To the Right Honourable

THE LADY DALKEITH,

Lady Governess to her Highness the
Princess Henrietta,

MADAM,—

IT is unsafe in these dangerous days for any to go abroad without a convoy, or, at the least, a pass; my book hath both in being dedicated to your Honour. The Apostle saith, Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? [1 Cor. ix. 7.] I am one of your Honour’s planting, and could heartily wish that the fruit I bring forth were worthy to be tasted by your judicious palate. Howsoever, accept these grapes, if not for their goodness, for their novelty: though not sweetest relished, they are soonest ripe, being the first fruits of Exeter press, presented unto you. And if ever my ingratitude should forget my obligations to your Honour, these black lines will turn red, and blush his unworthiness that wrote them. In this pamphlet your Ladyship shall praise whatsoever you are pleased but to pardon. But I am tedious, for your Honour can spare no more minutes from looking on a better book, her infant Highness, committed to your charge. Was ever more hope of worth in a less volume? But O! how excellently will the same, in due time, be set forth, seeing the paper is so pure, and your Ladyship the overseer to correct the press! The continuance and increase of whose happiness here, and hereafter, is desired in his daily devotions, who resteth

Your Honour’s in all

Christian service,

THOMAS FULLER.

GOOD THOUGHTS IN BAD TIMES.

PERSONAL MEDITATIONS.

I.

LORD, how near was I to danger, yet escaped! I was upon the brink of the brink of it, yet fell not in; they are well kept who are kept by thee. Excellent archer! Thou didst hit thy mark in missing it, as meaning to fright, not hurt me. Let me not now be such a fool as to pay my thanks to blind Fortune for a favour which the eye of Providence hath bestowed upon me. Rather let the narrowness of my escape make my thankfulness to thy goodness the larger, lest my ingratitude justly cause, that, whereas this arrow but hit my hat, the next pierce my head.

SCRIPTURE OBSERVATIONS.

I.

LORD, in the parable of the four sorts of ground whereon the seed was sown, the last alone proved fruitful. [Matth. xiii. 8.] There the bad were more than the good: but amongst the servants two improved their talents, or pounds, and only one buried them. [Matth. xxv. 18; Luke xix. 20.] There the good were more than the bad. Again, amongst the ten virgins, five were wise and five foolish: there the good and bad were equal. [Matth. xxv. 2.] I see that concerning the number of the saints in comparison to the reprobates, no certainty can be collected from these parables. Good reason, for it is not their principal purpose to meddle with that point. Grant that I may never rack a Scripture simile beyond the true intent thereof, lest, instead of sucking milk, I squeeze blood out of it.

HISTORICAL APPLICATIONS.

I.

THE English ambassador some years since prevailed so far with the Turkish emperor, as to persuade him to hear some of our English music, from which (as from other liberal sciences) both he and his nation were naturally averse. But it happened that the musicians were so long in tuning their instruments, that the great Turk, distasting their tediousness, went away in discontent before their music began. I am afraid that the differences and dissensions betwixt Christian churches (being so long in reconciling their discords) will breed in pagans such a disrelish of our religion, as they will not be invited to attend thereunto.

MIXT CONTEMPLATIONS.

I.

WHEN I look on a leaden bullet, therein I can read both God’s mercy and man’s malice. God’s mercy, whose providence, foreseeing that men of lead would make instruments of cruelty, did give that metal a medicinal virtue; as it hurts, so it also heals; and a bullet sent in by man’s hatred into a fleshy and no vital part, will (with ordinary care and curing), out of a natural charity, work its own way out. But oh! how devilish were those men who, to frustrate and defeat his goodness, and to countermand the healing power of lead, first found the champing and empoisoning of bullets! Fools, who account themselves honoured with the shameful title of being the inventors of evil things, [Rom. i. 30.] endeavouring to out-infinite God’s kindness with their cruelty.

TO THE CHRISTIAN READER.

WHEN I read the description of the tumult in Ephesus, Acts xix. 32, (wherein they would have their Diana to be jure divino, that it fell down from Jupiter,) it appears to me the too methodical character of our present confusions. Some therefore cried one thing, and some another, for the assembly was confused, and the more part knew not wherefore they were come together. O the distractions of our age! And how many thousands know as little why the sword was drawn, as when it will be sheathed. Indeed (thanks be to God!) we have no more house-burnings, but many heart-burnings; and though outward bleeding be stanched, it is to be feared that the broken vein bleeds inwards, which is more dangerous.

This being our sad condition, I perceive controversial writings (sounding somewhat of drums and trumpets) do but make the wound the wider. Meditations are like the minstrel the prophet called for, [2 Kings iii. 15.] to pacify his mind discomposed with passion, which moved me to adventure on this treatise as the most innocent and inoffensive manner of writing.

I confess, a volume of another subject, and larger size, is expected from me. But in London I have learnt the difference betwixt downright breaking, and craving time of their creditors. Many sufficient merchants, though not solvable for the present, make use of the latter, whose example I follow. And though I cannot pay the principal, yet I desire such small treatises may be accepted from me, as interest, or consideration money, until I shall, God willing, be enabled to discharge the whole debt.

If any wonder that this treatise comes patronless into the world, let such know that dedications begin now-a-days to grow out of fashion. His policy was commended by many, (and proved profitable unto himself,) who, instead of select godfathers, made all the congregation witnesses to his child, as I invite the world to this my book, requesting each one would patronize therein such parts and passages thereof as please them, so hoping that by several persons the whole will be protected.

I have, Christian reader (so far I dare go, not inquiring into thy surname, of thy side, or sect), nothing more to burden thy patience with. Only I will add, that I find our Saviour in Tertullian, and ancient Latin Fathers, constantly styled a sequestrator,Sequester. in the proper notion of the word. For God and man being at odds, the difference was sequestered or referred into Christ’s hand to end and umpire it. How it fareth with thy estate on earth I know not; but I earnestly desire, that in heaven both thou and I may ever^ be under sequestration in that Mediator for God’s glory and our good, to whose protection thou art committed by

Thy brother in all

Christian offices,

THOMAS FULLER.

PERSONAL MEDITATIONS.

SCRIPTURE OBSERVATIONS.

MEDITATIONS ON THE TIMES.

MEDITATIONS ON ALL KIND OF PRAYERS.

OCCASIONAL MEDITATIONS.

To

The Truly Honourable and Most Virtuous Lady,

THE LADY MONCK.

MADAM,—

I HAD the happiness, some sixteen years since, to be minister of that parish wherein your Ladyship had your nativity, and this I humbly conceive doth afford me some title to dedicate my weak endeavours to your Honour.

It is notoriously known in our English Chronicles, that there was an ill May-day, Anno Dom. 1517, in the ninth year of King Henry the Eighth, wherein much mischief was done in London, the lives of many lost, and estates of more confounded.

This last good May-day hath made plentiful amends for that evil one, and hath laid a foundation for the happiness of an almost ruined church and state; which as under God it was effected by the prudence and valour of your noble and most renowned husband, so you are eminently known to have had a finger, yea, a hand, yea, an arm happily instrumental therein. God reward you with honour here, and glory hereafter, which is the desire of millions in the three nations, and amongst them of

Your Honour’s most humble Servant,

THOMAS FULLER.

Zion College, May 2, 1660.

TO THE COURTEOUS READER.

I JUSTLY presume thee too much Christian and gentleman to trample on him who prostrates himself. I confess myself subject to just censure, that I have not severally sorted these contemplations, setting such which are, 1. Of Scripture; 2. Historical; 3. Occasional; 4. Personal; distinctly by themselves, which now are confusedly heaped, or rather huddled, together.

This I confess was caused by my haste, the press hourly craving, with the daughter of the horseleech, Give, give.

However, such a confused medley may pass for the lively emblem of these times, the subject of this our book. And when these times shall be reduced into better order, my book, at the next impression, may be digested into better method. Meantime I remain

Thy Servant in Christ Jesus,

THOMAS FULLER

MIXT CONTEMPLATIONS ON
THESE TIMES.

I. PLAY AN AFTER-GAME.

WE read how at the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, Neh. iii. 12: Next unto him repaired Shallum, the son of Halohesh, he and his daughters. Was it woman’s work to handle a trowel? Did it consist with the modesty of that sex to clamber scaffolds?

Surely those females did only repair by the proxy of their purses, in which sense Solomon is said to have built the temple.

Our weaker sex hath been overstrong in making and widening the breaches in our English Zion, both by their purses and persuasions. To redeem their credit, let them hereafter be as active in building as heretofore they were in breaking down.

Such wives, who not only lie in the bosoms, but lodge in the affections, of loving husbands, who are empowered with places of command, joining IMPORTUNITY to their OPPORTUNITY, may be marvellously instrumental to the happiness of our nation.

We read of Ahab, 1 Kings xxi. 25, that none was like him, who sold himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. By the same proportion that person will prove peerless in piety, who hath a godly consort in his bosom, seasonably to incite him, who is so forward in himself to all honorable actions.

II. MIRACULOUS CURE.

WE read, Luke xiii. 11, of a woman who had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. This woman may pass for the lively emblem of the English nation; from the year of our Lord 1642 (when our wars first began) unto this present 1660, are eighteen years in my arithmetic; all which time our land hath been bowed together, past possibility of standing upright.

Some will say that the weight of heavy taxes have caused this crookedness. But alas! this is the least and lightest of all things I reflect at in this allusion. It is chiefly the weight of our sins, Heb. xii. 1, which doth so easily beset us. Our mutual malice and animosities which have caused this incurvation.

A pitiful posture wherein the face is made to touch the feet, and the back is set above the head. God in due time set us right, and keep us right, that the head may be in its proper place. Next the neck of the nobility, then the breast of the gentry, the loins of the merchants and citizens, the thighs of the yeomanry, the legs and feet of artificers and day-laborers. As for the clergy (here by me purposely omitted) what place soever shall be assigned them; if low, God grant patience; if high, give humility unto them.

When thus our land in God’s leisure shall be restored to its former rectitude, and set upright again, then I hope she may leave off her steel bodies, which have galled her with wearing them so long, and return again to her peaceable condition.

III. HAND ON MOUTH.

IT is said, Gen. vi. 11, how before the flood the earth was filled with violence. Some will say, with Nicodemus, How can these things be? violence being relative, and requiring a counterpart. Though such tyrants were hammers, others must be patient anvils for them to smite upon. Such persons, purely passive in oppression, were to be pitied, not punished; to be delivered, not drowned in the flood.

But the answer is easy, seeing we read in the same chapter, ver. 5, that God saw that the imagination of the thoughts of man was only evil continually. God plainly perceived that the sufferers of violence would have been offerers of it, if empowered with might equal to their malice. Their cursedness was as sharp, though their horns were not so long; and what they lacked in deed and actions, they made up in desires and endeavours. So that in sending a general deluge over all, God was clearly just, and men justly miserable.

Let such Englishmen who have been of the depressed party during our civil wars, enter into a scrutiny and serious search of their own souls, whether or no (if armed with power) they would not have laid as great load on others as themselves underwent. Yea, let them out of a godly jealousy suspect more cruelty in themselves than they can conceive. Then will they find just cause to take the blame and shame on themselves, and give God the glory that he hath not drowned all in a general deluge of destruction.

IV. AT LAST.

A LADY of quality, formerly forward to promote our civil wars, and whose well-intending zeal had sent in all her plate to Guildhall, was earnestly discoursing with a divine concerning these times, a little before dinner; her face respecting the cupboard in the room, which was furnished with plenty of pure Venice glasses: “Now,” said she, “I plainly perceive, that I and many of my judgment have been abused with the specious pretences of liberty and religion, till in the indiscreet pursuance thereof we are almost fallen into slavery and atheism.”

To whom the other, betwixt jest and earnest, replied: “Madam, it is no wonder that now your eyes are opened; for so long as this cupboard was full of thick and massy plate, you could perceive nothing through them; but now so many clear and transparent glasses are substituted in their room, all things are become obvious to your intuition.”

The possessing of superfluous wealth sometimes doth hinder our clear apprehensions of matters; like a pearl in the eye of the soul, prejudicing the sight thereof; whilst poverty may prove a good collyrium, or eye-salve unto us, to make a true discovery of those things we knew not before.

V. MISTAKEN.

I BEHELD honour as of a mounting and aspiring nature, and therefore I expected, rationally enough as I conceive, to have found it ascending to the clouds.

I looked upon wealth as what was massy, ponderous, and by consequence probable to settle and be firmly fixed on the earth.

But oh! how much is my expectation frustrated and defeated! For David, Psalm vii. 5, maketh mention of honour lying in the dust; and Solomon his son, Prov. xxiii. 5, informeth me, how riches certainly make themselves wings, and flee away as an eagle toward heaven: what I looked for below is towered aloft, and what I expected above is fallen below.

Our age hath afforded plentiful experiments of both: honour was near the dust, when a new nobility of a later stamp were in a fair likelihood to have outshined those of a purer standard. The wealth of the land doth begin (to use the falconer’s phrase), to fly to lessen. And if these taxes continue, will soon fly out of sight. So uncertain and unsafe it is for men to bottom their happiness on any earthly perfection.

VI. TRUTH.

I SAW a traveller in a terrible tempest take his seasonable shelter under a fair and thick tree: it afforded him protection for a good time, and secured him from the rain.

But, after that it held up, and was fair round about, he unhappily continued under the tree so long, till the droppings thereof made him soundly wet, and he found more to condemn his weakness than pity his wetting.

