really intends our good more than we can our own, hath this great design in all the commands he gives us, in all the duties he enjoins us, namely, that in the obedience thereof, we should attain our happiness and chief good. Therefore, let this be always an encouragement to you to obey the commands and will of God, namely, your obedience to his commands have inseparably annexed to it your own happiness and blessedness; your obedience to God is not only your duty, but it is your privilege and your infallible way to the everlasting life and happi

ness.

CHAPTER XII.

Concerning your moral and civil Conversation and Actions in General.

I HAVE now done with those actions that principally concern your religious conversation and actions, I shall now proceed to ome observations and directions relating especially to your civil and moral concerns.

And I the rather observe this order, because when our minds and hearts are well principled with religion towards God, and your duties that more immediately relate thereunto, you have the best foundation of all morality, righteousness, and sobriety in your civil conversation; for as the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all true wisdom, so it is the best and soundest foundation of all morality, righteousness, and virtue.

Those matters that concern your civil conversation are these, and such as these: 1. Concerning the passions and the moderation of them. 2. Concerning idleness and employment. 3. Concerning company and the choice thereof. 4. Con

cerning vexations and their use. 5. Concerning your eating and drinking, and the moderation thereof. 6. Concerning your apparel and habit. 7. Concerning your civil deportment to superiors, equals, and inferiors. 8. Concerning single life and marriage. 9. Concerning your studies. 10. Concerning your deportment in the several stations of your life, at school, at the university, at the inns of court. 11. Concerning your speech and talking. 12. Concerning borrowing and lending.

13. Concerning the frugal husbanding of your maintenance and revenue. 14. Concerning your housekeeping, charity, and liberality. 15. Concerning travelling and keeping at home. 16. Concerning building and planting. These, and some others of like nature, as they shall occur to me, I shall briefly set down, though possibly not in the same order altogether as they are above declared.

CHAPTER XIII.

Concerning the Passions of the Mind and the Moderation thereof.

THE passions of the mind, especially those two great passions from whence most of the rest are derived, namely love and anger, are commonly the great root of all the disorders in the world, when either they are misplaced, or acted beyond their due bounds, immoderately or imprudently.

From immoderate love of the matters of this life arise the vices, of covetousness, from the immoderate love of riches; ambition, from the immoderate love of honour or power; lasciviousness, wantonness, fornication, adultery, debauchery, from the immoderate and unlawful love of pleasure. Again, from immoderate and ungoverned anger, arise fightings, murders, quarrellings, revilings, evil speakings, and a world more of disturbances.

If therefore you intend to live a sober, peace able and contented life, a life well pleasing to

God, comfortable to yourselves, and profitable to those among whom you live, you must have a great watchfulness over your passions, especially those of love and anger; they are unruly cattle, and therefore you must keep them chained up, and under the government of religion, reason and prudence.

If you thus keep them under discipline, they are useful servants; but if you let them loose and give them head, they will be your masters, and unruly masters, and carry you like wild and unbridled horses into a thousand mischiefs and inconveniences, besides the great disturbance, and disorder, and discomposure that they will occasion in your minds.

Therefore before you settle your love or affection upon any thing in this world, consider well first, whether it deserves your love, and if it do, yet how much love it deserves, and measure out so much love for it as it deserves, and no more. Consider also, whether it be a thing attainable; if it be not, your love of it is folly. Again, if it be attainable, whether the charge, the incumbrances, the difficulties of its attaining, do not outweigh the good that is in it when attained: and this take for a certain truth, that all worldly enjoyments, whether profits, or riches, or ho