mercies, which should raise the mind to God, are made the food to this sensuality, and the greatest means to keep it from him.

Sense is irrational, and fasteneth on its object, and when reason faileth in its office, there we are left like dogs gnawing upon a carrion, and in greediness, fighting for it with each other, when we have separated the creature from God in our minds, and so deprived it of its life and beauty, which fitted it for another use. And when every place and state of life hath such baits as these, which hourly are alluring a mind so weakly fortified against them, no wonder if they do prevail.

Sect. 6. Education, custom, and ill example confirm these vicious habits with the most, and much increase them."

Sect. 7. The best have some of this inordinate sensuality and weakness of reason, and are imperfect in virtue, and are tempted by the world, as well as others.

Sect. 8. Therefore no man can live to God according to his certain duty, who will not deny the desires of his flesh, and bring it into subjection, and live in vigilancy and daily conflict against its lusts.

Object. But the appetite of meat, and drink, and sleep, and ease, and venery, and sport, and pleasure, and gain, and honour is natural to us, and that which is natural is no vice, nor to be denied or destroyed.

Answ. It is natural to have the appetite, but it is the disease of nature that this appetite is inordinate, and no otherwise natural than the leprosy is to those to whom it is propagated by their parents; but it is natural to you to have lust and appetite, and is it not natural to you to have reason to moderate and rule them? If not, it is natural to you to be brutes, and not natural to you to be men. What is more natural to man than to be rational? Is it not his essential form? And whether is reason or appetite, think you, naturally made to be the predominant faculty? Should the horse rule the rider, or the rider the horse? The soul and body are much like the rider and the horse; bethink you which should naturally rule.

Sect. 9. The inordinacy of the fleshly appetite and fantasy,

• Vir bonus nec citò fieri, nec intelligi potest: nam ille alter fortasse Phœnix anno quingentesimo nascitur. Nec est mirum, ex intervallo magna generat; mediocria et in turbam nascentia sæpe fortuna producit: sed qui sciret quid esset vir bonus, nondum se esse credere, fortasse etiam fieri non posse desperaret.-Sen. Ep. 42. Diogenes said, he found good children at Lacædemon, but good men no where in all Greece.

maketh it a continual pain to the flesh to be restrained and denied.s

As it is to a headstrong, wilful horse to be governed, the more inordinate the appetite is, the more it is pained by denial and restraint.

Sect. 10. The far greater part of the world do live an ungodly, sensual life, and the interest of the flesh is predominant in them.

Sad experience puts this quite out of controversy.

Sect 11. Usually the more riches and fulness of all provisions for the flesh men possess, the more sensual and vicious they are.

It is not always so; but that it is usually so, we need no proof but the knowledge of the world: nor need we take it from Christ only as a point of faith, that it is hard for a rich man to enter into heaven; and reason telleth us, that when the love of the world above God is the mortal sin, those are most in danger of it, to whom the world appeareth most lovely; and they that have the most temptations, are in the greatest danger to miscarry.

Sect. 12. The rich are commonly the rulers of the world, who have the liberties, estates, and lives of others much in their power.

I never yet knew or heard of that place where the poor long ruled.

Sect. 13. Commonly, the more averse men are to godliness, and the more prone to sensuality, the less can they endure those that would persuade them to godliness from their sensual lives, or that give them the example of a holy, self-denying life.

For as it seemeth intolerable to them to leave their sensuality, and to betake themselves to a contrary life, which they are so averse to, so they take him as an enemy to them, that would draw them to it, and are furious against him, as a hungry dog against him that would take away his carrion. Experience puts this past all doubt (of which, more anon).

Sect. 14. Hence it cometh to pass, that in all parts of the

s Rari quippe boni; numero vix sunt totidem quot Thebarum portæ, vel divitis ostia Nili.-Juven. Quæ ego scio, populus non probat. Quæ probat populus, ego nescio.-Sen. Ep. 29. Imperitia in omnibus majori ex parte dominatur, et multitudo verborum.-Cleobulus in Laert. Offendet

te superbus contemptu, dives contumeliâ, petulans injuriâ, lividus malignitate, pugnax contentione, ventosus et mendax vanitate? Non feres à suspicioso timeri, à pertinace vinci, à delicato fastidiri.-Sen. de Ira, 1. 3. c. 8. Præstat cum paucis bonis adversus malos omnes, quàm cum multis malis adversus paucos pugnare.-Antisthenes in Laert, 1, 6, c. 1.

world, the fore-described life of godliness is the matter of the common hatred, scorn, and cruel persecution of the sensual and ungodly.P

The more exactly any man shall set himself to obey God, the more he crosses the lusts and carnal interests of the wicked, and the more he commonly suffereth in the world. So full of malice and prejudice is the world against such faithful subjects of God, that they slander them, and make them seem the most odious sort of men. And so unreasonable are they, and unjust, that the fullest evidence for their justification doth but seem to aggravate their faults, and nothing is so great a crime as their highest virtues. Or if their justification be undeniable, they rage the more, because they are hindered from making them suffer as deeply in their names as in their bodies. These things are no more questionable than the wars of Alexander or Cæsar, the world having longer, proof, and fuller evidence, of them.

Sect. 15. And, ordinarily, God himself so ordereth it, that his most faithful subjects shall be the deepest sufferers in this life.

Sect. 16. Therefore, self-denial, mortification, contempt of the world, and patience under manifold sufferings from God and man, are necessary to all who will be faithful to God, in the unquestionable duties before described.

