter of damage and inconvenience; but that which in itself is simply evil, must not be consented to under any extenuation or excuse; and the project of doing good, or redeeming the ill we have done, by such concessions, is more vain, more unjustifiable. We are so far from any warrant for those undertakings, that we have an infallible text, "That we are not to do evil that good may come of it," we ought not to presume that God will give us time and opportunity to do it, and then the intention of doing well will be no good excuse for the ill we have actually committed; neither have we reason to be confident that we shall have the will to do it, if we have the opportunity; since every transgression, so deliberated and resolved on, leaves the mind vitiated and less inclined to good; and there is such a bashfulness naturally at