taste of God's love on earth, and in the hopes of perfect felicity, love and joy for ever. Is not this a sweeter life than tiresome, unprofitable speculations?

O then, how inexcusable are our contemners of religion, that live in wilful ignorance and ungodliness, and think this easy and sweet religion to be a tedious and intolerable thing! What impudent calumniators and blasphemers are they of Christ and holiness, who deride and revile this sweet and easy way to life, as if it were a slavery and an irksome toil, unnecessary to our salvation, and unfit for a freeman, or at least a gentleman, (or a servant of the flesh and world) to practise. If Christ had set you such a task as Aristotle or Plato did to their disciples; so many notions, and so many curiosities to learn: if he had written for you as many books as Chrysippus did; if he had made necessary to your salvation, all the arbitrary notions of Lullius, and all the fanatic conceits of Campanella, and all the dreaming hypotheses of Cartesius, and all the astronomical and cosmographical difficulties of Ptolomy, Tycho-Brache, Copernicus and Galilæus, and all the chronological difficulties handled by Eusebius, Scaliger, Functius, Capellus, Petavius, &c. And all the curiosities in philosophy and theology of Cajetan, Scotus, Ockam, Gabriel, &c. Then you might have had some excuse for your aversation: but to accuse and refuse, and reproach so compendious, so easy, so sweet, so necessary a doctrine and religion, as that which is brought and taught by Christ; this is an ingratitude that hath no excuse, unless sensuality and malignant enmity may pass for an excuse.

Doth Christ deliver you from the maze of imaginary curiosities, and from the burdens of worldly wisdom, called philosophy, and of Pharisaical traditions, and Jewish ceremonies, and make you a light burden, an easy yoke, and commandments that are not grievous; and after all this, must he be requited with rejection and reproach, and your burdens and snares be taken for more tolerable than your deliverance? You make a double forfeiture of salvation, who are so unwilling to be saved.

Be thankful, O Christians, to your heavenly Master, for tracing you out so plain and sweet a way. Be thankful that he hath cut short those tiresome studies, by which your taskmasters would confound you, under pretence of making

you like gods, in some more subtle and sublime speculations than vulgar wits can reach. Now all that are willing may be religious, and be saved: it is not confined to men of learning. The way is so sweet, as sheweth it suitable to the end. It is but believe God's love and promises of salvation by Christ, till you are filled with love and its delights, and live in the pleasures of gratitude and holiness, and in the joyful hopes of endless glory! and is not this an easy yoke? Saith our heavenly poet Mr. G. Herbert in his poem called Divinity."

As men for fear the stars should sleep and nod,
And trip at night, have spheres supply'd;

As if a star were duller than a clod,

Which knows his way without a guide:
Just so the other heaven they also serve,
Divinity's transcendent sky,

Which with the edge of wit they cut and carve,
Reason triumphs, and faith lies by,

But all his doctrine which he taught and gave,
Was clear as heav'n from whence it came;

At least those beams of truth which only save,

Surpass in brightness any flame :

Love God, and love your neighbours, watch and pray,
Do as you would be done unto.

O dark instructions! even as dark as day!

Who can these Gordian knots undo?

CHAP. X.

Inference 6. How little Reason ungodly men have to be proud of their Learning, or of any sort of Knowledge or Wisdom whatsoever.

As the ancient Gnostics, being puffed up with their corrupt Platonic speculations, looked down with contempt upon ordinary Christians, as silly ignorants in comparison of them, and yet had not wisdom enough to preserve them from the lusts and pollutions of the world; even so is it with abundance of the worldly clergy and ungodly scholars in this age. They think their learning setteth them many degrees above the vulgar, and giveth them right to be reverenced as the oracles or rabbies of the world; when yet, poor souls! they have not learned, by all their reading, studies and dis