A Parliament is known to be the best refuge and sanctuary to shelter us from the tempest of violence and oppression. It is sometimes the sole, and always the surest, remedy in that kind. But alas! the late Parliament lasted so long, that it began to be the grievance of the nation, after that the most and best members thereof were violently excluded.

The remedy turned the malady of the land, and we were in fear to be drowned by the droppings of that tree, if God of his gracious goodness had not put an unexpected period to their power.

VII. AFTER-BORN.

A LADY big with child was condemned to perpetual imprisonment, and in the dungeon was delivered of a son, who continued with her till a boy of some bigness. It happened that one time he heard his mother (for see neither of them could, as to discern in so dark a place) bemoan her condition.

Why, mother, (said the child,) do you complain, seeing you want nothing you can wish, having clothes, meat, and drink sufficient? Alas! child, (returned the mother,) I lack liberty, converse with Christians, the light of the sun, and many things more, which thou, being prison-born, neither art nor can be sensible of in thy condition.

The post-nati, understand thereby such striplings born in England since the death of monarchy therein, conceive this land, their mother, to be in a good estate. For one fruitful harvest followeth another, commodities are sold at reasonable rates, abundance of brave clothes are worn in the city, though not by such persons whose birth doth best become, but whose purses can best bestow them.

But their mother, England, doth justly bemoan the sad difference betwixt her present and former condition, when she enjoyed full and free trade without payment of taxes, save so small they seemed rather an acknowledgment of their allegiance than a burden to their estate; when she had the court of a king, the House of Lords, yea, and the Lord’s house, decently kept, constantly frequented, without falsehood in doctrine, or faction in discipline. God of his goodness restore unto us so much of these things as may consist with his glory and our good.

VIII. A HEAP OF PEARLS.

I SAW a servant maid, at the command of her mistress, make, kindle, and blow a fire. Which done, she was posted away about other business, whilst her mistress enjoyed the benefit of the fire. Yet I observed that this servant, whilst industriously employed in the kindling thereof, got a more general, kindly, and continuing heat than her mistress herself. Her heat was only by her, and not in her, staying with her no longer than she stayed by the chimney; whilst the warmth of the maid was inlaid, and equally diffused through the whole body.

An estate suddenly gotten is not so lasting to the owner thereof, as what is duly got by industry. The substance of the diligent, saith Solomon, Prov. xii. 27, is precious. He cannot be counted poor that hath so many pearls, precious brown bread, precious small beer, precious plain clothes, &c. A comfortable consideration in this our age, wherein many hands have learned their lesson of labour, who were neither born nor bred unto it.

IX. SILENT SADNESS.

TWO captains on the same side in our civil wars, discoursing together, one of them (with small cause and without any measure) did intolerably boast of his personal performances, as if he had been of the quorum in all considerable actions; at last, not ashamed of, but weaned with his own loquacity, he desired the other captain to relate what service he had done in these wars; to whom he returned, “Other men can tell you of that.”

We meet with many, living at the sign of the Royalist, who much brag of their passive services (I mean their sufferings) in the late war. But that spoke in the wheel which creaketh most doth not bear the greatest burden in the cart. The loudest criers are not always the largest losers.

How much hath Sir John Stowel lost? How many new gentlemen have started up out of the estate of that ancient knight? What hath the Lord Craven lost? Whether more, or more unjustly, hard to decide? Others can tell of their and many other men’s sufferings, whilst they themselves hold their peace.

Here we dare not speak of him who, though the greatest loser of all, speaketh nothing of himself; and therefore his silence putteth a greater obligation on us, both to pity him here on earth, and pray for him to Heaven.

X. LOST AND KEPT.

THIS seeming paradox will, on examination, prove a real truth, viz. that though Job lost his seven thousand sheep consumed by fire of God, Job i. 16, (understand it, by his permission, and Satan’s immission,) yet he still kept the wool of many of them.

For Job, in the vindication of his integrity, (not to praise but purge himself,) doth relate, how the loins of the poor blessed him, being warmed with the fleece of his sheep (Job xxxi. 20). So much of his wool (in the cloth made thereof) he secured in a safe hand, lending it to God (in poor people), Prov. xix. 17, as the best of debtors, being most able and willing to repay it.

Such as have been plundered of their estates in these wars may content and comfort themselves with this consideration, that so long as they enjoyed plenty they freely parted with a proportion thereof to the relief of the poor: what they gave, that they have; it still remaineth theirs, and is safely laid up for them in a place where rust and moth do not corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal.

XI. ALL.

THE Magdeburgenses, out of a spirit of opposition to the Papists, over-prizing the person and actions of St. Peter, do, in my mind, on the other side too much decry him, causelessly cavilling at his words to our Saviour (Mark x. 28): Ecce reliquimus omnia, Behold, we have left all and followed thee.

What, say they, had he left? He maketh as if he had left great matters, and a mighty estate; whereas this his all was not more than an old ship, some few rotten nets, and suchlike inconsiderable accommodations.

But Bellarmine (always ingenuous, sometimes satirical) payeth them home for their causeless exception against that Apostle: What! saith he, would they have him have left more than he had? All was all, how little soever it was.

Different, I confess, is the standard and measure of men’s losses in this time. Some, in preserving of their consciences, have lost manners; others farms, others cottages. Some have had a hin, others a homer, others an ephah of afflictions. However, those men must on all hands be allowed the greatest losers who have lost all (how small soever that their all was), and who, with the widow (Mark xii. 44), have parted with ὅλον τὸν βίον αὑτῶν, all their livelihood.

XII. GOOD ACCOUNTANT.

I WAS present in the West country some twenty-five years since, when a bishop made a partage of money collected by a brief amongst such who in a village had been sufferers by a casual fire; one of whom brought in the inventory of his losses far above all belief.

Being demanded how he could make out his losses to so improbable a proportion, he alleged the burning of a pear-tree growing hard by his house, valuing the same at twenty years’ purchase, and the pears at twenty shillings per annum, presuming every one would be a bearing year; and by such windy particulars did blow up his losses to the sum by him nominated.

Some pretend in these wars to have lost more thousands than ever they were possessed of hundreds. These reckon in, not only what they had, but what they might, yea, would have had. They compute not only their possessions, but reversions, yea, their probabilities, possibilities, and impossibilities also, which they might desire, but could never hope to obtain.

The worst is, I might term many of these men anti-Mephibosheths, who, out of his loyalty to David, 2 Sam. xix. 30, Let them take all, said he, forasmuch as my lord the king is come home again in peace unto his own house. But these, except they may have all, and more than all, they ever possessed, care not a whit whether or no the king ever return; so unconcerned are they in his condition.

XIII. NO TITTLE OF TITLE.

TWO young gentlemen were comparing their revenues together, vying which of them were the best. My demesnes, saith the one, is worth two, but mine, saith the other, is worth four hundred pounds a year.

My farms, saith the one, are worth four, but mine, saith the other, are worth eight hundred pounds a year.

My estate, saith the one, is my own, to which the other returned no answer, as conscious to himself that he kept what lawfully belonged to another.

I care not how small my means be, so they be my means: I mean my own without any injury to others. What is truly gotten may be comfortably kept. What is otherwise may be possessed, but not enjoyed.

Upon the question, What is the worst bread which is eaten? One answered, in respect of the coarseness thereof, Bread made of beans. Another said, Bread made of acorns. But the third hit the truth, who said, Bread taken out of other men’s mouths, who are the true proprietaries thereof. Such bread may be sweet in the mouth to taste, but is not wholesome in the stomach to digest.

XIV. FREELY, FREELY.

A GRAVE divine in the West country, (familiarly known unto me,) conceiving himself over-taxed, repaired to one of the governors of the king’s garrisons for to move for some mitigation.

The governor perceiving the satin cap of this divine to be torn, Fie, fie, said he, that a man of your quality should wear such a cap; the rats have gnawed it. O no, sir, answered he, the rates have gnawed it.

The print or impression of the teeth of taxes is visible in the clothes of many men, yea, it hath corroded holes in many men’s estates. Yea, as Hatto, Archbishop of Mentz, is reported to have been eaten up by rats,Munster’s Cosmog. in German. so the vermin of taxes, if continuing, is likely to devour our nation.

However, let us not in the least degree now grudge the payment thereof. Let us now pay taxes that we may never pay taxes; for, as matters now stand, our freeness at the present may cause our freedom at the future, if once the arrears of the army and navy were discharged.

I care not how much I am let blood, so it be not by the adventure of an empiric, but advice of a physician, who I am sure will take no more ounces from me than may consist with my safety, and need doth require. Such the piety and policy of the present Parliament, they will impose no more payments than the necessity of the estate doth extort. The rather because they are persons (blessed be God) of the primest quality in the nation, and let us blood through their own veins, the greatest part of the payments they impose lighting first on their own estates.

XV. CRY WITHOUT CAUSE, AND BE WHIPT.

I HAVE known the city of London almost forty years, their shops did ever sing the same tune, that trading was dead. Even in the reign of King James (when they wanted nothing but thankfulness) this was their complaint.

It is just with God, that they who complained without cause should have just cause to complain. Trading, which then was quick, and in health, hath since been sick, yea, in a swoon, yea, dead, yea, buried. There is a vacation in the shops in the midst of high term; and if shops be in a consumption, ships will not be long in good health.

Yet I know not whether to call this decay of trade in London a mishap or a happy miss. Probably the city, if not pinched with poverty, had never regained her wealth.

XVI. SPRING BEGAN.

I MEET with two etymologies of bonfires. Some deduce it from fires made of bones, relating it to the burning of martyrs, first fashionable in England in the reign of King Henry the Fourth. But others derive the word (more truly in my mind) from boon, that is, good, and fires; whether good be taken here for great, or for merry and cheerful, such fires being always made on welcome occasions.

Such an occasion happened at London last February, 1659. I confess the 11th of March is generally beheld as the first day of the spring, but hereafter London (and in it all England) may date its vernal heat (after a long winter of woes and war) from the 11th of February.

On which day so many boon-fires (the best new lights I ever saw in that city) were made; although I believe the fagots themselves knew as much as some who laid them on for what purpose those fires were made.

The best is, such fires were rather prophetical than historical, not so much telling as foretelling the condition of that city and our nation, which, by God’s gracious goodness, is daily bettered and improved.

But O the excellent boon-fire which the converted Ephesians made, Acts xix. 19: Many also of them which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

What was a pint of ashes worth, according to that proportion. But oh! in the imitation of the Ephesians, let us Englishmen labor to find out our bosom sin, and burn it (how dear soever unto us) in the flames of holy anger and indignation. Such boon-fires would be most profitable to us, and acceptable to God, inviting him to perfect and complete the good which he had begun to our nation.

XVII. THE HAND IS ALL.

A GENTLEWOMAN some sixty years since came to Winchester school, where she had a son, and where Dr. Love (one eminent in his profession) was then schoolmaster. This tender mother, seeing the terrible rods (the properties of that school), began with tears to bemoan the condition of her son, subject to so cruel correction. To whom the schoolmaster replied: Mistress, content yourself, it matters not how big the rod be, so it be in the hand of Love to manage it.

Alas! he was only Love in his surname; but what saith the Apostle, 1 John iv. 16: God is love, even in his own essence and nature.

What then, though the wicked be not only a rod in the hand of God, but what is worse, a sword, Psalm xvii. 13, the wicked which is thy sword, they shall do no hurt as long as God hath the ordering of them.

A pregnant experiment hereof we have in (the, call it, rod or sword of) our late civil war, which lasted so long in our land, yet left so little signs behind it. Such who consider how much was destroyed in the war may justly wonder that any provision was left, whilst such who behold the plenty we have left will more admire that any was ever destroyed.

XVIII. ALL TONGUE AND EARS.

WE read, Acts xvii. 21, All the Athenians, and strangers which were there, spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

How cometh this transposition? tell and hear; it should be hear and tell; they must hear it before they could tell it; and in the very method of nature, those that are deaf are dumb.

But know, it is more than probable that many Athenians told what they never heard, being themselves the first finders, founders, and forgers of false reports, therewith merely to entertain the itching curiosity of others.

England aboundeth with many such Athenians; it is hard to say whether more false coin or false news be minted in our days. One side is not more pleased with their own factions than the other is with their own fictions.

Some pretend to intelligence without understanding, whose relations are their own confutations. I know some who repair to such novelants on purpose to know what news is false by their reporting thereof.

XIX. GIVE AND TAKE.

THE Archbishop of Spalatro, when Dean of Windsor, very affectionately moved the prebendaries thereof to contribute bountifully towards the relieving of a distressed foreigner, reporting him a person of much worth and want; to whom one of the company replied: Qui suadet sua det, Let him who persuadeth others, give something of his own. But the Archbishop, who was as covetous as ambitious, and whose charity had a tongue without hands, would not part with a penny.

The Episcopal party doth desire and expect that the Presbyterian should remit of his rigidness in order to an expedient betwixt them. The Presbyterians require that the Episcopal side abate of their austerity to advance an accommodation .

But some on both sides are so wedded to their wilfulness, stand so stiff in their judgments, are so high and hot in their passions, they will not part with the least punctilio in their opinions and practices.

Such men’s judgments cannot pretend to the exactness of the Gibeonites, Judges xx. 16, that they hit the mark of the truth at a hair’s breadth, and fail not, yet will they not abate a hair’s breadth in order to unity; they will take all, but tender nothing; make motions with their mouths, but none with their feet, for peace, not stirring a step towards it.

O that we could see some proffers and performances of condescension on either side, and then let others who remain obstinate, and will embrace no peace, be branded with Pharez, Gen. xxxviii. 29, the breach be upon them.

