SECT. 4. The inward disposition of the prisoner. THOU art forced to keep close :-But with what disposition, both of mind and body? If thou hadst an unquiet and burdened soul, it were not the open and free air, that could refresh thee; and if thou have a clear and light heart, it is not a strict closeness, that can dismay thee: thy thoughts can keep thee company, and cheer up thy solitariness. If thou hadst an unsound and painful body; as, if thou wert laid up of the gout, or some rupture, or luxation of some limb; thou wouldst not complain to keep in: thy pain would make thee insensible of the trouble of thy confinement: But, if God have favoured thee with health of body, how easily mayest thou digest a harmless limitation of thy person! A wise man, as Laurentius the Presbyter observed well, doth much while he rests: his motions are not so beneficial, as his sitting still. So mayest thou bestow the hours of thy close retiredness, that thou mayest have cause to bless God for so happy an opportunity. How memorable an instance hath our age yielded us, of an eminent person P, to whose encagement we are beholden, be sides many philosophical experiments, for that noble History of the World, which is now in our hands! The Court had his youthful and freer times; the Tower, his later age: the Tower reformed the Court in him; and produced those worthy monuments of art and industry, which we should have in vain expected from his freedom and jollity. It is observed, that shining wood, when it is kept within doors, loseth its light. It is otherwise with this and many other active wits, which had never shined so much, if not for their closeness. SECT. 5. The willing choice of retiredness in some persons. THOU art close shut up :-I have seen anchorites, that have sued for this as a favour, which thou esteemest a punishment; and, having obtained it, have placed merit in that wherein thou apprehendest misery. Yea, our History tells us of one, who, when the church, whereto his cell was annexed, was on fire, would not come out to live; but would die, and lie buried under the ashes of that roof, where his vow had fixed him. Suppose thou dost that out of the resolution of thine own will, which thou dost out of another's necessitating, and thou shalt sit down contented with thy lot. P Sir Walter Raleigh. SECT. 6. The causes of imprisonment. THOU art imprisoned :-Wise men are wont, in all actions and events, to enquire still into the causes. Wherefore dost thou suffer? Is it for thy fault? Make thou thy gaol God's CorrectionHouse for reforming of thy misdeeds. Remember, and imitate Manasseh, the evil son of a good father; who, upon true humiliation, by his just imprisonment, found a happy expiation of his horrible idolatries, murders, witchcrafts; whose bonds brought him home to God and himself. Is it for debt? Think not to pay those who have entrusted thee, with a lingering durance, if there be power in thy hand for a discharge: there is fraud, and injustice, in this closeness: fear thou a worse prison, if thou wilt needs wilfully live and die in a just indebtment, when thou mayest be at once free and honest stretch thine ability to the utmost, to satisfy others with thine own impoverishing. But, if the hand of God hath humbled and disabled thee, labour what thou canst to make thy peace with thy creditors: if they will needs be cruel, look up with patience to the hand of that God, who thinks fit to afflict thee with their unreasonableness; and make the same. good use of thy sufferings, which thou wouldst do from the immediate hand of thy Creator. : If it be for a good cause, rejoice in this tribulation; and be holily proud and glad, with the blessed Apostles, that thou art counted worthy to suffer shame and bonds for the name of the Lord Jesus; Acts v. 41: for every just cause is his neither is he less a martyr, that suffers for his conscience in any of God's commandments, than he who suffers for matter of faith and religion. Remember that cordial word of thy Saviour, Blessed are they, that are persecuted for righteousness' sake; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. In such a prison, thou shalt be sure to find good company. There, thou shalt find Joseph, Micaiah, Jeremiah, John Baptist, Peter, Paul and Silas, and (what should I think of the poll?) all the holy Martyrs and Confessors of Jesus Christ, from the first plantation of the Gospel to this present day. Repent thee, if thou canst, to be thus matched; and choose rather to violate a good conscience and be free, than to keep it under a momentary restraint. SECT. 7. The goodness of retiredness; and the partnership of the soul's imprisonment. THOU art a prisoner :-Make the best of thy condition: close air is warmer than open: and how ordinarily do we hear birds sing sweeter notes in their cages, than they could do in the wood! It shall be thine own fault, if thou be not bettered by thy retiredness. : Thou art a prisoner:-so is thy soul in thy body there, not restrained only, but fettered; yet complains not of the straitness of these clay walls or the weight of these bonds, but patiently waits for a happy gaol-delivery. So do thou attend, with all long-suffering, the good hour of the pleasure of thy God. Thy period is set, not without a regard to thy good; yea, to thy best. He, in whose hand are all times, shall find and hath determined a fit time, to free both thy body from these outward prison-walls, and thy soul from this prison of thy body; and to restore both body and