timorousness and fears of religion, and against all their gods, saying, there were no such things, and that all things came by chance and industry, nothing by the providence of the supreme power. But the next day, when they had fought unprosperously, and, flying from their enemies, who were eager in their pursuit, they came to the river Strymon, which was so frozen that their boats could not launch, and yet it began to thaw, so that they feared the ice would not bear them; then you should see the bold gallants, that the day before said there was no God, most timorously and superstitiously fall upon their faces, and beg of God that the river Strymon might bear them over from their enemies. What wisdom, and philosophy, and perpetual experience, and revelation, and promises, and blessings cannot do, a mighty fear can; it can allay the confidences of bold lust and imperious sin, and soften our spirit into the lowness of a child, our revenge into charity of prayers, our impudence into the blushings of a chidden girl; and therefore God hath taken a course proportionable: for he is not so unmercifully merciful as to give milk to an infirm lust, and hatch the egg to the bigness of a cockatrice. And therefore observe how it is that God's mercy prevails over all his works; it is even then when

nothing can be discerned but his judgments, for as when a famine had been in Israel in the days of Ahab for three years and a half, when the angry prophet Elijah met the king, and presently a great wind arose, and the dust blew into the eyes of them that walked abroad, and the face of the heavens was black and all tempest, yet then the prophet was most gentle, and God began to forgive, and the heavens were more beautiful than when the sun puts on the brightest ornaments of a bridegroom, going from his chambers of the east. So it is in the economy of the divine mercy: when God makes our faces black, and the winds blow so loud till the cordage cracks, and our gay fortunes split, and our houses are dressed with cypress and yew, and the mourners go about the streets, this is nothing but the pompa misericordiæ, this is the funeral of our sins, dressed indeed with emblems of mourning, and proclaimed with sad accents of death; but the sight is refreshing, as the beauties of the field which God had blessed, and the sounds are healthful, as the noise of a physician.*

The caresses of a pleasant fortune are apt to swell into extravagances of spirit, and burst into the dissolution of manners; and unmixt joy

* The Mercy of the Divine Judgments; Serm. xii. pages 286, 288, 295.

is dangerous; but if in our fairest flowers we spy a locust, or feel the uneasiness of a sackcloth under our fine linen, or our purple be tied with an uneven and a rude cord; any little trouble, but to correct our wildnesses, though it be but a death's-head served up at our feasts, it will make our tables fuller of health and freer from snare, it will allay our spirits, making them to retire from the weakness of dispersion, to the union and strength of a sober recollection.

ON PASSION AND REASON.

TRUTH enters into the heart of man when it is empty, and clean, and still; but when the mind is shaken with passion as with a storm, you can never hear the voice of the charmer though he charm ever so wisely: and you will very hardly sheathe a sword when it is held by a loose and a paralytic arm.*

THE PROSTITUTE.

THEY pay their souls down for the bread they eat, buying this day's meal with the price of the last night's sin.t

* Sermon preached to the University of Dublin.

Holy Dying, ch. 1.

ON ANGER.

In contentions be always passive, never active upon the defensive, not the assaulting part; and then also give a gentle answer, receiving the furies and indiscretions of the other like a stone into a bed of moss and soft compliance ;* and you shall find it sit down quietly: whereas anger and violence make the contention loud and long, and injurious to both the parties.

Consider that anger is a professed enemy to counsel; it is a direct storm, in which no man can be heard to speak or call from without: for if you counsel gently, you are despised; if you

* When Sir Matthew Hale dismissed the jury because he was convinced that it had been illegally selected, to favour the Protector, Cromwell was highly displeased with him, and at his return from the circuit, he told him in anger he was not fit to be a judge, to which all the answer he made was that, it was very true."

Abou Hanifah fut le chef des Hanifites. Ce Socrate Musulman donnoit a sa secte des leçons et des exemples. Un brutal lui ayant donné un soufflet ce Mahometan repondit ces paroles dignes d' un Chretien: "si j'etois vindicatif, je vous rendrois outrage pour outrage; si j' etois un délateur je vous accuserois devant le Calife: mais j'aime mieux demander a Dieu, qu'au jour du jugement il me fasse entrer au ciel avec vous."

urge it and be vehement, you provoke it more. Be careful therefore to lay up before-hand a great stock of reason and prudent consideration, that like a beseiged town, you may be provided for, and be defensible from within, since you are not likely to be relieved from without. Anger is not to be suppressed but by something that is as inward as itself, and more habitual. To which purpose add, that of all passions it endeavours most to make reason useless that it is an universal poison, of an infinite object; for no man was ever so amorous as to love a toad, none so envious as to repine at the condition of the miserable, no man so timorous as to fear a dead bee; but anger is troubled at every thing, and every man, and every accident, and therefore unless it be suppressed, it will make a man's condition restless. If it proceeds from a great cause, it turns to fury; if from a small cause, it is peevishness; and so is always either terrible or ridiculous. It makes a man's body monstrous, deformed, and contemptible, the voice horrid, the eyes cruel, the face pale or fiery, the gait fierce, the speech clamorous and loud. It is neither manly nor ingenuous. It proceeds from softness of spirit and pusillanimity; which makes that women are more than men, sick persons more than healthful,

angry