a blessed and a holy life. The things of God and of religion are easy and sweet, they bear entertainments in their hand, and reward at their back; their good is certain and perpetual, and they make us cheerful to-day, and pleasant to-morrow; and spiritual songs end not in a sigh and a groan, but they bring us to the felicity of God, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever. They do not give a private and particular delight, but their benefit is public; like the incense of the altar, it sends up a sweet smell to heaven, and makes atonement for the religious man that kindled it, and delights all the standers by, and makes the very air wholesome. There is no blessed soul goes to heaven, but he makes a general joy in all the mansions where the saints do dwell, and in all the chapels where the angels sing; and the joys of religion are not univocal, but productive of rare, and accidental, and preternatural pleasures; for the music of holy hymns delights the ear, and refreshes the spirit, and makes the very bones of the saints to rejoice. And charity, or the giving alms to the poor, does not only ease the poverty of the receiver, but makes the giver rich, and heals his sickness, and delivers from death. And temperance, though it be in the matter of meat, and drink, and pleasures, yet hath an effect upon the understanding, and makes

the reason sober, and the will orderly, and the affections regular, and does things beside and beyond their natural and proper efficacy: for all the parts of our duty are watered with the showers of blessing, and bring forth fruit according to the influence of heaven, and beyond the capacities of nature.

But they that will not deny a lust, nor refrain an appetite, they that will be drunk when their friends do merrily constrain them, or love a cheap religion, and a gentle and lame prayer, short and soft, quickly said and soon passed over, seldom returning and but little observed, how is it possible that they should think themselves persons disposed to receive such glorious crowns and sceptres, such excellent conditions, which they have not faith enough to believe, nor attention enough to consider, and no man can have wit enough to understand? But so might an Arcadian shepherd look from the rocks, or through the clifts of the valley where his sheep graze, and wonder that the messenger stays so long from coming to him to be crowned king of all the Greek islands, or to be adopted heir to the Macedonian monarchy. It is an infinite love of God that we have heaven upon conditions which we can perform with greatest diligence: but truly the lives of men are generally such, that they do things in order

to heaven, things (I say) so few, so trifling, so unworthy, that they are not proportionable to the reward of a crown of oak or a yellow ribband, the slender reward with which the Romans paid their soldiers for their extraordinary valour. True it is, that heaven is not in a just sense of a commutation, a reward, but a gift, and an infinite favor: but yet it is not reached forth but to persons disposed by the conditions of God; which conditions when we pursue in kind, let us be very careful we do not fail of the mighty prize of our high calling, for want of degrees and just measures, the measures of zeal and a mighty love.

RELIGION AND GOVERNMENT.

Those sects of Christians, whose professed doctrine brings destruction and diminution to government, give the most intolerable scandal and dishonor to the institution; and it had been impossible that Christianity should have prevailed over the wisdom and power of the Greeks and Romans, if it had not been humble to superiors, patient of injuries, charitable to the needy, a great exacter of obedience to kings,

even to heathens, that they might be won and convinced; and to persecutors, that they might be sweetened in their anger, or upbraided for their cruel injustice. For so doth the humble vine creep at the foot of an oak, and leans upon its lowest base, and begs shade and protection, and leave to grow under its branches, and to give and take mutual refreshment, and pay a friendly influence for a mighty patronage; and they grow and dwell together, and are the most remarkable of friends and married pairs of all the leafy nation. Religion of itself is soft, easy, and defenceless, and God hath made it grow up with empire, and lean upon the arms of kings, and it cannot well grow alone; and if it shall, like the ivy, suck the heart of the oak, upon whose body it grew and was supported, it will be pulled down from its usurped eminence, and fire and shame shall be its portion.

HYPOCRISY.

We do not live in an age in which there is so much need to bid men be wary, as to take care that they be innocent. Indeed in religion we are usually too loose and ungirt, exposing

ourselves to temptation, and others to offence, and our name to dishonor, and the cause itself to reproach, and we are open and ready to every evil but persecution. From that we are close enough, and that alone we call prudence; but in the matter of interest we are wary as serpents, subtle as foxes, vigilant as the birds of the night, rapacious as kites, tenacious as grappling-hooks and the weightiest anchors, and, above all, false and hypocritical as a thin crust of ice spread upon the face of a deep, smooth and dissembling pit; if you set your foot, your foot slips, or the ice breaks, and you sink into death, and are wound in a sheet of water, descending into mischief or your grave, suffering a great fall, or a sudden death, by your confidence and unsuspecting foot. There is a universal crust of hypocrisy that covers the face of the greatest part of mankind. Their religion consists in forms and outsides, and serves reputation or a design, but does not serve God. Their promises are but fair language, and the civilities of piazzas or exchanges, and disband and untie like the air that beats upon their teeth when they speak the delicious and hopeful words. Their oaths are snares to catch men, and make them confident; their contracts are arts and stratagems to deceive, measured by profit and possibility; and every thing is lawful