and mingled with alms, that we may certainly discern the love of money to be gone? Do we love to despise our inferiors? and can we willingly endure to admit him that excels us in any gift or grace whatsoever, and to commend it without abatement, and mingling allays with the commendation, and disparagements to the man? If we be arrived but thus far, it is well, and we must go farther. But we use to think that all disaffections of the body are removed, if they be changed into the more tolerable, although we have not an athletic health, or the strength of porters or wrestlers. For, although it be felicity to be quit of all passion that may be sinful or violent, and part of the happiness of heaven shall consist in that freedom; yet our growth in grace consists in the remission and lessening of our passions: only be that is incontinent in his lust, or in his anger; in his desires of money, or of honour; in his revenge, or in his fear; in his joys, or in his sorrows; that man is not grown at all in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. This only in the scrutiny and consequent judgment concerning our passions, it will concern the cu riosity of our care to watch against passions in the reflex act, against pride or lust; complacency and peevishness attending upon virtue. For he was noted for a vain person, who, being overjoyed for the cure (as he thought) of his pride, cried out to his wife: "Cerne, Dionysia, deposui fastum;" "Behold, I have laid aside all my pride:" and of that very dream the silly man thought he had reason to boast; but considered not that it was an act of pride and levity besides. If thou hast given a noble present to thy friend; if thou hast rejected the unjust desire of thy prince; if thou hast endured thirst and hunger for religion or continence; if thou hast refused an offer like that which was made to Joseph; sit down and rest in thy good conscience, and do not please thyself in opinions and fantastic noises abroad; and do not despise him that did not do so, as thou hast done, and reprove no man with an upbraiding circumstance; for it will give thee but an ill return, and a contemptible reward, if thou shalt overlay thy infant virtue, or drown it with a flood of breast-milk.

SERMON XV.

PART II.

5. He is well grown in or towards the state of grace, who is more patient of a sharp reproof than of a secret flattery. For a reprehension contains so much mortification to the pride and complacencies of a man, is so great an affront to an easy and undisturbed person, is so empty of pleasure and so full of profit, that he must needs love virtue in a great degree, who can take in that which only serves her end, and is displeasant to himself and all his gayeties. A severe reprehender of another's vice comes dressed like Jacob, when he went to cozen his brother of the blessing; his outside is rough and hairy," but "the voice is Jacob's voice:" rough hands and a healthful language get the blessing, even against the will of him that shall feel it; but he that is patient and even, not apt to excuse his fault, that is less apt to anger, or to scorn him that snatches him rudely from the flames of hell, he is virtue's confessor, and suffers these lesser stripes for that interest, which will end in spiritual and eternal benedictions.

They who are furious against their monitors, are incorrigible; but it is one degree of meekness to suffer discipline; and a meek man cannot easily be an ill man, especially in the present instance; he appears, at least, to have a healthful constitution; he hath good flesh to heal; his spirit is capable of medicine; and that man can never be despaired of, who hath a disposition so near his health as to improve all physic, and whose nature is relieved from every good accident from without. But that which I observe is, that this is not only a good disposition towards repentance and restitution, but is a sign of growth in grace, according as it becomes natural, easy, and habitual. Some men chide themselves for all their misdemeanours, because they would be represented to the censures and opinions of other men with a fair character, and such as need not to be reproved: others, out of inconsideration, sleep in their own dark rooms, and, until the charity of a guide or of a friend draws the curtain, and lets in a beam of light, dream on, until the grave opens,

and hell devours them: but if they be called upon by the grace of God, let down with a sheet of counsels and friendly precepts, they are presently inclined to be obedient to the heavenly monitions; but unless they be dressed with circumstances of honour and civility, with arts of entertainment and insinuation, they are rejected utterly, or received unwillingly. Therefore, although upon any terms to endure a sharp reproof be a good sign of amendment, yet the growth of grace is not properly signified by every such sufferance: for when this disposition begins, amendment also begins, and goes on in proportion to the increment of this. To endure a reproof without adding a new sin is the first step to amendment; that is, to endure it without scorn, or hatred, or indignation. 2. The next is to suffer reproof without excusing ourselves for he that is apt to excuse himself, is only desirous, in a civil manner, to set the reproof aside, and to represent the charitable monitor to be too hasty in his judgment, and deceived in his information; and the fault to dwell there, not with himself. 3. Then he that proceeds in this instance, admits the reprover's sermon or discourse without a private regret: he hath no secret murmurs or unwillingnesses to the humiliation, but is only ashamed that he should deserve it; but for the reprehension itself, that troubles him not, but he looks on it as his own medicine, and the other's charity. 4. But if to this he adds, that he voluntarily confesses his own fault, and, of his own accord, vomits out the loads of his own intemperance, and eases his spirit of the infection; then it is certain he is not only a professed and hearty enemy against sin, but a zealous, and a prudent, and an active person against all its interest; and never counts himself at ease but while he rests upon the banks of Sion, or at the gates of the temple; never pleased but in virtue and religion then he knows the state of his soul and the state of his danger; he reckons it no abjection to be abased in the face of man, so he may be gracious in the eyes of God: and that is a sign of a good grace and a holy wisdom ;, that man is "grown in the grace of God, and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." "Justus in principio sermonis est accusator sui," said the wise man; "The righteous accuseth himself in the beginning;" that is, quickly, lest he be prevented.

