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against the present laws and governors, which can never be such as some side or other will not find fault with, so as to urge what they call a reformation of them to a rebellion against them.

JEREMY TAYLOR.

appointment, it is said, at not having obtained the richer see of Winchester, which Clarendon had bestowed upon Morley. Notwithstanding the cogency of the evidence above-mentioned, and of many corroborative circumstances which it is impossible to detail here, the controversy as to the authorship of the 'Ikon Basiliké' is by some still decided in favour of the king. Such is the conclusion arrived at in a The English church at this time was honoured work entitled Who wrote Ikon Basiliké?' published by the services of many able and profound theoloin 1824 by Dr Wordsworth, master of Trinity col-gians; men who had both studied and thought lege, Cambridge; and a writer in the Quarterly deeply, and possessed a vigorous and original chaReview has ranged himself on the same side. But racter of intellect. The most eloquent and imagiin a masterly article by Sir James Mackintosh, in

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the Edinburgh Review, the question, notwithstanding some difficulties which still adhere to it, has, we think, been finally and satisfactorily set at rest in favour of Gauden.†

As a sample of the 'Ikon,' we present the following meditations upon

[The Various Events of the Civil War.]

The various successes of this unhappy war have at least afforded me variety of good meditations. Sometimes God was pleased to try me with victory, by worsting my enemies, that I might know how with moderation and thanks to own and use his power, who is only the true Lord of Hosts, able, when he pleases, to repress the confidence of those that fought against me with so great advantages for power and

number.

From small beginnings on my part, he let me see that I was not wholly forsaken by my people's love or his protection.

Other times God was pleased to exercise my patience, and teach me not to trust in the arm of flesh, but in the living God.

My sins sometimes prevailed against the justice of my cause; and those that were with me wanted not matter and occasion for his just chastisement both of them and me. Nor were my enemies less punished by that prosperity, which hardened them to continue that injustice by open hostility, which was begun by most riotous and unparliamentary tumults.

I am sure the event or success can never state the justice of any cause, nor the peace of men's consciences, nor the eternal fate of their souls.

Those with me had, I think, clearly and undoubtedly for their justification the word of God and the laws of the land, together with their own oaths; all requiring obedience to my just commands; but to none other under heaven without me, or against me, in the point of raising arms.

Jeremy Taylor.

native of all her divines was, however, JEREMY TAYLOR, who has been styled by some the Shakspeare, and by others the Spenser, of our theological literature. He seems to be closely allied, in the comThere is no doubt but personal and private sins plexion of his taste and genius, to the poet of the may ofttimes overbalance the justice of public engage-Faery Queen.' He has not the unity and energy ments; nor doth God account every gallant man (in or the profound mental philosophy, of the great the world's esteem) a fit instrument to assert in the dramatist; while he strongly resembles Spenser in way of war a righteous cause. The more men are his prolific fancy and diction, in a certain musical ar prone to arrogate to their own skill, valour, and rangement and sweetness of expression, in prolongec strength, the less doth God ordinarily work by them description, and in delicious musings and reveries for his own glory. suggested by some favourite image or metaphor on which he dwells with the fondness and enthu siasm of a young poet. In these passages he is also apt to run into excess; epithet is heaped upon epithet, and figure upon figure; all the quaint con ceits of his fancy, and the curious stores of his learning, are dragged in, till both precision and propriety are sometimes lost. He writes like an orator, anc produces his effect by reiterated strokes and multi plied impressions. His picture of the Resurrection in one of his sermons, is in the highest style of poetry, but generally he deals with the gentle and familiar; and his allusions to natural objects-as trees. birds, and flowers, the rising or setting sun the charms of youthful innocence and beauty, and the helplessness of infancy and childhood-possess an almost angelic purity of feeling and delicacy of fancy. When presenting rules for morning meditation and prayer, he stops to indulge his love of nature. Sometimes,' he says, 'be curious to see the preparation which the sun makes when he is coming forth from his chambers of the east.' He compares a young man to a dancing bubble, empty and gay, and shining like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no substance, and whose

Those on the other side are forced to fly to the shifts of some pretended fears, and wild fundamentals of state, as they call them, which actually overthrow the present fabric both of church and state; being such imaginary reasons for self-defence as are most impertinent for those men to allege, who, being my subjects, were manifestly the first assaulters of me and the laws, first by unsuppressed tumults, after by listed forces. The same allegations they use, will fit any faction that hath but power and confidence enough to second with the sword all their demands

*Vol. xxxii. p. 467.