XX. CHARITY, CHARITY.

IN my father’s time, there was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, a native of Carlton, in Leicestershire,Camd. Brit. in Leicestershire. where the people (through some occult cause) are troubled with a wharling in their throats, so that they cannot plainly pronounce the letter R. This scholar, being conscious of his infirmity, made a Latin oration of the usual expected length, without an R therein; and yet did he not only select words fit for his mouth, easy for pronunciation, but also as pure and expressive for signification, to show that men might speak without being beholden to the dog’s letter.

Our English pulpits, for these last eighteen years, have had in them too much caninal anger, vented by snapping and snarling spirits on both sides. But if you bite and devour one another, (saith the Apostle, Gal. v. 15,) take heed ye be not devoured one of another.

Think not that our sermons must be silent if not satirical, as if divinity did not afford smooth subjects enough to be seasonably insisted on in this juncture of time; let us try our skill whether we cannot preach without any dog letter or biting word: the art is half learned by intending, and wholly by serious endeavouring it.

I am sure that such soft sermons will be more easy for the tongue of the preacher in pronouncing them, less grating to the ears of pious people that hear them, and more edifying to the heart of both speaker and hearers of them.

XXI. BUT ONE FAVOURITE.

WE read how Abraham (Gen. xxv. 5) gave all he had unto Isaac. As for his six sons, Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian, Ishback, and Shuah, which he had by Keturah his concubine, he only gave them gifts, and sent them away into the east country.

England hath but one Isaac, or legitimate religion of the Church, namely, the Protestant, as the doctrine thereof is established in the Thirty-nine Articles. But how many spurious ones she hath (whether six, sixty, or six score) I neither do know nor will inquire, nor will I load my book and trouble the reader with their new, numerous, and hard names.

O may the state be pleased so far to reflect on this Isaac, as to settle the solid inheritance upon him! Let the Protestant religion only be countenanced by the law, be owned and acknowledged for the received religion of the nation.

XXII. CALMLY, CALMLY.

WE read, (Gen. iii. 8,) that when God solemnly proceeded in the sentencing of our first parents, he was heard walking in the garden in the cool of the day; to teach men, when they go about matters of moment, (wherein not only the present age, but posterity, is also concerned,) to becalm their souls of all passion. But alas! much reformation made (rather under than) by King Charles, was done in the heat of the day, in the dog-days of our civil discords, and midsummer moon of our military distractions. So that possibly, when that which was done in the heat of the day shall be reviewed, even by the self-same persons, in the cool of the day, they will perceive something by them so reformed, now to need a new reformation.

But this motion (and all that follow) I humbly lay down at their feet who have power and place to reform, who may either trample upon it or take it up, as their wisdoms shall see just occasion.

XXIII. TRY AND TRUST.

IT was wisely requested by the children of the captivity, Dan. i., and warily granted by the king’s chamberlain unto them, that, by way of trial, they should feed on pulse for ten days, and then an inspection to be made on their countenances, whether the lilies therein did look as white and roses as red as before, that so their bill of fare might be either changed or continued as they saw just occasion.

Let such new practices as are to be brought into our Church be for a time candidates and probationers on their good behaviour, to see how the temper of the people will fit them, and they fadge with it, before they be publicly enjoined.

XXIV. ALIKE, BUT CONTRARY.

I OBSERVE in Scripture, that power to do some deeds is a sufficient authority to do them. Thus Samson’s power to pluck down the two fundamental pillars of the Dagon’s temple, was authority enough for him to do it.

Elijah’s power to make fire to come at his call on the two captains was authority enough to do it, because such deeds were above the strength, stature, and standard of human proportion.

However, hence it doth not follow that it is lawful for a private man with axes and hammers to beat down a Christian church, because Samson plucked down Dagon’s temple; nor doth it follow that men may burn their brethren with fagot and fire, because Elijah called for fire from heaven; these being acts not miraculous but mischievous, and no might from heaven, but mere malice from hell, required for the achieving thereof.

Here it is hard to say which of these two things have done most mischief in England; public persons having private souls and narrow hearts consulting their own ease and advantage, or private persons having vast designs to invade public employments. This is most sure, that betwixt them both they have almost undone the most flourishing church and state in the Christian world.

XXV. CHASMA, PHASMA.

HOW bluntly and abruptly doth the seventy-third Psalm begin! Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart.

Truly is a term of continuation, not inception of a speech. The head or top of this psalm seems lost or cut off, and the neck only remaining; in the room thereof.

But know that this psalm hath two moieties; one unwritten, made only in the trying-house of David’s heart: the other written, visible on the theatre, beginning as is aforesaid.

Thomas Aquinas, sitting silent in a musing posture, at the table of the king of France, at last brake forth in these words: Conclusum est contra Manichaeos, It is concluded against the Manichaeans; which speech, though nonsense to the persons in the place, at the best independent, without any connection to the discourse at table, had its necessary coherence in the mind of that great schoolman.

David, newly awaking in this psalm out of the sweet slumber of his meditation, openeth his eyes with the good handsel of these words: Truly God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart. A maxim of undoubted truth, and a firm anchor to those who have been tossed in the tempest of these times.

XXVI. SHARE AND SHARE-LIKE.

CHESHIRE hath formerly been called chief of men. Indeed, no county in England of the same greatness, or (if you will rather) of the same littleness, can produce so many families of ancient gentry.

Now let it break the stomachs, but not the hearts, abate the pride, not destroy the courage, of the inhabitants of this shire, that they miscarried in their late undertakings, not so much by any defect in them as default in others.

If ten men together be to lift a log, all must jointly συνάντιλαμβάνειν, that is, heave up their parts (or rather their counterparts) together.

XXVII. NATALE SOLUM DULCEDINE, ETC.

I MUST confess myself born in Northamptonshire, and if that worthy county esteem me no disgrace to it, I esteem it an honour to me. The English of the common people therein (lying in the very heart of the land) is generally very good.

And yet they have an odd phrase not so usual in other places.

They used to say, when at cudgel plays (such tame were far better than our wild battles) one gave his adversary such a sound blow as that he knew not whether to stand or to fall, that he settled him at a blow.

The relics and stump (my pen dares write no worse) of the Long Parliament pretended they would settle the church and state; but surely had they continued, it had been done in the dialect of Northamptonshire; they would so have settled us, we should neither have known how to have stood, or on which side to have fallen.

XXVIII. SEASONABLE PREVENTION.

WHEN the famine in Egypt had lasted so long, the estates of the people were so exhausted by buying corn of the king, that, their money failing, they were forced to sell their cattle unto Joseph, Gen. xlvii. 17; and this maintained them with bread for one year more.

But the famine lasting longer, and their stock of cattle being wholly spent, they then sold all their lands, and after that their persons, to Joseph, as agent for Pharaoh, so that the king of Egypt became proprietary of the bodies of all the people in his land, Gen. xlvii. 23: Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day, and your land, for Pharaoh.

XXIX. WOLF IN A LAMB’S SKIN.

BUT where is the Papist all this while? One may make hue and cry after him. He can as soon not be, as not be active. Alas! with the maid in the Gospel, he is not dead, but sleepeth; or rather, he sleepeth not, but only shutteth his eyes in dog-sleep, and doth awake when he seeth his advantage, and snappeth up many a lamb out of our flocks.

Where is the Papist? do any say? Yea, where is he not? They multiply as maggots in May, and act in and under the fanatics. What is faced with faction is lined with Popery; Faux’s dark lantern, by a strange inversion, is under our new lights.

Quakers of themselves are a company of dull, blunt, silly souls. But they go down to the Romish Philistines, and from them they whet all the edge-tools of their arguments: a formal syllogism in the mouth of an Anabaptist is plain Jesuitical equivocation.

Meantime we Protestant ministers fish all night and catch nothing; yea, lose many, who in these times fall from our Church as leaves in autumn. God in his due time send us a seasonable spring, that we may repair our losses again.

XXX. VARIOUS FANCIES.

I KNOW not what Fifth-Monarchy men would have, and wish that they knew themselves.

I dare not flatly condemn them, lest I come within the Apostle’s reproof, 2 Peter ii. 12: Speaking evil of things they understand not. If by Christ’s reigning they only intend his powerful and effectual ruling by his grace in the hearts of his servants; we all will, not turn, but continue, Fifth-Monarchy men, having always been of this judgment since we were of any judgment; had we as many arms as fingers, we would use them all herein to embrace their persons and opinions.

But some go farther, to expect an actual and personal reign of Christ on earth a thousand years, though not agreeing.

For herein since some make him but about to set forth, others to be well onwards of his way, others to be alighting in the court, others to stand before the door, others that he is entering the palace, according to the slowness or swiftness of their several fancies herein.

However, if this be but a bare speculation, and advanceth not any farther, let them peaceably enjoy it. But if it hath a dangerous influence on men’s practices to unhinge their allegiance, and if the pretence to wait for Christ in his person be an intent to slight him in his proxy (the magistrate), we do condemn their opinion as false, and detest it as damnable, leaving their persons to be ordered by the wisdoms of those in authority.

XXXI. MADE LOYAL.

WHEN King Edward the First marched into Scotland, the men of the bishopric of Durham refused to follow his standard, pleading for themselves, that they were holy-work folk, only to wait on the shrine of St. Cuthbert, and not to go out of their own country. But that wise and valiant prince cancelled their pretended privileges.

He levelled them with the rest of his subjects for civil and military as well as holy-work folk, and made them to march with his army against his enemies.

If Fifth-Monarchy (alias first-anarchy) men challenge to themselves, that (by virtue of their opinion they hold) they must be exempted from their obedience to the government, because they, forsooth, (as the lifeguard to his person,) must attend the coming of Christ to reign on earth: such is the wisdom of the state, it will make them know they must share in subjection with the rest of our nation.

But charity doth command me to believe that, in stating their opinions, Fifth-Monarchy men’s expressions are more offensive than their intentions, mouths worse than their minds, whose brains want strength to manage their own wild notions: and God grant their arms may never have power to produce them into action.

XXXII. ATTEND, ATTEND.

SOME of those whom they call Quakers are, to give them their due, very good moral men, and exactly just in their civil transactions. In proof whereof let me mention this passage, though chiefly I confess for the application thereof, which having done me (I praise God) some good, I am confident will do no hurt to any other.

A gentleman had two tenants, whereof one, being a Quaker, repaired to his landlord on the quarter-day: Here, thou, said he, tell out and take thy rent, without stirring his cap, or showing the least sign of respect.

The other came cringing and congeling: If it please your worship, said he, the times are very hard, and trading is dead, I have brought to your worship five pounds (the whole due being twenty) and shall procure the rest for your worship with all possible speed.

Both these tenants put together would make a perfect one, the rent-completing of the one, and tongue-compliments of the other. But seeing they were divided, I am persuaded that of the two the landlord was less offended with the former, imputing his ill manners to his folly, but ascribing his good dealing to his honesty.

God expecteth and requireth both good works and good words. We cannot make our addresses and applications unto him in our prayers with too much awe and reverence.

However, such who court God with luscious language, give him all his attributes, and (as King James said of a divine, who shall be nameless) compliment with God in the pulpit, will be no whit acceptable unto him, if they do not also endeavour to keep his commandments.

It is the due paying of God’s quit-rents which he expecteth; I mean, the realizing of our gratitude unto him for his many mercies, in leading the remainder of our lives according to his will and his word.

XXXIII. NO REMEDY BUT PATIENCE.

ONCE a gaoler demanded of a prisoner newly committed unto him, whether or no he were a Roman Catholic. No, answered he. What then, said he, are you an Anabaptist? Neither, replied the prisoner. What, said the other, are you a Brownist, or a Quaker? Nor so, said the man, I am a Protestant, without wealth or gard, or any addition, equally opposite to all heretics and sectaries. Then, said the gaoler, get you unto the dungeon; I will afford no favour to you, who shall get no advantage by you. Had you been of any of the other religions, some hope I had to gain by the visits of such as are of your own persuasion, whereas now you will prove to me but an unprofitable prisoner.

This is the misery of moderation; I recall my word (seeing misery properly must have sin in it). This is an affliction attending moderate men, that they have not an active party to side with them and favour them.

Men of great stature will quickly be made porters to a king, and those diminutively little, dwarfs to a queen, whilst such who are of a middle height may get themselves masters where they can. The moderate man, eminent for no excess or extravagancy in his judgment, will have few patrons to protect, or persons to adhere unto him. But what saith St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 19: If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most miserable.

XXXIV. POTTAGE FOR MILK.

IN these licentious times, wherein religion lay in a swoon, and many pretended ministers (minions of the times) committed or omitted in divine service what they pleased; some, not only in Wales, but in England, and in London itself, on the Lord’s day (sometimes with, sometimes without a psalm) presently popped up into the pulpit, before any portion of Scripture, either in the Old or New Testament, was read to the people.

Hereupon one in jest-earnest said, that formerly they put down bishops and deans, and now they had put down chapters too. It is high time that this fault be reformed for the future, that God’s word, which is all gold, be not justled out to make room for men’s sermons, which are but parcel-gilt at the best.

XXXV. MODERATE MAY MEET.

WHEN St. Paul was at Athens, Acts xvii. 18, then certain philosophers of the Epicureans and of the Stoics encountered him, &c.

Some will say, Why was there no mention here of the Peripatetics and Academics, both notable sects of philosophers, and then numerous in the city of Athens?

