that hour, when all men shall be poor; for the justice of death looks equally upon the dead, and Charon expects no more from Alexander than from Irus.

VI. Give not only unto seven, but also unto eight, that is, unto more than many. Though to give unto every one that asketh may seem severe advice, yet give thou also before asking, where want is silently clamorous, and men's necessities, not their tongues, do loudly call for thy mercies. For though sometimes necessitousness be dumb, or misery speak not out, yet true charity is sagacious, and will find out hints for beneficence. Acquaint thyself with the physiognomy of want, and let the dead colours and first lines of necessity suffice to tell thee there is an object for thy bounty. Spare not where thou canst not easily be prodigal, and fear not to be undone by mercy; for since he who hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Almighty rewarder, who observes no Ides, but every day for His payments, charity becomes pious usury, Christian liberality the most thriving industry; and what we adventure in a cockboat may return in a carrack unto us. He who thus casts his bread upon the water shall surely find it again; for though it falleth to the bottom, it sinks but like the axe of the prophet, to rise again unto him.

IX. Persons lightly dipt, not grained in generous honesty, are but pale in goodness, and faint hued in integrity. But be thou what thou virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. Stand magnetically upon that axis when prudent simplicity hath fixt there; and let no attraction invert the poles of thy honesty. That vice may be uneasy and even monstrous unto thee, let iterated good acts and long-confirmed habits make virtue almost natural, or a second nature in thee. Since virtuous superstructions have commonly generous foundations, dive into thy inclinations, and early discover what nature bids thee to be or tells thee thou mayest be. They who thus timely descend into themselves, and cultivate the good seeds which nature hath set in them, prove not shrubs but cedars in their generation. And to be in the form of the best of the bad, or the worst of the good, will be no satisfaction unto them.

XXXVI. The heroical vein of mankind runs much in the soldiery, and courageous part of the world; and in that form we oftenest find men above men. History is full of the gallantry of that tribe; and when we read their notable acts, we easily find what a difference there is between a life in Plutarch and in Laertius. Where true fortitude dwells, loyalty, bounty, friendship and fidelity may be found. A man may confide in persons constituted for noble ends, who dare do and suffer, and who have a hand to burn for their country and their friend. Small and creeping things are the produce of petty souls. He is like to be mistaken, who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltroon friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in the cottages of such breasts; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty, and generous honesty, are the gems of noble minds; wherein, to derogate from none, the true heroic English gentleman hath no peer.

3. VII. Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, with thy faults; nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy follies. Think not to fasten thy imperfections on the stars, and so despairingly conceive thyself under a fatality of being evil. Calculate thyself within; seek not thyself in the moon, but in thine own orb or microcosmical circumference. Let celestial aspects admonish and advertise, not conclude and determine thy ways. For since good and bad stars moralize not our actions, and neither excuse or commend, acquit or condemn our good or bad deeds at the present or last bar; since some are astrologically well disposed, who are morally highly vicious; not celestial figures, but virtuous schemes, must dominate and state our actions. If we rightly understood the names whereby God calleth the stars; if we knew His name for the dog-star, or by what appellation Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn obey his will; it might be a welcome accession unto astrology, which speaks great things, and is fain to make use of appellations from Greek and barbarick systems. Whatever influences, impulsions or inclinations there be from the lights above, it were

a piece of wisdom to make one of those wise men who overrule their stars, and with their own militia contend with the host of heaven. Unto which attempt there want not auxiliaries from the whole strength of morality, supplies from Christian ethics, influences also and illuminations from above, more powerful than the lights of heaven.

3. IX. Since men live by examples, and will be imitating something, order thy imitation to thy improvement, not thy ruin. Look not for roses in Attalus his garden, or wholesome flowers in a venomous plantation. And since there is scarce any one bad, but some others are the worse for him; tempt not contagion by proximity, and hazard not thyself in the shadow of corruption. He who hath not early suffered this shipwreck, and in his younger days escaped this Charybdis, may make a happy voyage, and not come in with black sails into the port. Self-conversation, or to be alone, is better than such consortion. Some school-men tell us, that he is properly alone, with whom in the same place there is no other of the same species. Nebuchadnezzar was alone, though among the beasts of the field; and a wise man may be tolerably said to be alone, though with a rabble of people little better than beasts about him. Unthinking heads, who have not learned to be alone, are in a prison to themselves, if they be not also with others whereas on the contrary, they whose thoughts are in a fair, and hurry within, are sometimes fain to retire into company, to be out of the crowd of themselves. He who must needs have company, must needs have sometimes bad company. Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself; nor be only content, but delight to be alone and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus prepared, the day is not uneasy nor the night black unto him. Darkness may bound his eyes, not his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like Pompey and his sons, in all quarters of the earth; may speculate the universe, and enjoy the whole world in the hermitage of himself. Thus the old ascetick Christians found a paradise in a desert, and with little converse on earth held a conversation in heaven; thus they

:

astronomized in caves, and, though they beheld not the stars, had the glory of heaven before them.

WHAT

W. CHILLINGWORTH

THE DANGER

HAT will become of me and you, beloved fathers and brethren of the clergy? We to whom God hath entrusted the exercise and managing of three or four of his glorious attributes; for to us is committed the Gospel of Christ, which is the wisdom of God hidden from the world. And to us is committed the Gospel of Christ, which is the power of God to salvation, and which worketh mightily in them which believe, even according to the mighty working whereby he raised Christ from the dead. And to us is committed the Gospel of Christ, even the dispensation of the riches of his glorious mercy and compassions.

What then will become of us, if we, notwithstanding these great engagements, these inestimable prerogatives, shall turn this wisdom of God into foolishness, by exalting and defying our own carnal wisdom; if we shall weaken and make void this almighty power, by the violent opposition of our sinful lusts and affections; finally, if we shall be too sparing and niggardly in the dispensing of these his mercies; if we shall render his goodness suspected to our hearers, as if those frequent and plentiful offers of pity and compassion, were only empty historical expressions, and not professions of a mind heartily and sincerely inclined unto us.

I will tell you what will become of us; and I shall the better do it, by telling you first, what an excessive weight of glory we especially shall lose by it: They that be wise, saith Daniel, shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and

ever.

Not as those vulgar ordinary stars, that have light

enough only to make them visible; but like those more noble lights, which are able to cast a shadow through the whole creation, even like the sun in his full strength. And the preferment we are likely to gain, is very answerable to our loss, we shall be glorious shining firebrands, of the first magnitude, in whose fearful horrible destruction, God will show what he is able to do.

JOHN HALES

OF DUELS

TO die is not a private action to be undertaken at our own,

or at any other private man's pleasure and discretion: for, as we are not born unto ourselves alone, but for the service of God, and the commonwealth in which we live; so no man dies to himself alone, but with the damage and loss of that church or commonwealth of which he is a member : wherefore it is not left to any private man's power to dispose of any man's life, no, not to our own, only God and the magistrate may dispose of this. As soldiers in the camp must keep their standing, neither may they move or alter, but by direc tion from the captain; so is it with us all our life is a warfare, and every man in the world hath his station and place, from whence he may not move at his own, or at another man's pleasure, but only at the direction and appointment of God, his general, or of the magistrates, which are as captains and lieutenants under him. Then our lawful times of death are either when our day is come, or to fall in battle, or for misdemeanour to be cut off by the public hand of justice, "that the public might profit by the death of those, who, while living, would not be useful." He which otherwise dies, comes by surreption and stealth, and not warrantably, unto his end.-A Sermon preached at the Hague.