† Edinburgh Review, vol. xliv. p. 1. The same opinion had previously been supported with great ability by Mr Laing, in his History of Scotland,' vol. i. pp. 390 and 516.

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very imagery and colours are fantastical.' The ful- eth the raging of the sea, and the noise of his waves, filment of our duties he calls presenting a rosary and the madness of his people, had provided a plank or chaplet of good works to our Maker;' and he for me, I had been lost to all the opportunities of dresses even the grave with the flowers of fancy. content or study; but I know not whether I have This freshness of feeling and imagination remained been more preserved by the courtesies of my friends, with him to the last, amidst all the strife and vio- or the gentleness and mercies of a noble enemy.' lence of the civil war (in which he was an anxious This fine passage is in the dedication to Taylor's participator and sufferer), and the still more deaden- Liberty of Prophesying, a discourse published in ing effects of polemical controversy and systems of 1647, showing the Unreasonableness of Prescribing casuistry and metaphysics. The stormy vicissitudes to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of Persecuting of his life seem only to have taught him greater Differing Opinions. By 'prophesying' he means gentleness, resignation, toleration for human failings, preaching or expounding. The work has been and a more ardent love of humankind. justly described as 'perhaps, of all Taylor's writJeremy Taylor was a native of Cambridge (bap-ings, that which shows him farthest in advance of tised on the 15th of August, 1613), and descended the age in which he lived, and of the ecclesiastical of gentle, and even heroic blood. He was the system in which he had been reared-as the first lineal representative of Dr Rowland Taylor, who distinct and avowed defence of toleration which had suffered martyrdom in the reign of Queen Mary; been ventured on in England, perhaps in Christenand his family had been one of some distinction in dom.' He builds the right of private judgment upon the county of Gloucester. The Taylors, however, the difficulty of expounding Scripture-the insuffihad fallen into the portion of weeds and outworn ciency and uncertainty of tradition-the fallibility faces,' to use an expression of their most illustrious of councils, the pope, ecclesiastical writers, and the member, and Jeremy's father followed the humble church as a body, as arbiters of controverted points occupation of a barber in Cambridge. He put his son to college, as a sizar, in his thirteenth year, having himself previously taught him the rudiments of grammar and mathematics, and given him the advantages of the Free Grammar school. In 1631, Jeremy Taylor took his degree of bachelor of arts in Caius college, and entering into sacred orders, removed to London, to deliver some lectures for a college friend in St Paul's cathedral. His eloquent discourses, aided by what a contemporary calls his florid and youthful beauty, and pleasant air,' entranced all hearers, and procured him the patronage of Archbishop Laud, the friend of learning, if not of liberty. By Laud's assistance, Taylor obtained a fellowship in All Souls college, Oxford; became chaplain to the archbishop, and rector of Uppingham, in Rutlandshire. In 1639 he married Phoebe Langdale, a female of whom we know nothing but her musical name, and that she bore three sons to her accomplished husband, and died three years after her marriage. The sons of Taylor also died before their father, clouding with melancholy and regret his late and troubled years. The turmoil of the civil war now agitated the country, and Jeremy Taylor embarked his fortunes in the fate of the royalists. By virtue of the king's mandate, he was made a Doctor of Divinity; and at the command of Charles, he wrote a defence of Episcopacy, to which he was by principle and profession strongly attached. In 1644, while accompanying the royal army as chaplain, Jeremy Taylor was taken prisoner by the parliamentary forces, in the battle fought before the castle of Cardigan, in Wales. He was soon released, but the tide of war had turned against the royalists, and in the wreck of the church, Taylor resolved to continue in Wales, and, in conjunction with two learned and ecclesiastical friends, to establish a school at Newton-hall, county of Caermarthen. He appears to have been twice imprisoned by the dominant party, but treated with no marked severity.