The answer is this: These being persons acted with more moderate principles, were contented to be silent, though not concurring in their judgments; whilst the Epicureans and Stoics were violent in the extremes, the first for the anarchy of Fortune, the other for the tyranny of Fate.

Peace in our land, like St. Paul, is now likely to be encountered with two opposite parties, such as are for the liberty of a commonwealth, and such as are for an absolute monarchy in the full height thereof; but I hope neither of both are so considerable in their number, parts, and influence on the people, but that the moderate party, advocates for peace, will prevail for the settling thereof.

XXXVI. WHAT, NEVER WISE!

IN the year of our Lord 1606, there happened a sad overflowing of the Severn Sea, on both sides thereof, which some still alive do (one I hope thankfully) remember.

An account hereof was written to John Stow, the industrious chronicler, from Dr. Still, then Bishop of Bath and Wells, and three other gentlemen of credit, to insert it in his story; one passage wherein I cannot omit:—

Stow’s Chronicle, p. 889. “Among other things of note, it happened that, upon the tops of some hills, divers beasts of contrary nature had got up for their safety, as dogs, cats, foxes, hares, conies, moles, mice, and rats, who remained together very peaceably, without any manner or sign of fear of violence one towards another.”

How much of man was there then in brute creatures? How much of brutishness is there now in men? Is this a time for those who are sinking for the same cause to quarrel and fall out? I dare add no more but the words of the Apostle, 2 Tim. ii. 7: Consider what I say; and the Lord give you understanding in all things.

XXXVII. RECEDE A TITTLE.

I SAW two ride a race for a silver cup; he who won it outran the post many paces: indeed, he could not stop his horse in his full career, and therefore was fain to run beyond the post, or else he had never come soon enough unto it.

But presently after when he had won the wager, he reined his horse back again, and softly returned to the post, where from the judges of the match he received the cup, the reward of his victory.

Surely many moderate men designed a good mark to themselves, and propounded pious ends and aims in their intentions. But query whether, in pursuance thereof, in our late civil destruction, they were not violented to outrun the mark, (so impossible it is to stop a soul in the full speed thereof,) and whether they did not in some things overdo and exceed what they intended.

If so, it is neither sin nor shame, but honourable and profitable, for such persons (sensible of their over-activity) even fairly to go back to the post which they have outrun, and now calmly to demonstrate to the whole world that this only is the true and full measure of their judgments, whilst the rest was but the superfluity of their passions.

XXXVIII. BEAT THYSELF.

I SAW a mother threatening to beat her little child for not rightly pronouncing that petition in the Lord’s prayer: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us. The child essayed and offered as well as it could to utter it, adventuring at tepasses, trepasses, but could not pronounce the word aright. Alas! it is a shibboleth to a child’s tongue, wherein there is a confluence of hard consonants together; and therefore if the mother had beaten defect in the infant for default, she deserved to have been beaten herself.

The rather because what the child could not pronounce the parents do not practise. O how lispingly and imperfectly do we perform the close of this petition: As we forgive them that trespass against us. It is well if with the child we endeavour our best, though falling short in the exact observance thereof.

XXXIX. WITHOUT BLOOD.

IT passeth for a general report of what was customary in former times, that the sheriff of the county used to present the judge with a pair of white gloves at those which we call maiden assizes, viz. when no malefactor is put to death therein; a great rarity (though usual in small) in large and populous countries.

England, a spacious country, is full of numerous factions in these distracted times. It is above belief, and will hardly find credit with posterity, that a general peace can be settled in our nation without effusion of blood.

But if we should be blessed with a dry peace, without one drop of blood therein, O let the white gloves of honour and glory be in the first place presented to the God of heaven, the principal giver; and a second white pair of gratitude be given to our general, the instrumental procurer thereof.

XL. AGAINST THE HAIR AND THE FLESH.

ALL devils are not equally easy to be ejected out of possessed people; some are of a more sullen, sturdy, stubborn nature, good (or rather bad) at holdfast, and hard to be cast out.

In like manner all bosom sins are not conquered with facility alike, and these three are of the greatest difficulty:—

1. Constitutionary sins, riveted in our tempers and complexions.

2. Customary sins, habited in us by practice and presumption.

3. Such sins to the repentance whereof restitution is required.

Oh! when a man hath not only devoured widows’ houses, Matt. xxiii. 14, but also they have passed the first and second concoction in his stomach; yea, when they are become blood in the veins, yea, sinews in the flesh of his estate, O then to refund, to mangle and disinter one’s demesnes, this goeth shrewdly against flesh and blood indeed! But what saith the Apostle, Flesh and blood shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

Yet even this devil may be cast out with fasting and prayer, Matt. xvii. 21. This sin, notwithstanding it holdeth violent possession, may by those good means, and God’s blessing thereon, have a firm ejection.

XLI. A FREE-WILL OFFERING.

WHEN Job began to set up the second time, he built his recruited estate upon three bottoms:—

1. God’s blessing.

2. His own industry.

3. His friends’ charity.

Job xlii. 11: Every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one also an ear-ring of gold. Many drops meeting together filled the vessel.

When our patient Job, plundered of all he had, shall return again, certainly his loyal subjects will offer presents unto him (though they, alas! who love him best can give him least). Surely all is not given away in making the golden calf, but that there is some left for the business of the tabernacle.

But surely those have cause to be most bountiful, who may truly say to him what David said humbly to the God of heaven, 1 Chron. xxix. 14: Of thine own have I given unto thee.

XLII. A GOOD ANCHOR.

ISAAC, ignorantly going along to be offered, propounded to his father a very hard question, Gen. xxii. 7: Behold the fire and wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?

Abraham returned, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt-offering.

But was not this gratis dictum of Abraham? Did not he herein speak without book? Where and when did God give him a promise to provide him a lamb?

Indeed, he had no particular promise as to this present point, but he had a general one, Gen. xv. 1: Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward. Here was not only a lamb, but a flock of sheep, yea, a herd of all cattle promised unto him.

It hath kept many an honest soul in these sad times from sinking into despair, that though they had no express in Scripture that they should be freed from the particular miseries relating to this war, yet they had God’s grand charter for it, Rom. viii. 28: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

XLIII. EYES BAD, NOT OBJECT.

I LOOKED upon the wrong or back side of a piece of arras: it seemed to me as a continued nonsense, there was neither head nor foot therein; confusion itself had as much method in it: a company of thrums and threads, with many pieces and patches of several sorts, sizes, and colours, all which signified nothing to my understanding.

But then looking on the reverse or right side thereof, all put together did spell excellent proportions and figures of men and cities. So that indeed it was a history, not wrote with a pen, but wrought with a needle.

If men look upon our late times with a mere eye of reason, they will hardly find any sense therein, such their huddle and disorder. But, alas! the wrong side is objected to our eyes, whilst the right side is presented to the high God of heaven, who knoweth that an admirable order doth result out of this confusion, and what is presented to him at present may hereafter be so showed to us as to convince our judgments in the truth thereof.

XLIV. EVER, NEVER.

WE read, Psalm lv. 19: Because they have no changes, therefore they [the wicked] fear not God.

Profaneness is a strange logician, which can collect and infer the same conclusion from contrary premises. Libertines here in England, because they have had so many changes, therefore they fear not God.

Jacob taxed Laban, Gen. xxxi. 41: Thou hast changed my wages ten times. I have neither list nor leisure to inquire how far our alterations of government, within these few years, fall short of that number.

But it is a sad truth, that as King Mithridates is said to have fed on poison so long, that at last it became ordinary food to his body; so the multitude of changes have proved no change in many men’s apprehensions, being so common and ordinary it hath made no effectual impression on their spirits. Yea, which is worse, they (as if all things came by casualty) fear God the less for these alterations.

XLV. HEAR ME OUT.

I MUST confess myself to be (what I ever was) for a commonwealth: but give me leave to state the meaning of the word, seeing so much mischief hath taken covert under the homonymy thereof.

A commonwealth and a king are no more contrary than the trunk or body of a tree and the top branch thereof; there is a republic included in every monarchy.

The Apostle speaketh of some Ephesians, in the ii. and 12, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel: that the commonwealth is neither aristocratical nor democratical, but hath one sole and single person, Jesus Christ, the supreme head thereof.

May I live (if it may stand with God’s good will and pleasure) to see England a commonwealth in such a posture, and it will be a joyful object to all who are peaceable in our nation.

XLVI. MONS MOBILIS.

I OBSERVE that the mountains now extant do fall under a double consideration.

Those by creation, and those by inundation.

The former were of God’s making, primitive mountains; when at the first his wisdom did here sink a vale, there swell a hill, so to render the prospect of the earth the more grateful by the alternate variety thereof.

The second by inundation were such as owe their birth and being to Noah’s flood: when the water lying long in a place, (especially when driven on with the fury of the wind,) corroded a hollow, and so by consequence cast up a hill on both sides.

For such mountains of God’s making, who either by their birth succeed to estates, or have acquired them by God’s blessing on their lawful industry, good success may they have with their wealth and honour. And yet let not them be too proud, and think, with David, that God hath made their mountain so strong it cannot be moved; but know themselves subject to the earthquakes of mutability as well as others.

As for the many mountains of our age, grandized by the unlawful ruin of others, swoln to a tympany by the consumption of their betters; I wish them just as much joy with their greatness as they have right unto it.

XLVII. NOT INVISIBLE.

A WAGGISH scholar (to say no worse), standing behind the back of his tutor, conceived himself secured from his sight, and on this confidence he presumed to make antic mocks and mouths at him. Meantime his tutor had a looking-glass (unknown to the scholar) before his face, wherein he saw all which his pupil did, and the pupil soon after felt something from his tutor.

Many things have been done in huggermugger in our age, profane persons conceited that their privacy protected them from Divine inspection. Some say with the wicked in the psalm, Tush, shall the Lord see?

But know that, Rev. iv. 6, before the throne there was a sea of glass, like unto crystal. This is God’s omnisciency. Sea, there is the largeness; crystal, there is the pureness thereof. In this glass all persons and practices are plainly represented to God’s sight, so that such who sin in secret shall suffer openly.

XLVIII. BEST RACE.

GOD hath two grand attributes, first, optimus, that he is the best of beings. Secondly, maximus, that he is the greatest of essences. It may justly seem strange that all men naturally are ambitious, with the Apostles, Luke xxii. 24, to contest and contend for the latter, who shall be accounted for the greatest. Outward greatness having no reality in itself, but founded merely in outward account and reputation of others.

But as for his goodness, they give it a go-by, no whit endeavouring the imitation thereof; whereas, indeed, greatness without goodness is not only useless, but also dangerous and destructive, both to him that hath it and those who are about him.

This is a fruit of Adam’s fall, and floweth from original corruption. Oh! for the future let us change this our ambition into holy emulation, and fairly run a race of grace, who shall outstrip others in goodness.

In which race strive lawfully to gain the victory, supplant not those that run before thee, justle not those who are even with thee, hinder not those who come behind thee.

XLIX. FEED THE LAMBS.

WHAT may be the cause why so much cloth so soon changeth colour? It is because it was never wet wadded, which giveth the fixation to a colour, and setteth it in the cloth.

What may be the reason why so many now-a-days are carried about with every wind of doctrine, even to scour every point in the compass round about? Surely it is because they were never well catechised in the principles of religion.

O for the ancient and primitive ordinance of catechising! every youth can preach, but he must be a man indeed who can profitably catechise.

Indeed, sermons are like whole joints for men to manage, but catechising is mincemeat, shred into questions and answers, (fit for children to eat, and easy for them to digest,) whilst the minister may also, for the edification of those of riper years, enlarge and dilate himself on both as he seeth just occasion.

L. NAME AND THING.

THERE is a new word coined, within few months, called fanatics, which, by the close stickling thereof, seemeth well cut out and proportioned to signify what is meant thereby, even the sectaries of our age.

Some (most forcedly) will have it Hebrew, derived from the word to see or face one,פנה vidit. importing such whose piety consisteth chiefly in visage, looks, and outward shows; others will have it Greek, from φάνομαι, to show and appear; their meteor piety consisting only in short blazing, the forerunner of their extinction. But most certainly the word is Latin, from fanum, a temple; and fanatici were such who, living in or attending thereabouts, were frighted with spectra, or apparitions, which they either saw or fancied themselves to have seen. These people, in their fits and wild raptures, pretended to strange predictions:

It will be said we have already (more than a good) many nicknames of parties, which doth but inflame the difference, and make the breach the wider betwixt us. It is confessed; but withal it is promised, that when they withdraw the thing we will subtract the name. Let them leave off their wild fancies, inconsistent with Scripture, antiquity, and reason itself, and then we will endeavour to bury the fanatic, and all other names, in perpetual oblivion.

To

The Right Honourable and Virtuous Lady,

FRANCES MANNERS,

Countess of Rutland.

MADAM,—

BY the judicial law of the Jews, if a servant [Exodus xxi. 4.] had children by a wife which was given him by his master, though he himself went forth free in the seventh year, yet his children did remain with his master, as the proper goods of his possession. I ever have been and shall be a servant to that noble family, whence your Honour is extracted. And of late in that house I have been wedded to the pleasant embraces of a private life, the fittest wife and meetest helper that can be provided for a student in troublesome times: and the same hath been bestowed upon me by the bounty of your noble brother, Edward Lord Montague. Wherefore, what issue soever shall result from my mind, by his means most happily married to a retired life, must of due redound to his Honour, as the sole proprietary of my pains during my present condition. Now, this book is my eldest offspring, which, had it been a son, (I mean, had it been a work of masculine beauty and bigness,) it should have waited as a page in dedication to his Honour. But finding it to be of the weaker sex, little in strength, and low in stature, may it be admitted (madam) to attend on your Ladyship, his Honour’s sister.