putings to love God and holiness better than the riches and preferments of the world. And some of them not better than a cup of strong drink, or than the brutish pleasures of sense and flesh. It is a pitiful thing to see the pulpit made a stage for the ostentation of this self-shaming, self-condemning pride and folly: for a man under pretence of serving God, and helping other men to heaven, to make it his errand to tell the hearers, that he is a very wise and learned man, who hath not wit enough to choose a holy, humble life, nor to make sure of heaven, or to save his soul; nor perhaps to keep out of the tavern or alehouse the next week, nor the same day to forbear the venting of his worldly, carnal mind: What is such learning but a game of imagination, in which the fantasy sports itself with names and notions; or worse, the materials which are used in the service of sin, the fuel of pride, the blinder and deceiver of such as were too ignorant before, being a mere shadow and name of knowledge? What good will it do a man tormented with the gout, or stone, or by miserable poverty, to know the names of various herbs, or to read the titles of the apothecaries' boxes, or to read on a sign-post, 'Here is a good ordinary.' And what good will it do a carnal, unsanctified soul that must be in hell for ever, to know the Hebrew roots or points, or to discourse of "Cartesius's Materia Subtilis," and "Globuli Ætherei," &c. Or of "Epicurus and Gassendus' Atoms," or to look on the planets in Galileus' glasses, while he casteth away all his hopes of heaven, by his unbelief, and his preferring the pleasures of the flesh? Will it comfort a man that is cast out of God's presence, and condemned to utter darkness, to remember that he was once a good mathematician, or logician, or musician, or that he had wit to get riches and preferments in the world, and to climb up to the height of honour and dominion? It is a pitiful thing to hear a man boast of his wit, while he is madly rejecting the only felicity, forsaking God, esteeming vanity, and damning his soul: the Lord deliver us from such wit and learning! Is it not enough to refuse heaven, and choose hell (in the certain causes) to lose the only day of their hopes, and in the midst of light, to be incomparably worse than mad, but they must needs be accounted wise and learned, in all this self-destroying folly? As if (like the physician who boasted that he killed men according to the rules of art) it were the height of their ambi

tion to go learnedly to hell, and with reverend gravity and wit, to live here like brutes, and hereafter with devils for

evermore.

CHAP. XI.

Inference 7. Why the ungodly World hateth Holiness, and not Learning.

FROM my very childhood, when I was first sensible of the concernments of men's souls, I was possessed with some admiration, to find that every where the religious, godly sort of people, who did but exercise a serious care of their own and other men's salvation, were made the wonder and obloquy of the world; especially of the most vicious and flagitious men; so that they that professed the same articles of faith, the same commandments of God to be their law, and the same petitions of the Lord's-prayer to be their desire, and so professed the same religion, did every where revile those that did endeavour to live according to that same profession, and to seem to be in good sadness in what they said. I thought that this was impudent hypocrisy in the ungodly, worldly sort of men! To take them for the most intolerable persons in the land, who are but serious in their own religion, and do but endeavour to perform what all their enemies also vowed and promised. If religion be bad, and our faith be not true, why do these men profess it? If it be true and good, why do they hate and revile them that would live in the serious practice of it, if they will not practise it themselves? But we must not expect reason, when sin and sensuality have made men unreasonable.

But I must profess that since I observed the course of the world, and the concord of the word and providences of God, I took it for a notable proof of man's fall, and of the verity of the Scripture, and the supernatural original of true sanctification, to find such an universal enmity between the holy and the serpentine seed, and to find Cain and Abel's case so ordinarily exemplified, and him that is born after the flesh to persecute him that is born after the Spirit. And

VOL. XV.

methinks to this day it is a great and visible help for the confirmation of our Christian faith.

But that which is much remarkable in it is, that nothing else in the world, except the crossing of men's carnal interest, doth meet with any such universal enmity. A man may be as learned as he can, and no man hate him for it. If he excel all others, all men will praise him and proclaim his excellency he may be an excellent linguist, an excellent philosopher, an excellent physician, an excellent logician, an excellent orator, and all commend him. Among musicians, architects, soldiers, seamen, and all arts and sciences, men value, prefer and praise the best; yea, even speculative theology, such wits as the schoolmen and those that are called great divines are honoured by all, and meet, as such, but with little enmity, persecution or obloquy in the world. Though I know that even a Galilæus, a Campanella, and many such have suffered by the Roman inquisitors, that was not so much in enmity to their speculations or opinions, as through a fear lest new philosophical notions should unsettle men's minds and open the way to new opinions in theology, and so prove injurious to the kingdom and interest of Rome. I know also that Demosthenes, Cicero, Seneca, Lucan, and many other learned men, have died by the hands or power of tyrants. But that was not for their learning, but for their opposition to those tyrants' wills and interests. And I know that some religious men have suffered for their sins and follies, and some for their meddling too much with secular affairs, as the counsellors of princes, as Functius, Justus Jonas, and many others. But yet no parts, no excellency, no skill or learning is hated commonly, but honoured in the world, no not theological learning, save only this practical godliness and religion, and the principles of it, which only rendereth men amiable to God, through Christ, and saveth men's souls. To know and love God, and live as those that know and love him, to seek first his kingdom and the righteousness thereof, to walk circumspectly, in a holy and heavenly conversation, and studiously to obey the laws of God, this which must save us, this which God loveth and the devil hateth, is hated also by all his children; for the same malignity hath the same effect.

But methinks this should teach all considering men to