INORDINATION OF ZEAL.

When Abraham sat at his tent door, according to his custom, waiting to entertain strangers, he espied an old man, stooping and leaning on his staff, weary with age and travel, coming towards him, who was an hundred years of age. He received him kindly, washed his feet, provided supper, caused him to sit down; but observing that the old man eat, and prayed not, nor begged for a blessing on his meat, he 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 dishonored me; and couldst thou not endure him one night when he gave thee no trouble?” Upon this 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.

THE IMITATION OF JESUS.

It is reported in the Bohemian story that Saint Wenceslaus, their king, one winter night going to his devotions in a remote church, barefooted in the snow and sharpness of unequal and pointed ice, his servant Podavivus, who waited upon his master's piety and endeavored to imitate his affections, began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold till the king commanded him to follow him and set his

feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him: the servant did so, and either fancied a cure, or found one; for he followed his prince, helped forward with shame and zeal to his imitation and by the forming footsteps for him in the snow. In the same manner does the blessed Jesus; for, since our way is troublesome, obscure, full of objection and danger, apt to be mistaken and to affright our industry, he commands us to mark his footsteps, to tread where his feet have stood, and not only invites us forward by the argument of his example, but he hath trodden down much of the difficulty, and made the way easier and fit for our feet. For he knows our infirmities, and himself hath felt their experience in all things.

CONSIDERATION OF THE VANITY AND SHORTNESS OF

MAN'S LIFE.

The wild fellow in Petronius, that escaped upon a broken table from the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning himself upon the rocky shore, espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted with sand in the folds of his garment, and carried by his civil enemy, the sea, towards the shore to find a grave: and it cast him into some sad thoughts: that peradventure this man's wife, in some part of the continent, safe and warm, looks next month for the good man's return; or, it may be, his son knows nothing of the tempest; or his father thinks of that affectionate kiss, which still is warm upon the good old man's cheek, ever since he took a kind farewell; and he weeps with joy to think, how blessed he shall be, when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his father's arms. These are the thoughts of mortals, this is the end and sum of all their designs: a dark night and an ill guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, a hard rock and a rough wind, dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole

family, and they that shall weep loudest for the accident, are not yet entered into the storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck. Then looking upon the carcass, he knew it, and found it to be the master of the ship, who, the day before, cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade, and named the day when he thought to be at home: see how the man swims who was so angry two days since; his passions are becalmed with the storm, his accounts cast up, his cares at an end, his voyage done, and his gains are the strange events of death, which whether they be good or evil, the men, that are alive, seldom trouble themselves concerning the interest of the dead.

But seas alone do not break our vessel in pieces: everywhere we may be shipwrecked.

RULES AND

SPIRITUAL

ARTS OF

LENGTHENING OUR

DAYS, AND TO TAKE OFF THE OBJECTION OF A SHORT LIFE.

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 approaches 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, reflections 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 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 consumptions, with catarrhs and aches, with sore eyes and a 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: but by that time his soul is thus furnished, his body is decayed; and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is possesssed by so many degrees of death.

For old age seizes upon most men while they still retain the minds of boys and vicious youth, doing actions from principles of great folly, and a mighty ignorance, admiring things useless and hurtful, and filling up all the dimensions of their abode with businesses of empty affairs, being at leisure to attend no virtue: they can not pray, because they are busy, and because they are passionate: they can not communicate, because they have quarrels and intrigues of perplexed causes, complicated hostilities, and things of the world; and therefore they can not attend to the things of God; little considering, that they must find a time to die in; when death comes, they must be at leisure for that. Such men are like sailors loosing from a port, and tossed immediately with a perpetual tempest,

lasting till their cordage crack, and either they sink or return back again to the same place: they did not make a voyage, though they were long at sea. The business and impertinent affairs of most men steal all their time, and they are restless in a foolish motion: but this is not the progress of a man; he is no farther advanced in the course of a life, though he reckon many years; for still his Soul is childish and trifling like an untaught boy. . . .

But if I shall describe a living man, a man that hath that life that distinguishes him from a fool or a bird, that which gives him a capacity next to Angels, we shall find that even a good man lives not long, because it is long before he is born to this life, and longer yet before he hath a man's growth. "He that can look upon death and see its face with the same countenance, with which he hears its story; that can endure all the labors of his life with his Soul supporting his body; that can equally despise riches when he hath them and when he hath them not; that is no sadder if they lie in his neighbors' trunks, nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls he that is neither moved with good fortune coming to him, nor going from him; that can look upon another man's lands evenly and pleasedly as if they were his own, and yet look upon his own, and use them too, just as if they were another man's; that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool, nor yet keeps them avariciously and like a wretch; that weighs not benefits by weight and number, but by the mind and circumstances of him that gives them: that never thinks his Charity expensive, if a worthy person be the receiver; he that does nothing for opinion's sake, but everything for conscience, being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in markets and theatres, and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly: he that knows God looks on, and contrives his secret affairs as in the