It is tried friendship and obedience which is most valuable: and unwholesome pleasures, though preferred by the foolish patient, are forbidden by our wise physician, that they hinder not our health, and greater pleasures.

Sect. 17. Therefore, if worldly, fleshly pleasures were our end and chief good, the best men would have the smallest measure of them.

Object. But you restrain man further than God restraineth him, and bind him to more than God bindeth him to, and make superstition to seem his duty, and then raise these consequences from such premises.

Answ. What I mean by sin and duty I have so fully opened before, and proved to be such by the light of reason, that this objection hath no place. Even the sober heathens, the Greek philosophers, and Roman worthies, found and confessed all this

t Seneca Epist. 87. scribit, Tam necessarium fuisse Romano populo nasci Catonem quam Scipionem : alter enim cum hostibus nostris, alter cum moribus bellum gessit. And if a Cato was at war with the manners of the world, much more will a true saint, that is more fully acquainted with sacred verity.

to be true. If there be any thing in the life before described, which all sound reason doth not justify and command, let him that is able manifest so much: if not, it is no superstition" to live as a man that is governed by God, and led by reason, and to do that which all our faculties were made for. And for austerities, I have pleaded for none which is not become needful to our own preservation and felicity: as a patient will endure a strict diet, and exercise, and blood-letting, and bitter physic, for his health. It is not any affected, unprofitable austerities that I plead for, but those which are for our good, and fit us for our duty, and keep the flesh from rebelling against reason, and keep man from living like a beast: even less than many of the philosophers plead for; and he that useth but this much which is needful, will find it both opposed, as insufferable by the world, and murmured against by his suffering and displeased flesh; and that the soul cannot do its duty, but at a considerable cost and trouble to the body. Though there may be an evil masked and cunningly moderated, which men call goodness, which may be had at a cheaper rate. But saith Seneca truly, Non est bonitas, pessimis esse meliorem.

CHAP. XIV.

That there is a Life of Retribution after this.

To know whether there be a life after this for men to receive rewards or punishments in, is a matter of the greatest importance to mankind to be fully resolved in: upon which depends our comforts and our religion, and without which we know not what to expect, to hope for, or to fear, or what to intend and seek after through our lives, or how to order our hearts or actions.*

u

Qui totos dies precabantur et immolabant, ut sui liberi sibi superstites essent, superstitiosi sunt appellati; quod nomen patuit postea latius: qui autem omnia quæ ad cultum Deorum pertinerent, diligentur pertractarent, et tanquam relegerent; sunt dicti religioso ex relegendo, ut elegantes ex eligendo, à diligendo diligentes, ex intelligendo intelligentes: superstitiosi et religiosi, alterum vitii nomen, alterum laudis.-Cicero de Nat. Deor. lib. 2. pp. 73, 74. Ardua res hæc est opibus non tradere mores.-Martial. Pittaci dictum est, Perdifficile est esse bonum.-Bruson. All Cicero's books de finib. show the worthlessness of pleasure, iu comparison of virtue.

* Senec. Consol. ad Marciam :' Cum tempus advenerit quo se mundus renovaturus,-omni flagrante materia uno igne, quicquid nunc ex disposito lucet, ardebit-Nos quoque fælices animæ, et æterna sortitæ, cum Deo visum

This, therefore, I shall inquire into by the help of reason and natural evidence, as one that would not be deceived, or deceive, in so great a matter; and I shall pass by those arguments which are commonly fetched from the soul's immateriality, and independence upon matter, and other such like, which are commonly to be found in physics and metaphysics, as being not such as my present method leadeth me to, and shall make use of such as are the necessary consectaries of the certain truths already proved.

Object. But whatever rationalities may be drawn from the divine attributes, to prove a future state, yet, it depending wholly on the divine attributes, and the divine will being absolutely free, we can have no rational inducements to bring us to any sufficient knowledge of it, but by a clear revelation of the divine will.

Answ. Is the law of nature no clear revelation of God's will; or is it a law without any rewards or penalties? It depended on God's will whether man should be his subject or no, obliged to obey him; but doth it follow, therefore, that it cannot be proved? By making him a rational free-agent, and sociable, placed among occasions of good and evil, God did reveal that it was his will that man should be his subject, and obey him. One action of God doth often reveal his will concerning another. Those attributes of God which signify his relation to us do reveal much of his will concerning what he will do with us in those relations; and though his will be free, his perfections consist not with falsehood and mutability. If, in freedom, you include indetermination, then, when we prove the determination of it ad unum, you will plead no longer that it is free; any more than it is yet free whether he will make the world.

Sect. 1. He that is the most righteous Governor of the world, making a just difference, by rewards and punishments, between the obedient and the wicked, which yet he maketh not in this life, will certainly make it after this life; but God is the most righteous Governor of the world, making a just difference, by rewards and punishments, between the obedient and the wicked,

"erit, iterum ista moliri-Fœlicem filium tuum Marcia, qui ista (mortuus) jam novit. Duæ sunt viæ, duplicesque cursus animorum è corpore exeuntium: nam qui se vitiis humanis contaminarunt, et libidinibus se tradiderunt; iis devium quoddam iter est, seciusum à consilio Deorum. Qui autem se integros castosque servarunt, quibusque fuit minima cum corporibus contagio, suntque in corporibus humanis vitam imitati Deorum; iis ad illos à quibus sunt profecti, facilè patet reditus.-Socrates in Cicer. Tuscul. 1.