what it is, otherwise than in books, which hath supplied him with antidotes against that poison; he is superior to any temptation from the love of money, because he needs it not, nor knows what to do with it if he had it he hath in the dark volumes of philosophers made a discovery of that heap of passions and appetites, which lie in wait to assault human nature in all the several functions of life and insults of fortune; and when he discerns the strong opposition made, and the glorious conquests obtained by those heathen philosophers, by the mere supplies which reason and their natural faculties suggested to them, he then considers what other advantages he hath from Christianity, which enables him at once to despise and laugh at the provocations, without any exaltation in the triumph.

Let this privation of understanding go for wis dom, and this stupid absence of guilt stand for uprightness, yet it complies not with the obligation and end of the creation of man, who is not sent into the world only to have a being, to breathe till nature extinguisheth that breath, and reduces that miserable creature to the nothing he was before he is sent upon an errand, and to do the business of life; he hath faculties given him to judge between good and evil, to cherish and foment the first motions he feels towards the one, and to subdue the first temptations to the other; he hath not

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acted his part in doing no harm: his duty is not only to do good and to be innocent himself, but to propagate virtue, and to make others better than they would otherwise be. Indeed, an absence of folly is the first hopeful prologue towards the ob taining wisdom; yet he shall never be wise who knows not what folly is, nor, it may be, commendably and judiciously honest, without having taken some view of the quarters of iniquity: since true virtue pre-supposeth an election, a declining somewhat that is ill, as well as the choice of what is good. Our senses are given us to judge by, and have their proper objects, which they are the sole judges of; nor is it lawful to imprison those senses, that they may not be conversant with their objects, nor to abate their edge, and extinguish the acuteness, which is the perfection of them, lest their objects, how natural and proper soever, may have some operation upon them to their prejudice: a man may hear too much, and see more than he hath a mind to see, but no man eyer saw too well, or heard too well; and no sense was ever reformed by being deprived of its object, from the malignity whereof he hath other guards and remedies to secure him. A man would deserve little comfort in this world, or in the world that is to come, who would chuse to be blind, that he may be without those strugglings which some beau

tiful objects may raise or kindle within him; when a chaste eye hath a brightness about it, that dispels and disperses those rays which would dazzle and perplex it; and the unnatural attempt to extinguish a sense or passion, rather than to subdue it, is usually rewarded by the prevalence of a grosser temptation; and the lasciviousness that could not get entrance at the eye, makes a breach into the ear in loose and effeminate tunes, and kindles and fans all those desires into a flame, that the nobler sense would have resisted. To be without wishes, or without appetite, is the property of a carcase, not of a man; who is not more a reasonable, than an active creature; whose first testimony that he hath a soul, is the noise he makes; and there can⚫ not be a worse omen in the birth of any child, than its silence; and it were to be wished, that those instances only might condemn people to a contemplative life, into which silence is the principal ingredient, and should be taken for the best prognostic. The world is a field, in which man is to learn and to labour to be wise and to be valiant, that he may have foresight and courage enough to encounter and subdue temptations, not to hope to fly from them; at least not to fly out of the field, or farther than to recover breath to renew and continue the contention: they who prescribe famine to correct the luxury of the appetite,

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

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 state. 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,