I need not mind your Ladyship how God hath measured outward happiness unto you by the cubit of the sanctuary, of the largest size, so that one would be perplexed to wish more than what your Ladyship doth enjoy. My prayer to God shall be, that, shining as a pearl of grace here, you may shine as a star in glory hereafter. So resteth,

Your Honour’s,

In all Christian offices,

THOMAS FULLER.

Boughton, January 25, 1646.

THE CHRISTIAN READER.

AS one was not anciently to want a wedding-garment at a marriage feast, so now-a-days wilfully to wear gaudy clothes at a funeral is justly censurable as unsuiting with the occasion. Wherefore, in this sad subject, I have endeavoured to decline all light and luxurious expressions: and if I be found faulty therein, I cry and crave God and the reader pardon. Thus desiring that my pains may prove to the glory of God, thine, and my own edification, I rest,

Thine in Christ Jesus,

THOMAS FULLER

THE CAUSE AND CURE OF A WOUNDED CONSCIENCE.

DIALOGUE I.

What a wounded Conscience is, wherewith the Godly and Reprobate may be tortured.

TIMOTHEUS.

SEEING the best way never to know a wounded conscience by woful experience, is speedily to know it by a sanctified consideration thereof: give me, I pray you, the description of a wounded conscience, in the highest degree thereof.

PHILOLOGUS. It is a conscience frightened at the sight of sin, [Psalm xxxviii. 3.] and weight of God’s wrath, even unto the despair of all pardon during the present agony.

TIM. Is there any difference betwixt a broken spirit [Psalm li. 17.] and a wounded conscience, in this your acception?

PHIL. Exceeding much: for a broken spirit is to be prayed and laboured for, as the most healthful and happy temper of the soul, letting in as much comfort as it leaks out sorrow for sin: whereas, a wounded conscience is a miserable malady of the mind, filling it for the present with despair.

TIM. In this your sense, is not the conscience wounded every time that the soul is smitten with guiltiness for any sin committed?

PHIL. God forbid: otherwise his servants would be in a sad condition, as in the case of David, [1 Sam. xxiv. 5.] smitten by his own heart, for being, as he thought, overbold with God’s anointed, in cutting off the skirt of Saul’s garment; such hurts are presently healed by a plaster of Christ’s blood, applied by faith, and never come to that height to be counted and called wounded consciences.

TIM. Are the godly, as well as the wicked, subject to this malady?

PHIL. Yes, verily; vessels of honour, as well as vessels of wrath in this world, are subject to the knocks and bruises of a wounded conscience. A patient Job, pious David, faithful Paul, may be vexed therewith, no less than a cursed Cain, perfidious Achitophel, or treacherous Judas.

TIM. What is the difference betwixt a wounded conscience in the godly, and in the reprobate?

DIALOGUE II.

What use they are to make thereof, who neither hitherto were, nor haply hereafter shall be, visited with a wounded Conscience.

TIMOTHEUS.

ARE all God’s children, either in their life or at their death, visited with a wounded conscience?

PHIL. O no: God invites many with his golden sceptre, whom he never bruises with his rod of iron. Many, neither in their conversion, nor in the sequel of their lives, have ever felt that pain in such a manner and measure as amounts to a wounded conscience.

TIM. Must not the pangs in their travel of the new birth be painful unto them?

PHIL. Painful, but in different degrees. The Blessed Virgin Mary (most hold) was delivered without any pain; as well may that child be born without sorrow, which is conceived without sin. The women of Israel were sprightful and lively, unlike the Egyptians. [Exod. i. 19.] The former favour none can have in their spiritual travel; the latter some receive, who, though other whiles tasting of legal frights and fears, yet God so preventeth them with his blessings of goodness, [Psalm xxi. 3.] that they smart not so deeply therein as other men.

DIALOGUE III.

Three solemn Seasons when Men are surprised with wounded Consciences.

TIMOTHEUS.

WHAT are those times wherein men most commonly are assaulted with wounded consciences?

PHIL. So bad a guest may visit a man at any hour of his life; for no season is unseasonable for God to be just, Satan to be mischievous, and sinful man to be miserable; yet it happens especially at three principal times.

TIM. Of these, which is the first?

PHIL. In the twilight of a man’s conversion, in the very conflict and combat betwixt nature and initial grace. For then he that formerly slept in carnal security is awakened with his fearful condition: God, as he saith, Psalm l. 21, setteth his sins in order before his eyes. Imprimis, the sin of his conception. Item, the sins of his childhood. Item, of his youth. Item, of his man’s estate, &c. Or, Imprimis, sins against the first table. Item, sins against the second; so many of ignorance, so many of knowledge, so many of presumption, severally sorted by themselves. He committed sins confusedly, huddling them up in heaps; but God sets them in order, and methodizes them to his hand.

TIM. Sins thus set in order must needs be a terrible sight.

PHIL. Yes, surely, the rather because the metaphor may seem taken from setting an army in battle array. At this conflict, in his first conversion, behold a troop of sins cometh, and when God himself shall marshal them in rank and file, what guilty conscience is able to endure the furious charge of so great and well-ordered an army?

TIM. Suppose the party dies before he be completely converted in this twilight condition, as you term it, what then becomes of his soul, which may seem too good to dwell in outer darkness with devils, and too bad to go to the God of light?

PHIL. Your supposition is impossible. Remember our discourse only concerns the godly. Now God never is father to abortive children, but to such who, according to his appointment, shall come to perfection.

TIM. Can they not therefore die in this interim, before the work of grace be wrought in them?

PHIL. No, verily. Christ’s bones were in themselves breakable, but could not actually be broken by all the violence in the world, because God hath fore-decreed, A bone of him shall not be broken. So we confess God’s children mortal; but all the power of Devil or man may not, must not, shall not, cannot, kill them before their conversion, according to God’s election of them to life, which must be fully accomplished.

TIM. What is the second solemn time wherein wounded consciences assault men?

PHIL. After their conversion completed, and this either upon the committing of a conscience-wasting sin, such as Tertullian calls peccatum devoratorium salutis, or upon the undergoing of some heavy affliction of a bigger standard and proportion, blacker hue and complexion, than what befalls ordinary men, as in the case of Job.

TIM. Which is the third and last time when wounded consciences commonly walk abroad?

DIALOGUE IV.

The great Torment of a wounded Conscience, proved by Reasons and Examples.

TIMOTHEUS.

IS the pain of a wounded conscience so great as is pretended?

PHIL. God saith it, [Prov. xviii. 14.] we have seen it, and others have felt it, whose complaints savour as little of dissimulation, as their cries in a fit of the colic do of counterfeiting.

TIM. Whence comes this wound to be so great and grievous?

PHIL. Six reasons may be assigned thereof. The first drawn from the heaviness of the hand which makes the wound; namely, God himself, conceived under the notion of an infinite angry judge. In all other afflictions, man encounters only with man, and in the worst temptations, only with Satan; but in a wounded conscience, he enters the lists immediately with God himself.

DIALOGUE V.

Sovereign Uses to be made of the Torment of a wounded Conscience.

TIMOTHEUS.

SEEING the torture of a wounded conscience is so great, what use is to be made thereof?

PHIL. Very much: and first, it may make men sensible of the intolerable pain in hell fire. If the mouth of the fiery furnace into which the children were cast was so hot that it burnt those which approached it, how hot was the furnace itself! If a wounded conscience, the suburbs of hell, be so painful, O how extreme is that place where the worm never dieth, and the fire is never quenched!

TIM. Did our roaring boys (as they call them) but seriously consider this, they would not wish God damn them, and God confound them, so frequently as they do.

PHIL. No, verily: I read in Theodoret of the ancient Donatists, that they were so ambitious of martyrdom (as they accounted it), that many of them, meeting with a young gentleman, requested of him, that he would be pleased to kill them. He, to confute their folly, condescended to their desire, on condition, that first they would submit to be fast bound: which being done, he gave order that they should be severely scourged, and then saved their lives. In application: when I hear such riotous youths wish that God would damn or confound them, I hope God will be more merciful than to take them at their words, and to grant them their wish; only I heartily desire that he would be pleased sharply to scourge them, and soundly to lash them with the frights and terrors of a wounded conscience. And I doubt not but that they would so ill like the pain thereof, that they would revoke their wishes, as having little list, and less delight to taste of hell hereafter.

TIM. What other use is to be made of the pain of a wounded conscience?

PHIL. To teach us seasonably to prevent what we cannot possibly endure. Let us shun the smallest sin, lest, if we slight and neglect it, it by degrees fester and gangrene into a wounded conscience. One of the bravest spiritsSir Thomas Norris, President of Munster, ex levi vulnere neglecto sublatus. Camden’s Elizab. An. 1641. that ever England bred, or Ireland buried, lost his life by a slight hurt neglected, as if it had been beneath his high mind to stoop to the dressing thereof, till it was too late. Let us take heed the stoutest of us be not so served in our souls. If we repent not presently of our sins committed, but carelessly contemn them, a scratch may quickly prove an ulcer; the rather, because the flesh of our mind, if I may so use the metaphor, is hard to heal, full of choleric and corrupt humours, and very ready to rankle.

TIM. What else may we gather for our instruction from the torture of a troubled mind.

PHIL. To confute their cruelty who, out of sport or spite, willingly and wittingly wound weak consciences: like those uncharitable Corinthians, [1 Cor. viii. 12.] who so far improve their liberty in things indifferent, as thereby to wound the consciences of their weaker brethren.

TIM. Are not those ministers to blame, who, mistaking their message, instead of bringing the Gospel of peace, frighten people with legal terrors into despair?

PHIL. I cannot commend their discretion, yet will not condemn their intention herein. No doubt their desire and design is pious, though they err in the pursuit and prosecution thereof, casting down them whom they cannot raise, and conjuring up the spirit of bondage which they cannot allay again: wherefore, it is our wisest way to interweave promises with threatenings, and not to leave open a pit of despair, but to cover it again with comfort.

TIM. Remaineth there not, as yet, another use of this point?

DIALOGUE VI

That in some Cases more Repentance must be preached to a wounded Conscience.

TIMOTHEUS.

SO much for the malady, now for the remedy. Suppose you come to a wounded conscience, what counsel will you prescribe him?

PHIL. If, after hearty prayer to God for his direction, he appeareth unto me, as yet, not truly penitent, in the first place I will press a deeper degree of repentance upon him.

TIM. O miserable comforter! more sorrow still! Take heed your eyes be not put out with that smoking flax you seek to quench, and your fingers wounded with the splinters of that bruised reed you go about to break.

PHIL. Understand me, sir. Better were my tongue spit out of my mouth, than to utter a word of grief to drive them to despair who are truly contrite. But on the other side, I shall betray my trust, and be found an unfaithful dispenser of divine mysteries, to apply comfort to him who is not ripe and ready for it.

TIM. What harm would it do?

PHIL. Raise him for the present, and ruin him, without God’s greater mercy, for the future. For comfort daubed on, on a foul soul, will not stick long upon it; and, instead of pouring in, I shall spill the precious oil of God’s mercy. Yea, I may justly bring a wounded conscience upon myself, for dealing deceitfully in my stewardship.

TIM. Is it possible one may not be soundly humbled, and yet have a wounded conscience?

DIALOGUE VII.

Only Christ is to be applied to Souls truly contrite.

TIMOTHEUS.

BUT suppose the person in the minister’s apprehension heartily humbled for sin, what then is to be done?

PHIL. No corrosives, all cordials; no vinegar, all oil; no law, all Gospel must be presented unto him. Here, blessed the lips, yea,! beautiful the feet of him that bringeth the tidings of peace. As Elisha, when reviving the son of the Shunamite, laid his mouth to the mouth of the child; [2 Kings iv. 34.] so the gaping orifice of Christ’s wounds must spiritually, by preaching, be put close to the mouth of the wounds of a conscience: happy that skilful architect that can show the sick man that the head-stone of his spiritual building must be laid with shouts, crying, Grace, grace. [Zecha. iv. 7.]

DIALOGUE VIII.

Answers to the Objections of a wounded Conscience, drawn from the Grievousness of his Sins.

TIMOTHEUS.

GIVE me leave now, sir, to personate and represent a wounded conscience, and to allege and enforce such principal objections wherewith generally they are grieved.

PHIL. With all my heart, and God bless my endeavours in answering them.

TIM. But first I would be satisfied how it comes to pass, that men in a wounded conscience have their parts so presently improved. The Jews did question concerning our Saviour, How knoweth this man letters, being never learned? [John vii. 15.] But here the doubt and difficulty is greater. How come simple people so subtle on a sudden, to oppose, with that advantage and vehemence, that it would puzzle a good and grave divine to answer them?

PHIL. Two reasons may be rendered thereof. 1. Because a man in a distemper is stronger than when he is in his perfect health. What Samsons are some in the fit of a fever? Then their spirits, being raised by the violence of their disease, push with all their power. So it is in the agony of a distressed soul, every string thereof is strained to the height, and a man becomes more than himself to object against himself in a fit of despair.

TIM. What is the other reason?

PHIL. Satan himself, that subtle sophister, assists them. He forms their arguments, frames their objections, fits their distinctions, shapes their evasions; and this discomforter (aping God’s Spirit, the Comforter, John xiv. 26) bringeth all things to their remembrance, which they have heard or read, to dishearten them. Need, therefore, have ministers, when they meddle with afflicted men, to call to Heaven aforehand to assist them, being sure they shall have hell itself to oppose them.