In the great storm,' he says, 'which dashed the vessel of the church all in pieces, I had been cast on the coast of Wales, and, in a little boat, thought to have enjoyed that rest and quietness which in England, in a far greater, I could not hope for. Here I cast anchor, and thinking to ride safely, the storm followed me with so impetuous violence, that it broke a cable, and I lost my anchor. And here again I was exposed to the mercy of the sea, and the gentleness of an element that could neither distinguish things nor persons: and, but that He that still

and the consequent necessity of letting every man choose his own guide or judge of the meaning of Scripture for himself; since, says he, any man may be better trusted for himself, than any man can be for another-for in this case his own interest is most concerned, and ability is not so necessary as honesty, which certainly every man will best preserve in his own case, and to himself (and if he does not, it's he that must smart for it); and it is not required of us not to be in error, but that we endeavour to avoid it.' Milton, in his scheme of toleration, excludes all Roman Catholics-a trait of the persecuting character of his times; and Jeremy Taylor, to establish some standard of truth, and prevent anarchy, as he alleges, proposes the confession of the apostles' creed as the test of orthodoxy and the condition of union among Christians. The principles he advocates go to destroy this limitation, and are applicable to universal toleration, which he dared hardly then avow, even if he had entertained such a desire or conviction. The style of his masterly Discourse' is more argumentative and less ornate than that of his sermons and devotional treatises; but his enlightened zeal often breaks forth in striking condemnation of those who are curiously busy about trifles and impertinences, while they reject those glorious precepts of Christianity and holy life which are the glories of our religion, and would enable us to gain a happy eternity.' He closes the work with the following interesting and instructive apologue, which he had found, he says, in the Jews' books:

6

'When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man stopping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was a hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, and caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man ate and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, asked him why he did not worship the God of heaven? The old man told him that he worshipped the fire only, and acknowledged no other God; at which answer Abraham grew so zealously angry, that he thrust the old man out of his tent, and exposed him to all the evils of the night and an unguarded condition. When the old man was gone, God called to Abraham, and asked him where the stranger was? He replied, I thrust him away because he did not worship thee: God answered him, I have suffered him these hundred years, although he dishonoured me, and couldst thou not endure him one night, when he gave thee no trouble! Upon this, saith the story, Abraham fetched

him back again, and gave him hospitable entertainment and wise instruction. Go thou and do likewise, and thy charity will be rewarded by the God of Abraham.'

In Wales, Jeremy Taylor was married to Mrs Joanna Bridges, a natural daughter of Charles I., and mistress of an estate in the county of Caermarthen. He was thus relieved from the irksome duties of a schoolmaster; but the fines and sequestrations imposed by the parliamentary party on the property of the royalists, are supposed to have dilapidated his wife's fortune. It is known that he received a pension from the patriotic and excellent John Evelyn, and the literary labours of Taylor were never relaxed. Soon after the publication of the Liberty of Prophesying,' he wrote an Apology for Authorised and Set Forms of Liturgy, and in 1648 The Life of Christ, or the Great Exemplar, a valuable and highly popular work. These were followed by his treatises of Holy Living and Holy Dying, Twenty. seven Sermons for the Summer Half-Year, and other minor productions. He wrote also an excellent little manual of devotion, entitled the Golden Grove, so called after the mansion of his neighbour and patron the Earl of Carberry, in whose family he had spent many of his happiest leisure hours. In the preface to this work, Taylor had reflected on the ruling powers in church and state, for which he was, for a short time, committed to prison in Chepstow Castle. He next completed his Course of Sermons for the Year, and published some controversial tracts on the doctrine of Original Sin, respecting which his opinions were rather latitudinarian, inclining to the Pelagian heresy. He was attacked both by High Churchmen and Calvinists, but defended himself with warmth and spirit-the only instance in which his bland and benevolent disposition was betrayed into anything approaching to personal asperity. He went to London in 1657, and officiated in a private congregation of Episcopalians, till an offer was made him by the Earl of Conway to accompany him to Ireland, and act as lecturer in a church at Lisburn. Thither he accordingly repaired, fixing his residence at Portmore, on the banks of Lough | Neagh, about eight miles from Lisburn. Two years appear to have been spent in this happy retirement, when, in 1660, Taylor made a visit to London, to publish his Ductor Dubitantium, or Cases of Conscience, the most elaborate, but the least successful, of all his works. His journey, however, was made at an auspicious period. The Commonwealth was on the eve of dissolution in the weak hands of Richard Cromwell, and the hopes of the cavaliers were fanned by the artifice and ingenuity of Monk. Jeremy Taylor signed the declaration of the loyalists of London on the 24th of April; on the 29th of May Charles II. entered London in triumphal procession, to ascend the throne; and in August following, our author was appointed bishop of Down and Connor. The Restoration exalted many a worthless parasite, and disappointed many a deserving loyalist; let us be thankful that it was the cause of the mitre descending on the head of at least one pure and pious churchman! Taylor was afterwards made chancellor of the university of Dublin, and a member of the Irish privy council. The see of Dromore was also annexed to his other bishopric, on account of his virtue, wisdom, and industry.' These well-bestowed honours he enjoyed only about six years. The duties of his episcopal function were discharged with zeal, mingled with charity; and the few sermons which we possess delivered by him in Ireland are truly apostolic, both in spirit and language. The evil days and evil tongues on which he had fallen never caused him to swerve from his enlightened toleration