And certain it is, he cannot be either wise or good,

that had rather have a real sin within him, than that a good man should believe him to be a repenting sinner; that had rather keep his crime than lose his reputation; that is, rather to be so than to be thought so; rather be without the favour of God than of his neighbour. Diogenes once spied a young man coming out of a tavern or place of entertainment, who, perceiving himself observed by the philosopher, with some confusion stepped back again, that he might, if possible, preserve his fame with that severe person. But Diogenes told him, "Quantò magis intraveris, tantò magis eris in caupona:" "The more you go back, the longer you are in the place where you are ashamed to be seen." And he that conceals his sin, still retains that which he counts his shame and his burden. Hippocrates was noted for an ingenuous person, that he published and confessed his error concerning the sutures of the head and all ages since St. Austin have called him pious, for writing his book of retractations, in which he publishes his former ignorances and mistakes, and so set his shame off to the world invested with a garment of modesty, and above half changed before they were seen. I did the rather insist upon this particular, because it is a consideration of huge concernment, and yet much neglected in all its instances and degrees. We neither confess our shame nor endure it: we are privately troubled, and publicly excuse it; we turn charity into bitterness, and our reproof into contumacy and scorn; and who is there amongst us that can endure a personal charge, or is not to be taught his personal duty by general discoursings, by parable and apologue, by acts of insinuation and wary distances? But by this state of persons we know the estate of our own spirits.

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When God sent his prophets to the people, and "they stoned them with stones, and sawed them asunder, and cast them into dungeons, and made them beggars," the people fell into the condition of Babylon, " Quam curavimus, et non est sanata:" "We healed her," said the prophets, "but she would not be cured:" "Derelinquamus eam," that is her doom; let her enjoy her sins, and all the fruits of sin laid up in treasures of wrath against the day of vengeance and retribution.

6. He that is grown in grace and the knowledge of

Christ esteems no sin to be little or contemptible, none fit

For it is not only inconentertain any indecency or

to be cherished or indulged to. sistent with the love of God, to beginning of a crime, any thing that displeases him; but he always remembers how much it cost him to arrive at the state of good things, whither the grace of God hath already brought him he thinks of his prayers and tears, his restless nights and his daily fears, his late escape and his present danger, the ruins of his former state, and the difficulty and imperfect reparations of this new, his proclivity and aptness to vice, and natural averseness and uneasy inclinations to the strictness of holy living: and when these are considered truly, they naturally make a man unwilling to entertain any beginnings of a state of life contrary to that, which, with so much danger and difficulty, through so many objections and enemies, he hath attained. And the truth is, when a man hath escaped the dangers of his first state of sin, he cannot but be extremely unwilling to return again thither, in which he can never hope for heaven. And so it must be; for a man must not flatter himself in a small crime, and say, as Lot did, when he begged a reprieve for Zoar, "Alas! Lord, is it not a little one, and my soul shall live ?" And it is not, therefore, to be entertained because it is little; for it is the more without excuse, if it be little: the temptations to it are not great, the allurements not mighty, the promises not insnaring, the resistance easy; and a wise man considers it as a greater danger to be overcome by a little sin, than by a great one: a greater danger, I say; not directly, but accidentally; not in respect of the crime, but in relation to the person: for he that cannot overcome a small crime, is in the state of infirmity, so great, that he perishes infallibly, when he is arrested by the sins of a stronger temptation: but he that easily can, and yet will not, he is in love with sin, and courts his danger, that he may at least kiss the apples of paradise, or feast himself with the parings, since he is, by some displeasing instrument, affrighted from glutting himself with the forbidden fruit in ruder and bigger instances. But the well-grown Christian is curious of his newly-trimmed soul; and, like a nice person with clean clothes, is careful that no spot or stain sully the virgin-whiteness of his robe; whereas another, whose albs of baptism are sullied in many places