TIM. To come now to the objections which afflicted consciences commonly make; they may be reduced to three principal heads; either drawn from the greatness and grievousness of their sins, or from the slightness and lightness of their repentance, or from the faintness and feebleness of their faith; I begin with the objections of the first form.

PHIL. I approve your method; pray proceed.

TIM. First, sir, even since my conversion, I have been guilty of many grievous sins; and, which is worse, of the same sin many times committed. Happy Judah, [Gen. xxxviii. 26.] who, though once committing incest with Thamar, yet the text saith, that afterwards he knew her again no more. But I, vile wretch, have often re-fallen into the same offence.

PHIL. All this is answered in God’s promise in the prophet, Though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them as snow. [Isaiah i. 18.] Consider how the Tyrian scarlet was dyed, not superficially dipped, but thoroughly drenched in the liquor that coloured it, as thy soul in custom of sinning. Then was it taken out for a time and dried, put in again, soaked and sodden the second time in the fat; called therefore δίβαφον, twice dyed; as thou complainest thou hast been by relapsing into the same sin. Yea, the colour so incorporated into the cloth, not drawn over, but diving into the very heart of the wool, that rub a scarlet rag on what is white, and it will bestow a reddish tincture upon it; as perchance thy sinful practice and precedent have also infected those which were formerly good, by thy badness. Yet such scarlet sins, so solemnly and substantially coloured, are easily washed white in the blood of our Saviour.

TIM. But, sir, I have sinned against most serious resolutions, yea, against most solemn vows, which I have made to the contrary.

PHIL. Vow-breaking, though a grievous sin, is pardonable on unfeigned repentance. If thou hast broken a vow, tie a knot on it to make it hold together again. It is spiritual thrift, and no misbecoming baseness, to piece and joint thy neglected promises with fresh ones. So shall thy vow in effect be not broken when new mended: and remain the same, though not by one entire continuation, yet by a constant successive renovation thereof. Thus Jacob renewed his neglected vow of going to Bethel;Compare Gen. xxviii. 20, with Gen. xxxv. 1. and this must thou do, reinforce thy broken vows, if of moment and material.

TIM. What mean you by the addition of that clause, if of moment and material?

PHIL. To deal plainly, I dislike many vows men make, as of reading just so much and praying so often every day, of confining themselves to such a strict proportion of meat, drink, sleep, recreation, &c. Many things may be well done, which are ill vowed. Such particular vows men must be very sparing how they make. First, because they savour somewhat of will-worship. Secondly, small glory accrues to God thereby. Thirdly, the dignity of vows is disgraced by descending to too trivial particulars. Fourthly, Satan hath ground given him to throw at us with a more steady aim. Lastly, such vows, instead of being cords to tie us faster to God, prove knots to entangle our consciences: hard to be kept, but oh! how heavy when broken! Wherefore, setting such vows aside, let us be careful, with David, to keep that grand and general vow: I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous judgments. [Psalm cxix. 106.]

TIM. But, sir, I have committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, which the Saviour of mankind pronounceth unpardonable, and therefore all your counsels and comforts unto me are in vain.

PHIL. The Devil, the father of lies, hath added this lie to those which he hath told before, in persuading thee thou hast committed the sin against the Holy Ghost. For that sin is ever attended with these two symptoms. First, the party guilty thereof never grieves for it, nor conceives the least sorrow in his heart for the sin he hath committed. The second, which followeth on the former, he never wishes or desires any pardon, but is delighted and pleased with his present condition. Now, if thou canst truly say that thy sins are a burden unto thee, that thou dost desire forgiveness, and wouldest give anything to compass and obtain it, be of good comfort, thou hast not as yet, and by God’s grace never shalt, commit that unpardonable offence. I will not define how near thou hast been unto it. As David said to Jonathan, there is not a hair’s breadth betwixt death and me; so it may be thou hast missed it very narrowly, but assure thyself thou art not as yet guilty thereof.

DIALOGUE IX.

Answers to the Objections of a wounded Conscience drawn from the Slightness of his Repentance.

TIMOTHEUS.

I BELIEVE my sins are pardonable in themselves, but alas! my stony heart is such, that it cannot relent and repent, and therefore no hope of my salvation.

PHIL. Wouldst thou sincerely repent? thou dost repent. The women that came to embalm Christ did carefully forecast with themselves who shall roll away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? [Mark xvi. 3.] Alas I their frail, faint, feeble arms were unable to remove such a weight. But what follows? And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away, for it was very great. In like manner, when a soul is truly troubled about the mighty burden of his stony heart interposed, hindering him from coming to Christ; I say, when he is seriously and sincerely solicitous about that impediment, such desiring is a doing, such wishing is a working. Do thou but take care it may be removed, and God will take order it shall be removed.

TIM. But, sir, I cannot weep for my sins; my eyes are like the pit wherein Joseph was put; there is no water in them, I cannot squeeze one tear out of them.

PHIL. Before I come to answer your objection, I must premise a profitable observation. I have taken notice of a strange opposition betwixt the tongues and eyes of such as have troubled consciences. Their tongues some have known (and I have heard) complain that they cannot weep for their sins, when at that instant their eyes have plentifully shed store of tears: not that they spake out of dissimulation, but distraction. So sometimes have I smiled at the simplicity of a child, who being amazed, and demanded whether or no he could speak, hath answered, No. If in like manner, at the sight of such a contradiction betwixt the words and deeds of one in the agony of a wounded conscience, we should chance to smile, know us not to jeer, but joy, perceiving the party in a better condition than he conceiveth himself.

TIM. This your observation may be comfortable to others, but is impertinent to me. For, as I told you, I have by nature such dry eyes that they will afford no moisture to bemoan my sins.

PHIL. Then it is a natural defect, and no moral default, so by consequence a suffering, and no sin which God will punish. God doth not expect the pipe should run water where he put none into the cistern. Know also, their hearts may be fountains whose eyes are flints, and may inwardly bleed, who do not outwardly weep. Besides, Christ was sent to preach comfort, [Isaiah li. 3.] not to such only as weep, but mourn in Zion. Yea, if thou canst squeeze out no liquor, offer to God the empty bottles; instead of tears, tender and present thine eyes unto him. And though thou art water-bound, be not wind-bound also; sigh where thou canst not sob, and let thy lungs do what thine eyes cannot perform.

TIM. You say something, though I cannot weep, in case I could soundly sorrow for my sins. But alas! for temporal losses and crosses, I am like Rachel, lamenting for her children, and would not be comforted. But my sorrow for my sins is so small that it appears none at all in proportion.

PHIL. In the best saints of God, their sorrow for their sins being measured with the sorrow for their sufferings, in one respect will fall short of it, in another must equal it, and in a third respect doth exceed and go beyond it. Sorrow for sins falls short of sorrow for sufferings, in loud lamenting or violent uttering itself in outward expressions thereof; as in roaring, wringing the hands, rending the hair, and the like. Secondly, both sorrows are equal in their truth and sincerity, both far from hypocrisy, free from dissimulation, really hearty, cordial, uncounterfeited. Lastly, sorrow for sin exceeds sorrow for suffering, in the continuance and durableness thereof: the other like a land-flood, quickly come, quickly gone; this is a continual dropping or running river, keeping a constant stream. My sins, saith David, are ever before me; so also is the sorrow for sin in the soul of a child of God, morning, evening, day, night, when sick, when sound, feasting, fasting, at home, abroad, ever within him. This grief begins at his conversion, continues all his life, ends only at his death.

TIM. Proceed, I pray, in this comfortable point.

DIALOGUE X.

Answers to the Objections of a wounded Conscience drawn from the Feebleness of his Faith.

TIMOTHEUS.

BUT faith is that which must apply Christ unto us, whilst (alas!) the hand of my faith hath not only the shaking, but the dead palsy; it can neither hold nor feel anything.

PHIL. If thou canst not hold God, do but touch him, and he shall hold thee, and put feeling into thee. Saint Paul saith, If that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. [Phil. iii. 12.] It is not Paul’s apprehending of Christ, but Christ apprehending of Paul, doth the deed.

TIM. But I am sure my faith is not sound, because it is not attended with assurance of salvation. For I doubt (not to say despair) thereof. Whereas divines hold, that the essence of saving faith consists in a certainty to be saved.

PHIL. Such deliver both a false and dangerous doctrine; as the careless mother killed her little infant, for she over-laid it: [1 Kings iii. 19.] so this opinion would press many weak faiths to death, by laying a greater weight upon them than they can bear, or God doth impose; whereas to be assured of salvation is not a part of every true faith, but only an effect of some strong faiths, and that also not always, but at some times.

TIM. Is not certainty of salvation a part of every true faith?

PHIL. No, verily, much less is it the life and formality of faith, which consists only in a recumbency on God in Christ, with Job’s resolution, Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. [Job xiii. 15.] Such an adherence, without an assurance, is sufficient, by God’s mercy, to save thy soul. Those that say that none have a sincere faith without a certainty of salvation, may with as much truth maintain, that none are the king’s loyal subjects but such as are his favourites.

TIM. Is then assurance of salvation a peculiar personal favour, indulged by God, only to some particular persons?

PHIL. Yes, verily: though the salvation of all God’s servants be sure in itself, yet is only assured to the apprehensions of some select people, and that at some times; for it is too fine fare for the best man to feed on every day.

TIM. May they that have this assurance afterwards lose it?

PHIL. Undoubtedly they may; God first is gracious to give it them, they for a time careful to keep it; then negligently lose it, then sorrowfully seek it. God again is bountiful to restore it; they happy to recover it; for a while diligent to regain it, then again foolish to forfeit it, and so the same changes in one’s lifetime, often over and over again.

TIM. But some will say, If I may be infallibly saved without this assurance, I will never endeavour to attain it.

PHIL. I would have covered my flowers, if I had suspected such spiders would have sucked them. One may go to heaven without this assurance, as certainly, but not so cheerfully, and therefore prudence to obtain our own comfort, and piety to obey God’s command, obliges us all to give diligence to make our calling and election sure, both in itself and in our apprehension.

DIALOGUE XI.

God alone can satisfy all Objections of a wounded Conscience.

TIMOTHEUS.

BUT, sir, these your answers are no whit satisfactory unto me.

PHIL. An answer may be satisfactory to the objection, both in itself and in the judgment of all unprejudiced hearers, and yet not satisfactory to the objector, and that in two cases: First, when he is possessed with the spirit of peevishness and perverseness. It is lost labour to seek to feed and fill those who have a greedy horseleech of cavilling in their heart, crying, Give, give.

TIM. What is the second case?

PHIL. When the bitterness of his soul is so great and grievous, that he is like the Israelites in Egypt, who hearkened not to Moses, for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage. [Exod vi. 9.] Now as those who have meat before them, and will not eat, deserve to starve without pity; so such are much to be bemoaned, who through some impediment in their mouth, throat, or stomach, cannot chew, swallow, or digest comfort presented unto them.

TIM. Such is my condition; what then is to be done unto me?

DIALOGUE XII.

Means to be used by wounded Consciences for the recovering of Comfort.

TIMOTHEUS.

ARE there any useful means to be prescribed, whereby wounded consciences may recover comfort the sooner?

PHIL. Yes, there are.

DIALOGUE XIII.

Four wholesome Counsels, for a wounded Conscience to practise.

TIMOTHEUS.

PERFORM your promise; which is the first counsel you commend unto me?

PHIL. Take heed of ever renouncing thy filial interest in God, though thy sins deserve that he should disclaim his paternal relation to thee. The prodigal, returning to his father, did not say, I am not thy son, but I am no more worthy to be called thy son. [Luke xv. 21.] Beware of bastardizing thyself, being as much as Satan desires, and more than he hopes to obtain. Otherwise thy folly would give him more than his fury could get.

TIM. I conceive this a needful caution.

PHIL. It will appear so if we consider what the Apostle saith, that we wrestle with principalities and powers. [Ephes. vi. 12.] Now wrestlers in the Olympian games were naked, and anointed with oil to make them sleek and glibbery, so to afford no holdfast to such as strove with them. Let us not gratify the Devil with this advantage against ourselves, at any time to disclaim our sonship in God: if the Devil catches us at this lock, he will throw us flat, and hazard the breaking of our necks with final despair. Oh no! still keep this point: a prodigal son I am, but a son, no bastard; a lost sheep, but a sheep, no goat; an unprofitable servant, but God’s servant, and not absolute slave to Satan.

TIM. Proceed to your second counsel.

PHIL. Give credit to what grave and godly persons conceive of thy condition, rather than what thy own fear (an incompetent judge) may suggest unto thee. A seared conscience thinks better of itself, a wounded worse, than it ought: the former may account all sin a sport, the latter all sport a sin: melancholy men, when sick, are ready to conceit any cold to be the cough of the lungs, and an ordinary pustule no less than the plague sore. So wounded consciences conceive sins of infirmity to be of presumption, sins of ignorance to be of knowledge, apprehending their case more dangerous than it is indeed.

TIM. But it seems unreasonable that I should rather trust another saying, than my own sense of myself.

PHIL. Every man is best judge of his own self, if he be his own self; but during the swoon of a wounded conscience, I deny thee to be come to thy own self: whilst thine eyes are blubbering, and a tear hangs before thy sight, thou canst not see things clearly and truly, because looking through a double medium of air and water; so whilst this cloud of pensiveness is pendent before the eyes of thy soul, thine estate is erroneously represented unto thee.

