For so we have seen a busy flame sitting upon a sullen coal, turn its point to all the angles and portions of its neighbourhood, and reach at a heap of prepared straw, which, like a bold temptation, called it to a restless motion and activity to devour it; but either it was at too big a distance, or a gentle breath from heaven diverted the sphere and the ray of the fire to the other side, and so prevented the violence of the burning, till the flame expired in a weak consumption, and died turning into smoke and the coolness of death and the harmlessness of a cinder.

And when a man's desires are winged with sails and fanned with a lusty wind of passion, and pass on in a smooth channel of opportunity, God oftentimes hinders the lust and the impatient desire from passing to its port and entering into action, by a sudden thought, by remembrance of a little word, by a fancy, by a sudden disability, by unreasonable and unlikely fears, by the sudden intervening of company, by the very weariness of the passion, by curiosity, by want of health, by the too great violence of the desire, by a sentence of Scripture, by the reverence of a good man, or else by the proper interventions of the Spirit of grace, chastising the crime, and representing its appendant mischiefs and its constituent disorder and irregularity; and after all this the very anguish and trouble of being defeated in the purpose hath rolled itself into so much uneasiness and unquiet reflections, that the man is grown ashamed and vexed into sober counsels.

And the mercy of God is not less infinite in separating men from the occasion of their sins, from the neighbourhood and the temptation. For if a hyena and a dog should be thrust into the same kennel, one of them would soon find a grave, and it may be both of them their death. So infallible is the ruin of most men, if they be showed some temptation. Nitre and resin, naphtha and bitumen, sulphur and pitch, are their constitution, and the fire passes upon them easily, and there is none to rescue them.

But God, by removing our sins from us, as far as the

east is from the west, not putting away the guilt, but setting the occasion far from us, extremely far, so far that sometimes we cannot sin, and many times not easily, hath magnified His mercy by giving us safety in all those measures in which we are untempted.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE was born in London, A.D. 1605, graduated as a physician in Leyden, and practised at Norwich. His first work was Religio Medici, followed by treatises on Vulgar Errors, on Urn Burial, and a collection of aphorisms under the heading of Christian Morals,

GOD IN NATURE.

THERE are two books from whence I collect my divinity; that written one of God, and besides that other of his servant nature, that universal and public manuscript that lies expanded unto the eyes of all-those that never saw him in the one, have discovered him in the other. This was the scripture and theology of the heathens; the natural motion of the sun did make them more admire him, than its supernatural station did the children of Israel; the ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them than in the other did all his miracles; surely the heathen know better than we Christians, who cast a more careful eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdained not to suck divinity from the flowers of nature.

Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of nature; which I define not with the schools, to be the principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained for the actions of his creatures according to their several kinds.

To make a revolution every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which God hath

ordained it, from which it cannot swerve, by a faculty from that voice which first did give it motion. Now, this course of nature God seldom alters or perverts, but like an excellent artist hath so contrived his work, that with the selfsame instrument without a new creation he may effect his obscured designs. Thus he sweeteneth the water with a word, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the blast of his mouth might as easily have created; for God is like a skilful geometrician, who when more easily and with one stroke of his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and forelaid principles of his art; but yet this rule of his he doth sometimes pervert, to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason should question his power and conclude he could not. And thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she is; and, therefore, to ascribe his actions unto her, is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writing.

ever.

I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and no deformity in any kind or species of creature whatI cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly, they being created in these outward shapes and figures which best express those actions of their inward forms. And having past that general visitation of God, who saw that all that he made was good, that is, conformable to His will, which abhors deformity, and is the rule of order and beauty; there is no deformity but in monstrosity, wherein notwithstanding there is also a kind of beauty,-nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts, as they become sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabric.

To speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or misshapen, but the chaos; wherein notwithstanding there was no deformity, because no form, nor yet was

it impregnate by the voice of God. Now, nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature, they being both servants of his Providence. Art is the perfection of nature; were the world now as it was on the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

OBLIVION.

Now since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methuselah, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong and spacious buildings above it, and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests, what prince can promise such diuturnity to his relics, or might not gladly say, Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim.

Time which antiquates antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these minor monuments. In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories, when to be unknown was the means of their continuation, and obscurity their protection. If they died by violent hands and were thrust into their urns, these bones become considerable, and some old philosophers would honour them, whose souls they conceived were most pure, which thus were snatched from their bodies. If they fell by long and aged decay, yet wrapt up in the bundle of time they fall into indistinction, and make but one blot with infants.

If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a prolongation of death, our life is a sad composition; we live with death and die not in a moment. How many pulses made up the life of Methuselah, were work for Archimedes; common counters sum up the life of Moses'

man.

Our days become considerable like petty sums by minute accumulations; where numerous fractions make up but small round numbers, and our days of a span make not one long finger. If the nearness of our last

necessity brought a nearer conformity unto it, there were a happiness in hoary hairs, and no calamity in half senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; when avarice makes us the sport of death, when even David grew politically cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to be the wisest of men.

But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity stretcheth our days, misery makes Alcmena nights, and time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious being is that which can unwish itself, content to be nothing or never to have been, which was beyond the malcontent of Job, who cursed not the day of his life, but his nativity;-content to have so far been, as to have a title to future being; although he had lived here but in a hidden state of life, and, as it were, an abortion.

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietors of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarianism, not to be resolved by man, nor even perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names as they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the act of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration.

Vain ashes, which in the oblivion of names, persons, sexes, and times, have found unto themselves a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as em blems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vain glory, and maddening vice.