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A finer

or fervent piety. Any remains of a controversial
spirit which might have survived the period of his
busy manhood, were now entirely repressed by the
calm dictates of a wise experience, sanctified by af-
fliction, and by his onerous and important duties as
a guide and director of the Protestant church. He
died at Lisburn of a fever on the 13th of August,
1667, in the fifty-fifth year of his age.
pattern of a Christian divine never perhaps existed.
His learning dignified the high station he at last at-
tained; his gentleness and courtesy shed a grace
over his whole conduct and demeanour; while his
commanding genius and energy in the cause of truth
and virtue, render him worthy of everlasting affec-
We have alluded to the ge-
tion and veneration.
neral character and style of Jeremy Taylor's works.
A late eminent scholar, Dr Parr, has eulogised his
controversial writings: fraught as they are,' he
says, with guileless ardour, with peerless eloquence,
and with the richest stores of knowledge-historical,
classical, scholastic, and theological-they may be
considered as irrefragable proofs of his pure, affec-
tionate, and dutiful attachment to the reformed
church of England.' His uncontroversial writings,
however, form the noblest monument to his memory.
His peculiar tenets may be differently judged of by
different sects. He was perhaps too prone to specu
lation in matters of doctrine, and he was certainly no
blindly-devoted adherent of the church. His mind
loved to expatiate on the higher things of time,
death, and eternity, which concern men of all par-
ties, and to draw from the divine revelation its
hopes, terrors, and injunctions (in his hands irre-
sistible as the flaming sword), as a means of purify.
ing the human mind, and fitting it for a more exalted
destiny. Theology is rather a divine life than a
divine knowledge. In heaven, indeed, we shall first
see, and then love; but here on earth, we must first
love, and love will open our eyes as well as our
hearts; and we shall then see, and perceive, and un-
derstand.'*

The following passages are selected as being among the most characteristic or beautiful in Bishop Taylor's works:

[The Age of Reason and Discretion.]

We must not think that the life of a man begins when he can feed himself or walk alone, when he can fight or beget his like, for so he is contemporary with a camel or a cow; but he is first a man when he comes to a certain steady use of reason, according to his proportion; and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at fourteen, some at one-and-twenty, some never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and insensibly. But, as when the sun approaching towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns like those which decked the brows of Moses, when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly : so is a man's reason and his life. He first begins to perceive himself, to see or taste, making little reflec tions upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of flies and dogs, shells and play, horses and liberty: but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little *Via Intelligentiæ,' a sermon preached by Jeremy Taylor to the university of Dublin. 292

institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not because he needs them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and little images of things are laid before him, like a cock-boat to a whale, only to play withal: but, before a man comes to be wise, he is half dead with gouts and consumption, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and worn-out body. So that, if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, he is long before his soul be dressed; and he is not to be called a man without a wise and an adorned soul, a soul at least furnished with what is necessary towards his well-being.

And now let us consider what that thing is which we call years of discretion. The young man is passed his tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caitiff spirit; he is run from discipline, and is let loose to passion. The man by this time hath wit enough to choose his vice, to act his lust, to court his mistress, to talk confidently, and ignorantly, and perpetually; to despise his betters, to deny nothing to his appetite, to do things that, when he is indeed a man, he must for ever be ashamed of; for this is all the discretion that most men show in the first stage of their manhood. They can discern good from evil; and they prove their skill by leaving all that is good, and wallowing in the evils of folly and an unbridled appetite. And by this time the young man hath contracted vicious habits, and is a beast in manners, and therefore it will not be fitting to reckon the beginning of his life; he is a fool in his understanding, and that is a sad death.

[The Pomp of Death.]

Take away but the pomps of death, the disguises, and solemn bugbears, and the actings by candlelight, and proper and fantastic ceremonies, the minstrels and the noise-makers, the women and the weepers, the swoonings and the shriekings, the nurses and the physicians, the dark room and the ministers, the kindred and the watches, and then to die is easy, ready, and quitted from its troublesome circumstances. It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd suffered yesterday, or a maid-servant to-day; and at the same time in which you die, in that very night a thousand creatures die with you, some wise men and many fools; and the wisdom of the first will not quit him, and the folly of the latter does not make him unable to die.