soul from the bondage of corruption, to the glorious liberty of the sons of God; Rom. viii. 21. CHAP. X. COMFORTS AGAINST BANISHMENT. SECT. 1. The universality of a wise man's country. THOU art banished from thy country: Beware lest, in thy complaining, thou censure thyself. A wise man's country is every where. What such relation hath the place, wherein thou wert born, to thy present being? What, more than the time, wherein thou wert born? What reason hast thou to be more addicted to the region, wherein thou fellest, than to the day of the week, or hour of the day, in which thou salutedst the light? What are times and places of our birth, but unconcerning circumstances? Wherever thou farest well, thou mayest either find or make thy country. "But," thou sayest, "there is a certain secret property in our native soil, that draws our affection to it; and ties our hearts to it, not without a pleasing kind of delight, whereof no reason can be yielded: so as we affect the place, not because it is better than others, but it is because it is our own. Ulysses doth no less value the rocky soil of his hard and barren Ithaca, than Agamemnon doth the noble walls of his rich and pleasant Mycena." I grant this relation hath so powerful an influence upon our hearts naturally, as is pretended; yet such a one, as is easily checked with a small unkindness. How many have we known, who, upon an actual affront, not of the greatest, have diverted their respects from their native country; and, out of a strong alienation of mind, have turned their love into hostility! We shall not need to seek far for histories: our times and memories will furnish us too well. Do we not see those, who have sucked the breasts of our Common Mother, upon a little dislike to have spit in her face? Can we not name our late homebred compatriots, who, upon the disrelish of some displeasing laws, have flown off from their country, and suborned treasons, and incited foreign princes to our invasion? So as thou seest this natural affection is not so ardent in many, but that it may be quenched with a mean discontentment. If, therefore, there were no other ground of thine affliction, thy sorrow is not so deep-rooted, but that it may be easily pulled up. SECT. 2. The benefit of self-conversation. "Ir is not the air or earth," that thou standest upon: "it is the company," thou sayest, "from which it is a kind of death to part. I shall leave all acquaintance and conversation, and be cast upon strange faces, and languages that I understand not: my best entertainment will be solitude; my ordinary, inhospitality." What dost thou affright thyself, my son, with these bugs of needless terror? He is not worthy of the name of a Philosopher, much less of a Christian Divine, that hath not attained to be absolute in himself; and, which way soever he is cast, to stand upon his own bottom; and that, if there were no other men left in the world, could not tell how to enjoy himself. It is that within us, whereby we must live and be happy: some additions of complacency may come from without: sociable natures, such is man's, seek and find pleasure in conversation; but if that be denied, sanctified spirits know how to converse comfortably with their God and themselves. ¶ Sen. Ep. 66. SECT. 3. Examples of those holy ones, that have abandoned society. How many holy ones of old have purposely withdrawn themselves from the company of men, that they might be blessed with an invisible society; that have exchanged cities for deserts, houses for caves, the sight of men for beasts; that their spiritual eyes might be fixed upon those better objects, which the frequence of the world held from them! Necessity doth but put thee into that estate, which their piety affected. "Oh! but to be driven to forsake parents, kinsfolk, friends, how sad a case must it needs be! What is this, other than a perfect distraction? What are we, but pieces of our parents? And what are friends, but parts of us? What is all the world to us, without these comforts?" When thou hast said all, my son, what is befallen thee, other than it pleased God to enjoin the Father of the Faithful: 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, into a land that I will shew thee? Gen. xii. Ï. Lo, the same God, by the command of authority, calls thee to this secession. If thou wilt shew thyself worthy to be the son of such a Father, do that, in an humble obedience to God, which thou art urged to do, by the compulsion of men. But what so grievous a thing is this? Dost thou think to find God where thou goest? Dost thou make full account of his company both all along the way, and in the end of thy journey? Hath not He said, who cannot fail, I will not leave thee nor forsake thee? Certainly, he is not worthy to lay any claim to a God, that cannot find parents, kindred, friends in him alone. Besides, he, that of very stones could raise up children unto Abraham, how easily can he of inhospital men raise up friends to the sons of Abraham! Only labour thou to inherit that faith, wherein he walked that alone shall free-denizen thee, in the best of foreign states; and shall entertain thee, in the wildest deserts. SECT. 4. The advantage that hath been made of removing. THOUυ art cast upon a foreign nation:-Be of good cheer: we know that flowers, removed, grow greater; and some plants, which were but unthriving and unwholesome in their own soil, have grown both safe and flourishing in other climates. Had Joseph been ever so great, if he had not been |