the man to act a scene of folly and madness, and healthlessness and dishonor. We do to God what we severely punish in our servants; we correct our children for their meddling with dangers which themselves prefer before immortality; and though no man thinks himself fit to be despised, yet he is willing to make himself a beast, a sot, and a ridiculous monkey, with the follies and vapors of wine; and when he is high in drink or fancy, proud as a Grecian orator in the midst of his popular noises, at the same time he shall talk such dirty language, such mean low things, as may well become a changeling and a fool, for whom the stocks are prepared by the laws, and the just scorn of

men.

Every drunkard clothes his head with a mighty scorn; and makes himself lower at that time than the meanest of his servants. The boys can laugh at him when he is led like a cripple, directed like a blind man, and speaks, like an infant, imperfect noises, lisping with a full and spongy tongue, and an empty head, and a vain and foolish heart. So cheaply does he part with his honor for drink or loads of meat; for which honor he is ready to die, rather than hear it to be disparaged by another; when himself destroys it, as bubbles perish with the breath of children. Do not the laws of all wise na

tions mark the drunkard for a fool, with the meanest and most scornful punishment? And is there any thing in the world so foolish as a man that is drunk? But, good God! what an intolerable sorrow hath seized upon great portions of mankind, that this folly and madness should possess the greatest spirits, and the wittiest men, the best company, the most sensible of the word honor, and the most jealous of losing the shadow, and the most careless of the thing? Is it not a horrid thing, that a wise or a crafty, a learned or a noble person, should dishonor himself as a fool, destroy his body as a murderer, lessen his estate as a prodigal, disgrace every good cause that he can pretend to by his relation, and become an appellative of scorn, a scene of laughter or derision, and all, for the reward of forgetfulness and madness? for there are in immoderate drinking no other pleasures.

I end with the saying of a wise man: He is fit to sit at the table of the Lord, and to feast with saints, who moderately uses the creatures which God hath given him: but he that despises even lawful pleasures, shall not only sit and feast with God, but reign together with him, and partake of his glorious kingdom.

6

MARRIAGE.

The first blessing God gave to man, was society; and that society was a marriage, and that marriage was confederate by God himself, and hallowed by a blessing: and at the same time, and for very many descending ages, not only by the instinct of nature, but by a superadded forwardness, (God himself inspiring the desire,) the world was most desirous of children, impatient of barrenness, accounting single life a curse, and a childless person hated by God. The world was rich and empty, and able to provide for a more numerous posterity than it had. When a family could drive their herds, and set their children upon camels, and lead them till they saw a fat soil watered with rivers, and there sit down without paying rent, they thought of nothing but to have great families, that their own relations might swell up to a patriarchate, and their children be enough to possess all the regions that they saw, and their grandchildren become princes, and themselves build cities and call them by the name of a child, and become the fountain of a nation.

This was the consequent of the first blessing, “Increase and multiply." The next blessing was, the promise of the Messiah; and that also in

creased in men and women a wonderful desire of marriage: for as soon as God had chosen the family of Abraham to be the blessed line, from whence the world's Redeemer should descend according to the flesh, every of his daughters hoped to have the honor to be his mother, or his grandmother, or something of his kindred; and to be childless in Israel was a sorrow to the Hebrew women, great as the slavery of Egypt, or their dishonors in the land of their captivity.

But when the Messiah was come, and the doctrine was published, and his ministers but few, and his disciples were to suffer persecution, and to be of an unsettled dwelling, and the nation of the Jews, in the bosom and society of which the church especially did dwell, were to be scattered and broken all in pieces with fierce calamities, and the world was apt to calumniate and to suspect and dishonor Christians upon pretences and unreasonable jealousies, and that to all these purposes the state of marriage brought many inconveniences; it pleased God in this new creation to inspire into the hearts of his servants a disposition and strong desire to lead a single life, lest the state of marriage should in that conjunction of things become an accidental impediment to the dissemination of the gospel, which called men

from a confinement in their domestic charges to travel, and flight, and poverty, and difficulty, and martyrdom. Upon this necessity the Apostles and apostolical men published doctrines, declaring the advantages of single life, not by any commandment of the Lord, but by the spirit of prudence, for the present and then incumbent necessities, and in order to the advantages which did accrue to the public ministries and private piety.

Upon this occasion it grew necessary for the Apostle to state the question right, and to do honor to the holy rite of marriage, and to snatch the mystery from the hands of zeal and folly, and to place in it Christ's right hand, that all its beauties might appear, and a present convenience might not bring in a false doctrine, and a perpetual sin, and an intolerable mischief.

Marriage is a school and exercise of virtue; and though marriage hath cares, yet the single life hath desires, which are more troublesome and more dangerous, and often end in sin, while the cares are but instances of duty and exercises of piety; and therefore, if single life hath more privacy of devotion, yet marriage hath more necessities and more variety of it, and is an exercise of more graces. Here is the proper scene of piety and patience, of the duty of parents and the charity of relatives; here