little moiety of a creature dies before it could be well said to live. So it is with those Christians, who will do all that they think lawful, and will do no more than what they suppose necessary; they do but peep into the light of the sun of righteousness; they have the beginnings of life; but their hinder parts, their passions and affections, and the desires of the lower man, are still unformed; and he that dwells in this state is just so much of a Christian as a sponge is of a plant, and a mushroom of a shrub: they may be as sensible as an oyster, and discourse at the rate of a child, but are greatly short of the righteousness evangelical.

WATCHFULNESS.

He that would be free from the slavery of sin, and the necessity of sinning, must always watch. Aye, that's the point; but who can watch always? Why, every good man can watch always: and that we may not be deceived in this, let us know that the running away from a temptation is a part of our watchfulness, and every good employment is another great part

of it, and a laying in provision of reason and religion beforehand, is yet a third part of this watchfulness: and the conversation of a Christian is a perpetual watchfulness; not a continual thinking of that one, or those many things which may endanger us; but it is a continual doing something directly or indirectly against sin. He either prays to God for his spirit, or relies upon the promises, or receives the sacrament, or goes to his bishop for counsel and a blessing, or to his priest for religious offices, or places himself at the feet of good men to hear their wise sayings, or calls for the church's prayers, or does the duty of his calling, or actually resists temptation, or frequently renews his holy purposes, or fortifies himself by vows, or searches into his danger by a daily examination; so that in the whole, he is forever upon his guard. This duty and caution of a Christian is like watching lest a man cut his finger. Wise men do not often cut their fingers, and yet every day they use a knife; and a man's eye is a tender thing, and every thing can do it wrong, can put it out; yet because we love our eyes so well, in the midst of so many dangers, by God's providence and a prudent natural care, by winking when any thing comes against them, and by turning aside when a blow is offered, they are preserved so certainly, that

not one in ten thousand does by a stroke lose one of his eyes in all his life-time. If we would transplant our natural care to a spiritual caution, we might by God's grace be kept from losing our souls, as we are from losing our eyes; and because a perpetual watchfulness is our great defence, and the perpetual presence of God's grace is our great security, and that this grace never leaves us, unless we leave it, and the precept of a daily watchfulness is a thing not only so reasonable, but so many easy ways to be performed, we see upon what terms we may be quit of our sins, and more than conquerors over all the enemies and impediments of salvation.

PITY.

If you do but see a maiden carried to her grave a little before her intended marriage, or an infant die before the birth of reason, nature hath taught us to pay a tributary tear. Alas! your eyes will behold the ruin of many families, which though they sadly have deserved, yet mercy is not delighted with the spectacle; and therefore God places a watery cloud in the

eye,

that when the light of heaven shines upon it, it may produce a rainbow to be a sacrament and a memorial that God and the sons of God

do not love to see a man perish. God never rejoices in the death of him that dies; and we also esteem it undecent to have music at a funeral. And as religion teaches us to pity a condemned criminal, so mercy intercedes for the most benign interpretation of the laws. You must indeed be as just as the laws, and you must be as merciful as your religion: and you have no way to tie these together, but to follow the pattern in the mount; do as God does, who in judgment remembers mercy.

THE HOPE OF MAN.

Truly, what is the hope of man? It is indeed

the resurrection of the soul in this world from sorrow and her saddest pressures, and like the twilight to the day, and the harbinger of joy; but still it is but a conjugation of infirmities, and proclaims our present calamity; only because it is uneasy here, it thrusts us forwards toward the light and glory of the resurrection. For as a worm, creeping with her belly on

the ground, with her portion and share of Adam's curse, lifts up its head to partake a little of the blessings of the air, and opens the junctures of her imperfect body, and curls her little rings into knots and combinations, drawing up her tail to a neighbourhood of the head's pleasure and motion; but still it must return to abide the fate of its own nature, and dwell and sleep upon the dust: so are the hopes of a mortal man; he opens his eyes and looks upon fine things at a distance, and shuts them again with weakness, because they are too glorious to behold; and the man rejoices because he hopes fine things are staying for him; but his heart aches, because he knows there are a thousand ways to fail and miss of those glories; and though he hopes, yet he enjoys not; he longs, but he possesses not; and must be content with his portion of dust, and being "a worm and no man," must lie down in this portion, before he can receive the end of his hopes, the salvation of his soul in the resurrection of the dead. For as death is the end of our lives, so is the resurrection the end of our hopes; and as we die daily, so we daily hope. But death which is the end of our life, is the enlargement of our spirits from hope to certainty, from uncertain fears to certain expectations, from the death of the body to the life of the soul.