TIM. What is your third counsel?

PHIL. In thy agony of a troubled conscience, always look upwards unto a gracious God to keep thy soul steady; for looking downward on thyself thou shalt find nothing but what will increase thy fear, infinite sins, good deeds few and imperfect: it is not thy faith, but God’s faithfulness, thou must rely upon; casting thine eyes downwards on thyself to behold the great distance betwixt what thou deservest and what thou desirest, is enough to make thee giddy, stagger, and reel into despair: ever therefore lift up thine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh thy help, [Psalm cxxi. 1.] never viewing the deep dale of thy own unworthiness, but to abate thy pride when tempted to presumption.

TIM. Sir, your fourth and last counsel.

PHIL. Be not disheartened, as if comfort would not come at all, because it comes not all at once, but patiently attend God’s leisure; they are not styled the swift, but the sure mercies of David: and the same prophet says, the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward: [Isaiah lv. 3, and lviii. 8.] this we know comes up last to secure and make good all the rest: be assured, where grace patiently leads the front, glory at last will be in the rear. Remember the prodigious patience of Elijah’s servant.

TIM. Wherein was it remarkable?

PHIL. In obedience to his master: he went several times to the sea; it is tedious for me to tell what was not troublesome for him to do, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven times sent down steep Carmel, [1 Kings xviii. 43.] with danger, and up it again with difficulty, and all to bring news of nothing, till his last journey, which made recompense for all the rest, with the tidings of a cloud arising. So thy thirsty soul, long parched with drought for want of comfort, though late, at last shall be plentifully refreshed with the dew of consolation.

DIALOGUE XIV.

Comfortable Meditations for wounded Consciences to muse upon.

TIMOTHEUS.

FURNISH me, I pray, with some comfortable meditations; whereon I may busy and employ my soul when alone.

PHIL. First, consider that our Saviour had not only a notional, but an experimental and meritorious knowledge of the pains of a wounded conscience when hanging on the cross. If Paul conceived himself happy being to answer for himself, before King Agrippa, especially because he knew him to be expert in all the customs and questions of the Jews; how much more just cause has thy wounded conscience of comfort and joy, being in thy prayers to plead before Christ himself, who hath felt thy pain, and deserved that in due time by his stripes thou shouldst be healed?

TIM. Proceed, I pray, in this comfortable subject.

PHIL. Secondly, consider that herein, like Elijah, thou needest not complain that thou art left alone, seeing the best of God’s saints in all ages have smarted in the same kind: instance in David: indeed, sometimes he boasts how he lay in green pastures, and was led by still waters; [Psalm xxiii. 2.] but after he bemoans that he sinks in deep mire, where there was no standing. [Psalm lxix. 2.] What is become of those green pastures? parched up with the drought. Where are those still waters? troubled with the tempest of affliction. The same David compares himself to an owl, and in the next Psalm resembles himself to an eagle.Compare Psalm cii. 6, with Psalm ciii. 5. Do two fowls fly of more different kind? The one the scorn, the other the sovereign; the one the slowest, the other the swiftest; the one the most sharp-sighted, the other the most dim-eyed of all birds. Wonder not, then, to find in thyself sudden and strange alterations. It fared thus with all God’s servants, in their agonies of temptation; and be confident thereof, though now run aground with grief, in due time thou shalt be all afloat with comfort.

TIM. I am loath to interrupt you in so welcome a discourse.

PHIL. Thirdly, consider that thou hast had, though not grace enough to cure thee, yet enough to keep thee, and conclude that he whose goodness hath so long held thy head above water from drowning, will at last bring thy whole body safely to the shore. The wife of Manoah had more faith than her husband, and thus she reasoned: If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received a burnt and a meat offering at our hands. [Judg. xiii. 23.] Thou mayest argue in like manner: If God had intended finally to forsake me, he would never so often have heard and accepted my prayers, in such a measure as to vouchsafe unto me, though not full deliverance from, free preservation in, my affliction. Know God hath .done great things for thee already, and thou mayest conclude, from his grace of supportation hitherto, grace of ease, and relaxation hereafter.

TIM. It is pity to disturb you; proceed.

PHIL. Fourthly, consider that, besides the private stock of thy own, thou tradest on the public store of all good men’s prayers, put up to heaven for thee. What a mixture of languages met in Jerusalem at Pentecost, [Acts ii.]—Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, &c. But conceive, to thy comfort, what a medley of prayers, in several tongues, daily centre themselves in God’s ears in thy behalf, English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, &c., insomuch, that perchance thou dost not understand one syllable of their prayers, by whom thou mayest reap benefit.

TIM. Is it not requisite, to entitle me to the profit of other men’s prayers, that I particularly know their persons which pray for me?

PHIL. Not at all, no more than it is needful that the eye or face must see the backward parts, which is difficult, or the inward parts of the body, which is impossible; without which sight, by sympathy they serve one another. And such is the correspondency by prayers betwixt the mystical members of Christ’s body, corporally unseen one by another.

TIM. Proceed to a fifth meditation.

PHIL. Consider, there be five kinds of consciences on foot in the world; first, an ignorant conscience, which neither sees nor saith anything, neither beholds the sins in a soul, nor reproves them. Secondly, the flattering conscience, whose speech is worse than silence itself, which, though seeing sin, soothes men in the committing thereof. Thirdly, the seared conscience, which hath neither sight, speech, nor sense, in men that are past feeling. [Ephes. iv. 19.] Fourthly, a wounded conscience, frighted with sin. The last and best is a quiet and clear conscience, pacified in Christ Jesus. Of these, the fourth is thy case, incomparably better than the three former, so that a wise man would not take a world to change with them. Yea, a wounded conscience is rather painful than sinful, an affliction, no offence, and is in the ready way, at the next remove, to be turned into a quiet conscience.

TIM. I hearken unto you with attention and comfort.

PHIL. Lastly, consider the good effects of a wounded conscience, privative for the present, and positive for the future. First, privative, this heaviness of thy heart (for the time being) is a bridle to thy soul, keeping it from many sins it would otherwise commit. Thou that now sittest sad in thy shop, or walkest pensive in thy parlour, or standest sighing in thy chamber, or liest sobbing on thy bed, mightest perchance at the same time be drunk, or wanton, or worse, if not restrained by this affliction. God saith in his prophet to Judah, I will hedge thy way with thorns, [Hos. ii. 6.] namely to keep Judah from committing spiritual fornication. It is confest that a wounded conscience, for the time, is a hedge of thorns (as the messenger of Satan, sent to buffet St. Paul, is termed a thorn in the flesh). [2 Cor. xii. 7.] But this thorny fence keeps our wild spirits in the true way, which otherwise would be straggling: and it is better to be held in the right road with briers and brambles, than to wander on beds of roses in a wrong path, which leads to destruction.

TIM. What are the positive benefits of a wounded conscience?

PHIL. Thereby the graces in thy soul will be proved, approved, improved. Oh, how clear will thy sunshine be, when this cloud is blown over! And here I can hardly hold from envying thy happiness hereafter. Oh that I might have thy future crown, without thy present cross; thy triumphs, without thy trial; thy conquest, without thy combat! But I recall my wish, as impossible, seeing what God hath joined together, no man can put asunder. These things are so twisted together, I must have both or neither.

DIALOGUE XV.

That is not always the greatest Sin whereof a Man is guilty, wherewith his Conscience is most pained for the present.

TIMOTHEUS.

IS that the greatest sin in man’s soul, wherewith his wounded conscience, in the agony thereof, is most perplexed?

PHIL. It is so commonly, but not constantly. Commonly, indeed, that sin most pains and pinches him, which commands as principal in his soul.

TIM. Have all men’s hearts some one paramount sin, which rules as sovereign over all the rest?

PHIL. Most have. Yet, as all countries are not monarchies governed by kings, but some by free states, where many together have equal power; so it is possible (though rare) that one man may have two, three, or more sins, which jointly domineer in his heart, without any discernible superiority betwixt them.

TIM. Which are the sins that most generally wound and afflict a man, when his conscience is terrified?

PHIL. No general rule can exactly be given herein. Sometimes, that sin in acting whereof he took most delight; it being just, that the sweetness of his corporal pleasure should be sauced with more spiritual sadness. Sometimes, that sin which (though not the foulest) is the most frequent in him. Thus his idle words may perplex him more than his oaths, or perjury itself. Sometimes that sin (not which is most odious before God, but) most scandalous before men does most afflict him, because drawing greatest disgrace upon his person and profession. Sometimes, that sin which he last committed, because all the circumstances thereof are still firm and fresh in his memory. Sometimes that sin which (though long since by him committed) he hath heard very lately powerfully reproved; and no wonder, if an old gall new rubbed over smart the most. Sometimes, that sin which formerly he most slighted and neglected, as so inconsiderably small that it was unworthy of any sorrow for it, and yet now it may prove the sharpest sting in his conscience.

TIM. May one who is guilty of very great sins sometimes have his conscience much troubled only for a small one?

PHIL. Yes, verily: country patients often complain, not of the disease which is most dangerous, but most conspicuous. Yea, sometimes they are more troubled with the symptom of a disease (suppose an ill colour, bad breath, weak stomach) than with the disease itself. So in the soul, the conscience ofttimes is most wounded, not with that offence which is, but appears, most; and a sin incomparably small to others, whereof the party is guilty, may most molest for the present, and that for three reasons.

TIM. Reckon them in order.

PHIL. First, that God may show in him, that as sins are like the sands in number, so they are far above them in heaviness, whereof the least crumb taken asunder, and laid on the conscience by God’s hand, in full weight thereof, is enough to drive it to despair.

TIM. What is the second reason?

PHIL. To manifest God’s justice, that those should be choked with a gnat-sin, who have swallowed many camel-sins, without the least regret. Thus some may be terrified for not fasting on Friday, because indeed they have been drunk on Sunday: they may be perplexed for their wanton dreams, when sleeping, because they were never truly humbled for their wicked deeds, when waking. Yea, those who never feared Babylon the great, may be frightened with little Zoar; I mean, such as have been faulty in flat superstition may be tortured for committing or omitting a thing in its own nature indifferent.

DIALOGUE XVI.

Obstructions hindering the speedy flowing of Comfort into a troubled Soul.

TIMOTHEUS.

HOW comes it to pass, that comfort is so long a coming to some wounded consciences?

PHIL. It proceeds from several causes: either from God, not yet pleased to give it; or the patient, not yet prepared to receive it; or the minister, not well fitted to deliver it.

TIM. How from God not yet pleased to give it?

PHIL. His time to bestow consolation is not yet come: now no plummets of the heaviest human importunity can so weigh down God’s clock of time, as to make it strike one minute before his hour be come. [John ii. 4.] Till then, his mother herself could not prevail with Christ to work a miracle, and turn water into wine: and till that minute appointed approach, God will not in a wounded conscience convert the water of affliction into that wine of comfort which makes glad the heart of the soul.

TIM. How may the hinderance be in the patient himself?

PHIL. He may as yet not be sufficiently humbled, or else God perchance in his providence foresees, that as the prodigal child, when he had received his portion, riotously misspent it, so this sick soul, if comfort were imparted unto him, would prove an unthrift and ill husband upon it, would lose and lavish it. God therefore conceives it most for his glory, and the other’s good, to keep the comfort still in his own hand, till the wounded conscience get more wisdom to manage and employ it.

TIM. May not the sick man’s too mean opinion of the minister be a cause why he reaps no more comfort by his counsel?

PHIL. It may. Perchance the sick man hath formerly slighted and neglected that minister, and God will now not make him the instrument for his comfort, who before had been the object of his contempt. But on the other side, we must also know, that perchance the party’s over-high opinion of the minister’s parts, piety, and corporal presence (as if he cured where he came, and carried ease with him) may hinder the operation of his advice. For God grows jealous of so suspicious an instrument, who probably may be mistaken for the principal. Whereas a meaner man, of whose spirituality the patient hath not so high carnal conceits, may prove more effectual in comforting, because not within the compass of suspicion to eclipse God of his glory.

TIM. How may the obstructions be in the minister himself?

PHIL. If he comes unprepared by prayer, or possessed with pride, or unskilful in what he undertakes; wherefore in such cases, a minister may do well to reflect on himself (as the disciples did when they could not cast out the Devil), [Matth. xvii. 19.] and to call his heart to account, what may be the cause thereof: particularly whether some unrepented for sin in himself hath not hindered the effects of his counsels in others.

TIM. However, you would not have him wholly disheartened with his ill-success.

PHIL. O no; but let him comfort himself with these considerations. First, that though the patient gets no benefit by him, he may gain experience by the patient, thereby being enabled more effectually to proceed with some other in the same disease. Secondly, though the sick man refuses comfort for the present, yet what doth not sink on a sudden may soak in by degrees, and may prove profitable afterwards. Thirdly, his unsucceeding pains may notwithstanding facilitate comfort for another to work in the same body, as Solomon built a temple with most materials formerly provided and brought thither by David. Lastly, grant his pains altogether lost on the wounded conscience, yet his labour is not in vain in Lord, [1 Cor. xv. 58.] who without respect to the event will reward his endeavours.

TIM. But what if this minister hath been the means to cast this sick man down, and now cannot comfort him again?

PHIL. In such a case, he must make this sad accident the more matter for his humiliation, but not for his dejection. Besides, he is bound, both in honour and honesty, civility and Christianity, to procure what he cannot perform, calling in the advice of others more able to assist him, not conceiving, out of pride or envy, that the discreet craving of the help of others is a disgraceful confessing of his own weakness: like those malicious midwives, who had rather that the woman in travail should miscarry, than be safely delivered by the hand of another more skilful than themselves.

