goodness; He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord; there is more rhetorick in that one fentence than in a library of fermons, and indeed if those sentences were understood by the reader, with the fame emphafis as they are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes of inftructions, but might be honest by an epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar without relieving his neceffities with my purfe, or his foul with my prayers; these scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untouched part of us both there is under these cantoes and miferable outfides, these mutilate and femi-bodies, a foul of the fame alloy with our own, whose genealogy is God's as well as ours, and in as fair a way to falvation, as ourselves. Statifts that labour to contrive a commonwealth without poverty, Ed: Rev. N°58 þ. 262. poverty, take away the object of SECT. XIV. Now there is another part of charity, which is the bafis and pillar of this, and that is the love of God, for whom we love our neighbour: for this I think charity, to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God. All that is truly amiable is God, or as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or fhadow of himself. Nor is it strange that we fhould place affection on that which is invisible; all that we truly love is fo: what we adore under affection of our fenfes, deferves not the honour of fo pure a title. Thus we adore virtue, tho' to the eyes of fenfe, fhe be invifible. Thus that part of our noble friends that we love, is not that thot merely forgetting the Commons that part that we embrace, but that infenfible part that our arms cannot embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing but himself, he loves us but for that part which is as it were himself, and the traducttion of his holy fpirit. Let us call to affize the loves of our parents, affection of our wives and children, and they are all dumb thows, and dreams, without reality, truth, or conftancy; for first there is a strong bond of affection between us and our parents, yet how easily diffolved? we betake ourselves to a woman, forgetting our mothers in a wife, and the womb that bare us in that which fhall bear our image. This woman bleffing us with children, our affections leaves the level it held before, and finks from our bed unto our iffue and picture of pofterity, where affection holds no fteady manfion. They growing up in years defire our ends, or applying our death plying themselves to a woman, take a lawful way to love another better than ourselves. Thus I perceive a man may be buried alive, and behold his grave in his own iffue. SECT. XV. IBLIOT ром NUS I conclude therefore and fay, there is no happiness under (or as Copernicus will have it, above) the fun, nor any crambo in that repeated verity and burden of all the wifdom of Solomon, All is vanity and vexation of Spirit; there is no felicity in what the world adores. Ariftotle, whilft he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, falls upon one himfelf: for his fummnm bonum, is á chimera, and there is no fuch thing as his felicity. That wherein God himself is hpapy, the holy angels are happy, in whofe defect the de-. vils are unhappy, that dare I call happiness: whatfoever conduceth Ee a Ecclef. ii. 26. unto ODLE unto this, may with an easy metaphor deserve that name; whatfoeever elfe the world terms happinefs, is to me as a story out of Pliny, a tale of Boccace or Malizpini, an apparition, or neat delufion, wherein there is no more of happiness than the name. Blefs me in this life with but peace of confcience, command of my affections, the love of thyfelf and my dearest friends, and I fhall be happy enough to pity Cefar. These are, O Lord, the humble defires of my most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on earth : wherein I fet no rule or limit to thy hand or providence, difpofe of me according to the wifdom of thy pleasure. Thy will be done, tho in my own undoing. * FINI S. |