[Marriage.]

They that enter into the state of marriage cast a die of the greatest contingency, and yet of the greatest interest in the world, next to the last throw for eternity. Life or death, felicity or a lasting sorrow, are in the power of marriage. A woman, indeed, ventures most, for she hath no sanctuary to retire to from an evil husband; she must dwell upon her sorrow, and hatch the eggs which her own folly or infelicity hath produced; and she is more under it, because her tormentor hath a warrant of prerogative, and the woman may complain to God, as subjects do of tyrant princes; but otherwise she hath no appeal in the causes of unkindness. And though the man can run from many hours of his sadness, yet he must return to it again; and when he sits among his neighbours, he remembers the objection that is in his bosom, and he sighs deeply. The boys, and the pedlars, and the fruiterers, shall tell of this man when he is carried to his grave, that he lived and died a poor wretched

person.

The stags in the Greek epigram, whose knees were clogged with frozen snow upon the mountains, came down to the brooks of the valleys, hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice,

till the young herdsmen took them in their stranger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles; and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or woman's peevishness.

*

Man and wife are equally concerned to avoid all offences of each other in the beginning of their conversation; every little thing can blast an infant blossom; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new-weaned boy: but when by age and consolidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the sun and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken: so are the early unions of an unfixed marriage; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. After the hearts of the man and the wife are endeared and hardened by a mutual confidence and experience, longer than artifice and pretence can last, there are a great many remembrances, and some things present, that dash all little unkindnesses in pieces.

*

It is fit that I should

There is nothing can please a man without love; and if a man be weary of the wise discourses of the apostles, and of the innocency of an even and a private fortune, or hates peace, or a fruitful year, he hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of Paradise; for nothing can sweeten felicity itself but love; but when a man dwells in love, then the breasts of his wife are pleasant as the droppings upon the hill of Hermon; her eyes are fair as the light of heaven; she is a fountain sealed, and he can quench his thirst, and ease his cares, and lay his sorrows down upon her lap, and can retire home to his sanctuary and refectory, and his gardens of sweetness and chaste refreshments. No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society. infuse a bunch of myrrh into the festival goblet, and, after the Egyptian manner, serve up a dead man's bones at a feast: I will only show it, and take it away again; it will make the wine bitter, but wholesome. But those married pairs that live as remembering that they must part again, and give an account how they treat themselves and each other, shall, at that day of their death, be admitted to glorious espousals; and when they shall live again, be married to their Lord, and partake of his glories, with Abraham and Joseph, St Peter and St Paul, and all the married saints. All those things that now please us shall pass from us, or we from them; but those things that concern the other life are permanent as the numbers of eternity. And although at the resurrection there shall be no relation of husband and wife, and no marriage shall be celebrated but the marriage of the Lamb, yet then shall be remembered how men and women passed through this state, which is a type of that; and from this sacramental union all holy pairs shall pass to the spiritual and eternal, where love shall be their portion, and joys shall crown their heads, and they shall lie in the bosom of Jesus, and in the heart of God, to eternal ages.

[The Progress of Sin.]

I have seen the little purls of a spring sweat through the bottom of a bank, and intenerate the stubborn

pavement, till it hath made it fit for the impression of a child's foot; and it was despised, like the descending pearls of a misty morning, till it had opened its way and made a stream large enough to carry away the ruins of the undermined strand, and to invade the neighbouring gardens: but then the despised drops were grown into an artificial river, and an intolerable mischief. So are the first entrances of sin, stopped with the antidotes of a hearty prayer, and checked into sobriety by the eye of a reverend man, or the counsels of a single sermon: but when such beginnings are neglected, and our religion hath not in it so much philosophy as to think anything evil as long as we can endure it, they grow up to ulcers and pestilential evils; they destroy the soul by their abode, who at their first entry might have been killed with the pressure of a little finger.

He that hath passed many stages of a good life, to prevent his being tempted to a single sin, must be very careful that he never entertain his spirit with the remembrances of his past sin, nor amuse it with the fantastic apprehensions of the present. When the Israelites fancied the sapidness and relish of the fleshpots, they longed to taste and to return.

