torment. Discharge thy sin betimes, and be at peace. He never breaks his sleep for debt, that pays when he takes up.

SECTION VII.

Solicitation of Sin remedied.—The ordering of Affec

tions.

NEITHER can it suffice for peace, to have crossed the old scroll of our sins, if we prevent not the future: yea, the present very importunity of temptation breeds unquietness. Sin, where it hath got a haunt, looketh for more, as humours that fall towards their old issue: and, if it be not strongly repelled, doth near as much vex us with soliciting, as with yielding. Let others envy their happiness, I shall never think their life so much as quiet, whose doors are continually beaten and their morning sleep broken with early clients; whose entries are daily thronged with suitors, pressing near for the next audience; much less, that through their remiss answers are daily haunted with traitors or other instruments of villany, offering their mischievous service, and inciting them to some pestilent enterprize. Such are temptations to the soul; whereof it cannot be rid so long as it holds them in any hope of entertainment; and so long they will hope to prevail, while we give them but a cold and tímorous denial. Suitors are drawn on with an easy repulse; counting that as half granted which is but faintly gainsayed. Peremptory answers can only put sin out of heart for any second attempts: it is ever impudent, when it meets not with a bold

heart; hoping to prevail by wearying us, and wearying us by entreaties. Let all suggestions, therefore, find thee resolute: so shall thy soul find itself at rest; for as the devil, so sin, his natural brood, flies away with resistance.

To which purpose all our heady and disordered affections, which are the secret factors of sin and Satan, must be restrained by a strong and yet temperate command of reason and religion: these, if they find the reins loose in their necks, like to the wild horses of that chaste hunter in the tragedy,' carry us over hills and rocks; and never leave us, till we be dismembered, and they breathless: but, contrarily, if they be pulled in with the sudden violence of a strait hand, they fall to plunging and careering, and never leave, till their saddle be empty, and even then dangerously strike at their prostrate rider. If there be any exercise of Christian wisdom, it is in the managing of these unruly affections; which are not more necessary in their best use, than pernicious in their misgovernance. Reason hath always been busy, in undertaking this so necessary a moderation: wherein, although she have prevailed with some of colder temper, yet those which have been of more stubborn metal, like unto grown scholars which scorn the ferule that ruled their minority, have still despised her weak endeavours. Only Christianity hath this. power; which, with our second birth, gives us a new nature so that now, if excess of passions be natural to us as men, the order of them is natural to us as Christians. Reason bids the angry man say over his alphabet, ere he give his answer;

2 Seneca, Hippolytus, Act. iv.-Ed.

hoping, by this intermission of time, to gain the mitigation of his rage: he was never thoroughly angry that can endure the recital of so many idle letters. Christianity gives not rules, but power, to avoid this short madness. It was a wise speech that is reported of our best and last cardinal,' (I hope,) that this island either did or shall see; who, when a skilful astrologer, upon the calculation of his nativity, had foretold him some specialties concerning his future estate, answered, "Such perhaps I was born: but, since that time, I have been born again; and my second nativity hath crossed my first." The power of nature is a good plea for those that acknowledge nothing above nature: but, for a Christian to excuse his intemperateness by his natural inclination, and to say, "I am born choleric, sullen, amorous," is an apology worse than the fault. Wherefore serves religion, but to subdue or govern nature? We are so much Christians as we can rule ourselves; the rest is but form and speculation. Yea, the very thought of our profession is so powerful, that, (like unto that precious stone,) being cast into this sea, it assuageth those inward tempests that were raised by the affections. The unregenerate mind is not capable of this power; and, therefore, through the continual mutinies of his passions, cannot but be subject to perpetual unquietness. There is neither remedy nor hope in this estate. But the Christian soul, that hath inured itself to the awe of God and the exercises of true mortification, by the only looking up at his holy profession, cureth the burning venom of these fiery serpents that lurk within him. Hast

1 Cardinal Pole.

thou nothing but nature? Resolve to look for no peace. God is not prodigal, to cast away his best blessings on so unworthy subjects. Art thou a Christian? do but remember thou art so; and then, if thou darest, if thou canst, yield to the excess of passions.

SECTION VIII.

The second main enemy to Peace-Crosses. HITHERTO, [we have considered,] the most inward and dangerous enemy of our peace; which, if we have once mastered, the other field shall be fought and won with less blood. Crosses disquiet us, either in their present feeling, or their expectation: both of them, when they meet with weak minds, so extremely distempering them, that the patient, for the time, is not himself. How many have we known, which through a lingering disease, weary of their pain, weary of their lives, have made their own hands their executioners! How many, meeting with a headstrong grief, which they could not manage, have by the violence of it, been carried quite from their wits! How many millions, what for incurable maladies, what for losses, what for defamations, what for sad accidents to their children, rub out their lives in perpetual discontentment; therefore living because they can. not yet die, not for that they like to live! If there could be any human receipt prescribed to avoid evils, it would be purchased at a high rate: but, both it is impossible, that earth should redress that which is sent from heaven; and, if it could be done, even the want of miseries would prove miserable;

for the mind, cloyed with continual felicity, would grow a burden to itself, loathing that, at last, which intermission would have made pleasant. Give a free horse the full reins, and he will soon tire. Summer is the sweetest season by all consents, wherein the earth is both most rich with increase, and most gorgeous for ornament; yet, if it were not received with interchanges of cold frosts and piercing winds, who could live? Summer would be no summer, if winter did not both lead it in and follow it. We may not, therefore, either hope or strive to escape all crosses; some we may: what thou canst, fly from; what thou canst not, allay and mitigate. In crosses, universally, let this be thy rule make thyself none; escape some; bear the rest; sweeten all.

SECTION IX.

Of Crosses that arise from conceit.

APPREHENSION gives life to crosses; and, if some be simply, most are as they are taken.' I have seen many; which when God hath meant them no hurt, have framed themselves crosses out of imagination; and have found that insupportable for weight which in truth never was, neither had ever any but a fancied being: others again, laughing out heavy afflictions, for which they were bemoaned of the beholders. One receives a deadly wound, and looks not so much as pale at the smart; another

1i. e. Though some crosses be such essentially in their own nature, the greater part are so, or not, accordingly as they are received.-ED.