that thou art thus mindful of him?' And how utterly unworthy are we even of common mercies, if we return not to our God more advantage of glory, than those poor creatures that were made for us, and which cannot in nature be sensible of his favours!

VIII.

How plain is it that all sensitive things are ordered by an instinct from their Maker! He that gives them being puts into them their several inclinations, faculties, operations. If we look to birds; the mavis, the blackbird, the redbreast, have throats tuneable to any note, as we daily see they may be taught strains utterly varying from their natural tones; yet they all naturally have the same songs and accents, different from each other, and fully according to their own kind, so as every mavis hath the same ditty with his fellows: if we mark the building of their nests, each kind observes its own fashion and materials, some clay, others moss, hair, sticks; yea, if their very motions and restings they are conformed to their own feather, different from others. If[ we look] to beasts, they all, untaught, observe the fashions of their several kinds. Galen observes, that when he was dissecting a she-goat big with young, a kid, then ready to be yeaned, starts out, and walks up and down the room; and there being in the same place set several vessels of oil, honey, water, milk, the new fallen kid smells at them all, and refusing the rest, falls to lapping of the milk; whereupon he justly infers, that nature stays not for a teacher. Neither is it other in flies, and all sorts of the meanest vermin. All bees build alike, and order the commonwealth of their hive in one

manner; all ants keep their own way in their housing, journeys, provisions; all spiders do as perfectly and uniformly weave their web, as if they had been apprentices to the trade. The same instincts are seen also in the rational creatures, although in most cases overruled by their higher faculties. What an infinite Providence then is this we live under, that hath distributed to every creature, as a several form, so several inclinations, qualities, motions, proper to their own kind, and different from other; and keeps them in this constant uniformity and variety for the delight and contentment of man! O God, that I could be capable of enough wondering at thy great works! that I could be enough humbled under the sense of my own incapacity! that I could give thee so much more glory as I find more violence in myself!

IX.

When I saw my precious watch (now through an unhappy fall grown irregular) taken asunder and lying scattered upon the workman's shopboard, so as here lay a wheel, there the balance, here one gimmer, there another; straight my ignorance was ready to think when and how will all these ever piece together again in their former order? But when the skilful artisan had taken it a while in hand, and curiously pinned the joints, it now began to return to its wonted shape and constant motion, as if it had never been disordered. How could I choose but see in this the just emblem of a distempered church and state? Wherein, if all seem disjointed and every wheel laid aside by itself, so as an unknowing beholder would despair of a redress, yet if it shall please the great Artist of Heaven to put

his hand unto it, how soon might it return to a happy resettlement! Even so, blessed Lord, for thy great mercy's sake, make up the breaches of thy Sion, and repair the ruins of thy Jerusalem.

X.

We are, and we are not, all one man's children. Our bodies once met in one root; but our minds and dispositions do so differ, as if we had never been of kin. One man is so gentle and plausible that he would fain please all; another is so churlish and dogged, that he cares not whom he displeases, and hardly can be well pleased with himself; one so sparing and pinching that he grudges himself necessaries; another so vainly lavish that he cares not how he squanders his estate: one is tenderly pitiful, another mercilessly cruel; one religiously devout, another wildly profane; one cowardly fearful, another desperately courageous; one jovially cheerful and lightsome, another sad and dumpish, even to stupidity; one petulant and wanton, another austerely continent; one humble and low-conceited of rich endowments, another swollen big with a little. He did never read men to purpose, that is too much troubled with the harsh and unpleasing contrariety of humours which he meets with in the world; and he shall be too unthankful to God, that finding himself better composed than others, knows not whither to ascribe it; and too neglective of himself, that finding his own distempered, labours not to rectify it.

XI.

Nature, law, and grace divide all the ages of the world. Now, as it is in man, who is a lesser world,

that in every day there is a resemblance of his whole life; the morning is his childhood, the midway his youth, the evening his old age; so is it in this greater world. The dim break of day was the state of nature; and this was the nonage of the world, wherein the light of knowledge, both of human and divine things, was but weak and obscure.' The sun was risen higher in the state of the Law, but yet not without thick mists and shadows, till the high noon of that true Sun of Righteouness, who personally shone forth to the world; upon whose vertical point began the age of grace, that still continues; which is the clear afternoon and full vigour of the world, though now in its sensible declination: after this there shall be no time but eternity. These then are they which both the prophets and apostles have styled the last days; not only in respect of the times that went before them, but in regard that no time shall follow them. Neither have we reason to boggle at the large latitude of sixteen hundred years: there was neither of the two other periods of age but were longer than this. Besides, however childhood and youth have their fixed terms, which they ordinarily pass not, yet the duration of old age is indefinite. We have, in our youth, known some grey-heads that have continued vigorous till we have lived to match them in the colour of their livery. And if this be, as it is, the evening of the world, do we not

This was the opinion generally received in Bishop Hall's time, and it continues still the popular theory. The true state of nature for man, however, is not the savage or uncultivated state, but that in which the essential qualities of his humanity are fully developed, and its ends attained. Such appears to have been his first condition on earth, under the immediate care and tuition of the Almighty.-ED.

see much difference of time in the shutting in of the light? A summer's evening is a winter's day. But, if these were to the apostles the last days, how can they be other than in the last hour, yea, the last minute unto us? Why do we not put ourselves into a constant expectation of the end of all things, and set ourselves in a meet posture for the receipt of our returning Saviour?

XII.

It is a feeling and experimental expression that the apostle gives of a Christian, That he looks not on the things which are seen.' Not that his eyes are so dim, as old Isaac's, that he cannot discern them, or that his inward senses are so stupified that he cannot judge of their true value; but that, taking an exact view of these earthly things, he descries so much vanity in them, as that he finds them not worthy to be looked at with the full bent of his desires: like as it is not the mere sight of a strange beauty that is forbidden, for a man may as well look upon a fair face as upon a good picture, but a settled and fixed aspect that feeds the eye and draws the heart to a sinful concupiscence. Thus doth not the Christian look upon the things that are seen, as making them the full scope and aim of his desires and affections: so far he takes notice of them, as to make his best, that is lawful and moderate, use of them; not so as to make them the chief object of his contemplation, the main drift of his cares. It is well observed by St. Basil, that as there are two contrary ways, the broad and the narrow, so there are two guides as contrary—

12 Cor. iv. 18.