So when a Libyan tiger, drawn from his wilder foragings, is shut up and taught to eat civil meat, and suffer the authority of a man, he sits down tamely in his prison, and pays to his keeper fear and reverence for his meat; but if he chance to come again, and taste a draught of warm blood, he presently leaps into his natural cruelty. He scarce abstains from eating those hands that brought him discipline and food.* So is the nature of a man made tame and gentle by the grace of God, and reduced to reason, and kept in awe by religion and laws, and by an awful virtue is taught to forget those alluring and sottish relishes of sin; but if he diverts from his path, and snatches handfuls from the wanton vineyards, and remembers the lasciviousness of his unwholesome food that pleased his childish palate, then he grows sick again, and hungry after unwholesome diet, and longs for the apples of Sodom.

death, and be no more. So is every sinner that lies down in shame, and makes his grave with the wicked; he shall, indeed, rise again, and be called upon by the voice of the archangel; but then he shall descend into sorrows greater than the reason and the patience of a man, weeping and shrieking louder than the groans of the miserable children in the valley of Hinnom.

[Sinful Pleasure.]

Look upon pleasures not upon that side which is next the sun, or where they look beauteously, that is, as they come towards you to be enjoyed: for then they paint and smile, and dress themselves up in tinsel and hast rifled and discomposed them with enjoying their glass gems and counterfeit imagery; but when thou false beauties, and that they begin to go off, then behold them in their nakedness and weariness. See

what a sigh and sorrow, what naked unhandsome proportions and a filthy carcass they discover; and the next time they counterfeit, remember what you have already discovered, and be no more abused.

[Useful Studies.]

Spend not your time in that which profits not; for your labour and your health, your time and your studies, are very valuable; and it is a thousand pities to see a diligent and hopeful person spend himself in 1 gathering cockle-shells and little pebbles, in telling sands upon the shores, and making garlands of useless daisies. Study that which is profitable, that which will make you useful to churches and commonwealths, that which will make you desirable and wise. Only I shall add this to you, that in learning there are variety of things as well as in religion: there is mint and cummin, and there are the weighty things of the law; so there are studies more and less useful, and everything that is useful will be required in its time: and I may in this also use the words of our blessed Saviour, These things ought you to look after, and not to leave the other unregarded.' But your great care is to be in the things of God and of religion, in holiness and true wisdom, remembering the saying of Origen, That the knowledge that arises from goodness is something that is more certain and more divine than all demonstration,' than all other

The Pannonian bears, when they have clasped a dart in the region of their liver, wheel themselves upon the wound, and with anger and malicious revenge strike the deadly barb deeper, and cannot be quit from that fatal steel, but in flying bear along that which them-learnings of the world. selves make the instrument of a more hasty death: so is every vicious person struck with a deadly wound, and his own hands force it into the entertainments of

the heart; and because it is painful to draw it forth by a sharp and salutary repentance, he still rolls and turns upon his wound, and carries his death in his bowels, where it first entered by choice, and then dwelt by love, and at last shall finish the tragedy by divine judgments and an unalterable decree.

[The Resurrection of Sinners.]

So have we seen a poor condemned criminal, the weight of whose sorrows sitting heavily upon his soul, hath benumbed him into a deep sleep, till he hath forgotten his groans, and laid aside his deep sighings: but on a sudden comes the messenger of death, and unbinds the poppy garland, scatters the heavy cloud that encircled his miserable head, and makes him return to acts of life, that he may quickly descend into

* Admonitæque tument gustato sanguine fauces :
Fervet, et a trepido vix abstinet ira magistro.
But let the taste of slaughter be renewed,
And their fell jaws again with gore imbrued;
Then dreadfully their wakening furies rise,

And glaring fires rekindle in their eyes;

With wrathful roar their echoing dens they tear,
And hardly ev'n the well-known keeper spare ;

The shuddering keeper shakes, and stands aloof for fear.'

[Comforting the Afflicted.]

Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting his praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. And what greater measure can we have, than that we should bring joy to our brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to heaven and round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay his eyelids close together-than that thy tongue should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to listen for light and ease; and when he perceives that there is such a thing in the world, and

* Sir Isaac Newton, a little before he died, said, 'I don't

know what I may seem to the world, but as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.'-Spence's Anecdotes, p. 54.

Who reads

Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains;

Deep versed in books, and shallow in himself,

Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys

And trifles for choice matters, worth a spunge,

As children gathering pebbles on the shore.

Paradise Regained, book iv.

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