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of man! yet GoD commits the manag-ing fo great a truft, without particular Law or prefcription, wholly to the demeanour of every grown man.

And

therefore when he himself tabl'd the

Jews from heaven, that Omer which was every mans daily portion of manna, is computed to have bin more then might have well fuffic'd the heartieft feeder thrice as many meals. For thofe actions which enter into a man, rather then iffue out of him, and therefore defile not, GOD ufes not to captivat under a perpetuall childhood of prefcription, but trufts him with the gift of reafon to be his own choofer; there were but little work left for preaching, if law and compulfion fhould grow fo faft upon. S 4

those

those things which hertofore were govern'd only by exhortation. Salomon informs us that much reading is a wearines to the flesh; but neither he, nor other infpir'd author tells us that fuch, or fuch reading is unlawfull; yet certainly had GoD thought good to limit us herein, it had bin much more expedient to have told us what was unlawfull, then what was wearifome. As for the burning of those Ephefian books by St. Pauls converts, tis reply'd the books were magick, the Syriack fo renders them. It was a privat act, a voluntary act, and leaves us to a voluntary imitation: the men in remorse burnt those books which were their own; the Magiftrat by this example is not appointed: these men practiz'd

practiz'd the books, another might perhaps have read them in fome fort ufefully. Good and evill we know in the field of this World grow up together almost infeparably; and the knowledge of good is fo involv'd and interwoven with the knowledge of evill, and in so many cunning refemblances hardly to bediscern'd, that those confused feeds which were impos'd on Pfyche as an inceffant labour to cull out, and fort afunder, were not more intermixt. It was from out the rinde of one apple tafted, that the knowledge of good and evill as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evill, that is to fay of knowing good

by evill. As therefore the ftate of man now is; what wifdome can there be to choose, what continence to forbeare without the knowledge of evill? He that can apprehend and confider vice with allher baits and feeming pleafures, and yet abftain, and yet diftinguish, and yet pre-fer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Chriftian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloifter'd vertue, unexercis'd and unbreath'd, that never fallies out and fees her adverfary, but flinks out of the race, where that immortall: garland is to be run for, not without duft and heat. Affuredly we bring not. innocence into the world, we bring im

:

purity much rather that which purifies.

us is triall, and triall is by what is con

trary.

trary. That vertue therefore which is but a youngling in the contemplation of evill, and knows not the utmoft that vice promifes to her followers, and rejects it, is but a blank vertue, not a pure; her whiteneffe is but an excrementall whiteneffe; Which was the reafon why our fage and ferious Poet Spencer, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher then Scotus or Aquinas, defcribing true temperance under the perfon of Guion, brings him in with his palmer through the cave of Mammon, and the bowr of earthly bliffe that he might fee: and know, and yet abftain. Since there fore the knowledge and furvay of vice is in this world fo neceffary to the conftituting of human vertue, and the feanning of

error

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