DIALOGUE XVII.

What is to be conceived of their final Estate who die in a wounded Conscience without any visible Comfort.

TIMOTHEUS.

WHAT think you of such, who yield up their ghost in the agony of an afflicted spirit, without receiving the least sensible degree of comfort?

PHIL. Let me be your remembrancer to call or keep in your mind what I said before, that our discourse only concerns the children of God: this notion renewed, I answer. It is possible that the sick soul may receive secret solace, though the standers-by do not perceive it. We know how insensibly Satan may spirt and inject despair into a heart, and shall we not allow the Lord of heaven to be more dexterous and active with his antidotes than the Devil is with his poisons?

TIM. Surely, if he had any such comfort, he would show it by words, signs, or some way, were it only but to comfort his sad kindred, and content such sorrowful friends which survive him; were there any hidden fire of consolation kindled in his heart, it would sparkle in his looks and gestures, especially seeing no obligation of secrecy is imposed on him, as on the blind man, when healed, to tell none thereof. [Mark viii. 26.]

PHIL. It may be he cannot discover the comfort he hath received, and that for two reasons: First, because it comes so late, when he lies in the marshes of life and death, being so weak, that he can neither speak, nor make signs with Zechariah, being at that very instant when the silver cord is ready to be loosed, and the golden bowl to be broken, and the pitcher to be broken at the fountain, and the wheel to be broken at the cistern.

TIM. What may be the other reason?

PHIL. Because the comfort itself may be incommunicable in its own nature, which the party can take and not tell; enjoy, and not express; receive, and not impart: as by the assistance of God’s Spirit, he sent up groans which cannot be uttered, [Rom. viii. 26.] so the same may from God be returned with comfort which cannot be uttered; and as he had many invisible and privy pangs, concealed from the cognizance of others, so may God give him secret comfort, known unto himself alone, without any other men’s sharing in the notice thereof. The heart knoweth his own bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy. [Prov. xiv. 10.] So that his comfort may be compared to the new name given to God’s servants, which no man knoweth, save he that receiveth it. [Rev. ii. 17.]

TIM. All this proceeds on what is possible or probable, but amounts to no certainty.

PHIL. Well, then, suppose the worst, this is most sure, though he die without tasting of any comfort here, he may instantly partake of everlasting joys hereafter. Surely many a despairing soul, groaning out his last breath with fear and thought to sink down to hell, hath presently been countermanded by God’s goodness to eternal happiness.

TIM. What you say herein, no man alive can confirm or confute, as being known to God alone, and the soul of the party. Only I must confess that you have charity on your side.

PHIL. I have more than charity, namely, God’s plain and positive promise, Blessed are such as mourn, for they shall be comforted. [Matth.v. 4.] Now though the particular time when be not expressed, yet the latest date that can be allowed must be in the world to come, where such mourners, who have not felt God in his comfort here, shall see him in his glory in heaven.

TIM. But some who have led pious and godly lives have departed, pronouncing the sentence of condemnation upon themselves, having one foot already in hell by their own confession.

DIALOGUE XVIII.

Of the different Time and Manner of the coming of Comfort to such who are healed of a wounded Conscience.

TIMOTHEUS.

HOW long may a servant of God lie under the burden of a wounded conscience?

PHIL. It is not for us to know the times and the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. [Acts i. 7.] God alone knows whether their grief shall be measured unto them by hours, or days, or weeks, or months, or many years.

TIM. How then is it that St. Paul saith, that God will give us the issue with the temptation, [1 Cor. x. 13.] if one may long be visited with this malady?

PHIL. The Apostle is not so to be understood, as if the temptation and issue were twins, both born at the same instant; for then no affliction could last long, but must be ended as soon as it is begun; whereas we read how Æneas, truly pious, was bedridden of the palsy eight years; [Acts ix. 33.] the woman diseased with a bloody issue twelve years; [Matth. ix. 2.] another woman bowed by infirmity eighteen years; [Luke xii. 11] and the man lame thirty-eight years at the pool of Bethesda. [John v. 5.]

TIM. What then is the meaning of the Apostle?

DIALOGUE XIX.

How such who are completely cured of a wounded Conscience are to demean themselves.

TIMOTHEUS.

GIVE me leave now to take upon me the person of one recovered out of a wounded conscience.

PHIL. In the first place, I must heartily congratulate thy happy condition, and must rejoice at thy upsitting, whom God hath raised from the bed of despair: welcome David out of the deep, Daniel out of the lion’s den, Jonah from the whale’s belly, welcome Job from the dunghill, restored to health and wealth again.

TIM. Yea, but when Job’s brethren came to visit him after his recovery, every one gave him a piece of money, and an ear-ring of gold: [Job xlii. 11.] but the present I expect from you, let it be, I pray, some of your good counsel for my future deportment.

PHIL. I have need to come to thee, and comest thou to me? Fain would I be a Paul, sitting at the feet of such a Gamaliel, who hath been cured of a wounded conscience in the height thereof: I would turn my tongue into ears, and listen attentively to what tidings he brings from hell itself. Yea, I should be worse than the brethren of Dives, if I should not believe one risen from the dead, for such in effect I conceive to be his condition.

TIM. But waiving these digressions, I pray proceed to give me good advice.

PHIL. First thankfully own God thy principal restorer, and comforter paramount. Remember that, of ten lepers, one only returned to give thanks, [Luke xvii. 17.] which shows, that by nature, without grace overswaying us, it is ten to one if we be thankful. Omit not also thy thankfulness to good men, not only to such who have been the architects of thy comfort, but even to those who, though they have built nothing, have borne burthens towards thy recovery.

TIM. Go on, I pray, in your good counsel.

PHIL. Associate thyself with men of afflicted minds, with whom thou mayest expend thy time to thine and their best advantage. O how excellently did Paul comply with Aquila and Priscilla! As their hearts agreed in the general profession of piety, so their hands met in the trade of tent-makers, they abode and wrought together, being of the same occupation. [Acts xviii. 3.] Thus I count all wounded consciences of the same company, and may mutually reap comfort one by another; only here is the difference; they (poor souls) are still bound to their hard task and trade, whilst thou (happy man) hast thy indentures cancelled, and, being free of that profession, art able to instruct others therein.

TIM. What instructions must I commend unto them?

PHIL. Even the same comfort wherewith thou thyself wast comforted of God: [2 Cor. i. 4.] with David, tell them what God hath done for thy soul; and with Peter, being strong, strengthen thy brethren: [Luke xxii. 32.] conceive thyself like Joseph, therefore, sent before, and sold into the Egypt of a wounded conscience, (where thy feet were hurt in the stocks, the irons entered into thy soul,) that thou mightest provide food for the famine of others, and especially be a purveyor of comfort for those thy brethren, which afterwards shall follow thee down into the same doleful condition.

TIM. What else must I do for my afflicted brethren?

PHIL. Pray heartily to God in their behalf: when David had prayed, Psalm xxv. 2, O my God, I trust in thee, let me not be ashamed; in the next verse, (as if conscious to himself, that his prayers were too restrictive, narrow, and niggardly,) he enlarges the bounds thereof, and builds them on a broader bottom: Yea, let none that wait on thee be ashamed. Let charity in thy devotions have Rehoboth, room enough: beware of pent petitions confined to thy private good, but extend them to all God’s servants, but especially all wounded consciences.

TIM. Must I not also pray for those servants of God, which hitherto have not been wounded in conscience?

PHIL. Yes, verily, that God would keep them from, or cure them in, the exquisite torment thereof. Beggars, when they crave an alms, constantly use one main motive, that the person of whom they beg may be preserved from that misery whereof they themselves have had woful experience. If they be blind, they cry, Master, God bless your eyesight; if lame, God bless your limbs; if undone by casual burning, God bless you and yours from fire. Christ, though his person be now glorified in heaven, yet he is still subject, by sympathy of his saints on earth, to hunger, nakedness, imprisonment, and a wounded conscience, and so may stand in need of feeding, clothing, visiting, comforting, and curing. Now when thou prayest to Christ for any favour, it is a good plea to urge, edge, and enforce thy request withal, Lord, grant me such or such a grace, and never mayest thou, Lord, in thy mystical members, never be tortured and tormented with the agony of a wounded conscience, in the deepest distress thereof.

TIM. How must I behave myself for the time to come?

DIALOGUE XX.

Whether one cured of a wounded Conscience be subject to a Relapse.

TIMOTHEUS.

MAY a man, once perfectly healed of a wounded conscience, and for some years in peaceable possession of comfort, afterwards fall back into his former disease?

PHIL. Nothing appears in Scripture or reason to the contrary, though examples of real relapses are very rare, because God’s servants are careful to avoid sin, the cause thereof; and being once burnt therewith, ever after dread the fire of a wounded conscience.

TIM. Why call you it a relapse?

PHIL. To distinguish it from those relapses more usual and obvious, whereby such who have snatched comfort before God gave it them, on serious consideration that they had usurped that to which they had no right, fall back again into the former pit of despair; this is improperly termed a relapse, as not being a renewing, but a continuing of their former malady, from which, though seemingly, they were never soundly recovered.

TIM. Is there any intimation in Scripture of the possibility of such a real relapse in God’s servants?

PHIL. There is; when David saith, I will hear what God the Lord will speak, for he will speak peace unto his people, and to his saints, but let them not turn again to folly: [Psalm lxxxv. 8.] this imports that if his saints turn again to folly, which by woful experience we find too frequently done, God may change his voice, and turn his peace, formerly spoken, into a warlike defiance to their conscience.

TIM. But this methinks is a diminution to the majesty of God, that a man, once completely cured of a wounded conscience, should again be pained therewith: let mountebanks palliate, cures break out again, being never soundly, but superficially healed: He that is all in all never doth his work by halves, so that it shall be undone afterwards.

PHIL. It is not the same individual wound in number, but the same in kind, and perchance a deeper in degree: nor is it any ignorance or falsehood in the surgeon, but folly and fury in the patient, who, by committing fresh sins, causes a new pain in the old place.

DIALOGUE XXI.

Whether it be lawful to pray for, or to pray against, or to praise God for, a wounded Conscience.

TIMOTHEUS.

IS it lawful for a man to pray to God to visit him with a wounded conscience? PHIL. He may and must pray to have his high and hard heart truly humbled, and bruised with the sight and sense of his sins, and with unfeigned sorrow for the same: but may not explicitly and directly pray for a wounded conscience, in the highest degree and extremity thereof.

TIM. Why interpose you those terms explicitly and directly?

PHIL. Because implicitly and by consequence, one may pray for a wounded conscience: namely, when he submits himself to be disposed by God’s pleasure, referring the particulars thereof wholly to his infinite wisdom, tendering, as I may say, a blank paper to God in his prayers, and requesting him to write therein what particulars he pleases; therein generally and by consequence, he may pray for a wounded conscience, in case God sees the same for his own glory, and the parties’ good; otherwise, directly he may not pray for it.

TIM. How prove you the same?

PHIL. First, because a wounded conscience is a judgment, and one of the sorest, as the resemblance of the torments of hell. Now it is not congruous to nature, or grace, for a man to be a free and active instrument, purposely to pull down upon himself the greatest evil that can befall him in this world. Secondly, we have neither direction nor precedent of any saint, recorded in God’s word, to justify and warrant such prayers. Lastly, though praying for a wounded conscience may seemingly scent of pretended humility, it doth really and rankly savour of pride, limiting the Holy One of Israel. It ill becoming the patient to prescribe to his heavenly physician what kind of physic he shall minister unto him.

TIM. But we may pray for all means to increase grace in us, and therefore may pray for a wounded conscience, seeing thereby at last piety is improved in God’s servants.

PHIL. We may pray for and make use of all means whereby grace is increased: namely, such means as by God are appointed for that purpose; and therefore, by virtue of God’s institution, have both a proportionableness and attendency in order thereunto. But properly, those things are not means, or ordained by God, for the increase of piety, which are only accidentally overruled to that end by God’s power against the intention and inclination of the things themselves. Such is a wounded conscience, being always actually an evil of punishment, and too often occasionally an evil of sin; the bias whereof doth bend and bow to wickedness: though overruled by the aim of God’s eye, and strength of his arm, it may bring men to the mark of more grace and goodness. God can and will extract light out of darkness, good out of evil, order out of confusion, and comfort out of a wounded conscience: and yet darkness, evil, confusion, &c. are not to be prayed for.

TIM. But a wounded conscience, in God’s children, infallibly ends in comfort here, or glory hereafter, and therefore is to be desired.

PHIL. Though the ultimate end of a wounded conscience winds off in comfort, yet it brings with it many intermediate mischiefs and maladies, especially as managed by human corruption: namely, dulness in divine service, impatience, taking God’s name in vain, despair for the time, blasphemy; which a saint should decline, not desire; shun, not seek; not pursue, but avoid, with his utmost endeavours.

TIM. Is it lawful positively to pray against a wounded conscience?

PHIL. It is, as appears from an argument taken from the lesser to the greater. If a man may pray against pinching poverty, as wise Agur did; [Prov. xxx. 8.] then may he much more against a wounded conscience, as a far heavier judgment. Secondly, if God’s servants may pray for ease under their burdens, whereof we see divers particulars in that worthy prayer of Solomon; [1 Kings viii. 33.] I say, if we pray to God to remove a lesser judgment by way of subvention, questionless we may beseech him to deliver us from the great evil of a wounded conscience, by way of prevention.