worst of passions! How much more comfortable it is to walk in smooth and even paths, than to wander in rugged ways overgrown with briers, obstructed with rubs. and beset with snares; to sail steadily in a quiet, than to be tossed in a tempestuous sea; to behold the lovely face of heaven smiling with a cheerful serenity, than to see it frowning with clouds, or raging with storms; to hear harmonious consents, thau dissonant janglings; to see objects correspondent in graceful symmetry, than lying disorderly in confused heaps; to be in health, and have the natural humours consent in moderate temper, than-as it happens in diseases-agitated with tumultuous commotions: how all senses and faculties of man unanimously rejoice in those emblems of peace, order, harmony, and proportion. Yea, how nature universally delights in a quiet stability or undisturbed progress of motion; the beauty, strength, and vigor of everything requires a concurrence of force, co-operation, and contribution of help; all things thriye and flourish by communicating reciprocal aid; and the world subsists by a friendly conspiracy of its parts; and especially that political society of men chiefly aims at peace as its end, depends on it as its cause, relies on it for its support. How much a peaceful state resembles heaven, into which neither complaint, pain, nor clamour do ever enter; but blessed sculs converse together in perfect love, and in perpetual concord; and how a condition of enmity represents the state of hell, that black and dismal region of dark hatred, fiery wrath, and horrible tumult. How like a paradise the world would be, flourishing in joy and rest, if men would cheerfully conspire in affection, and helpfully contribute to each other's content: and how like a savage wilderness row it is, when, like wild beasts, they vex and persecute, worry and devour each other. How not only philosophy hath placed the supreme pitch of happiness in a calmness of mind and tranquility of life, void of care and trouble, of irregular passions and perturbations; but that Holy Scripture itself, in that one term of peace, most usually comprehends all joy and content, all felicity and prosperity: so that the heavenly consort of angels, when they agree most highly to bless, and to wish the greatest happiness to mankind, could not better express their sense than by saying: Be on earth peace, and good-will among men.'

Almighty God, the most good and beneficent Maker, gracious Lord, and merciful Preserver of all things, infuse into their hearts those heavenly graces of meekness, patience, and benignity: grant us and his whole church, and all his creation, to serve him quietly here, and a blissful rest to praise and magnify him for ever.

Industry.

By industry we understand a serious and steady application of mind, joined with a vigorous exercise of our active faculties, in prosecution of any reasonable, honest, useful design, in order to the accomplishment or attainment of some considerable good; as, for instance, a merchant is industrious who continueth intent and active in driving on his trade for acquiring wealth; a soldier is industrious who is watchful for occasion, and earnest in action towards obtaining the victory; and a scholar is industrious who doth assiduously bend his mind to study for getting knowledge. Such, in general, I conceive to be the nature of industry, to the practice whereof the following considerations may induce:

1. We may consider that industry doth befit the constitution and frame of our nature, all the faculties of our soul and organs of our body being adapted in a congruity and tendency thereto : our hands are suited for work, our fect for travel, our senses to watch for occasion of pursuing good and eschewing evil, our reason to plod and contrive ways of employing the other parts and powers; all these, I say, are formed for action, and that not in a loose and gadding way, or in a slack and remiss degree, but in regard to determinate ends, with vigour requisite to attain them: and especially our appetites do prompt to industry, as inclining to things not attainable without it; according to that aphorism of the wise man: The desire of the slothfui killeth him, for his hands refused to labour; that is, he is apt to desire things which he cannot attain without pains; and not enduring them, he for want thereof doth feel a deadly smart and anguish; whereof, in not being industrious, we defeat the intent of our Maker, we pervert his work and gifts, we forfeit the use and benefit of our faculties, we are bad husbands of nature's stock.

2. In consequence hereto, industry doth preserve and perfect our nature, Keeping it in good tune and temper, improving and advancing it towards its best state. The

labour of our mind in attentive meditation and study doth render it capable and patient of thinking upon any object and occasion, doth polish and refine it by use, doth enlarge it by accession of habits, doth quicken and reuse our spirits, dilating and diffusing them into their proper channels. The very labour of our body doth keep the organs of action sound and clean, discussing fogs and superfluous humours, opening passages, distributing nourishment, exciting vital heat; barring the use of it, no good constitution of soul or body can subsist; but a foul rust, a dull nan.bness, a resty listlessness, a heavy unwieldiness, must seize on us: our spirits will be stifled and choked, our hearts will grow faint and languid; our parts will flag and decay; the vigour of our mind, and the health of our body, will be much impaired. It is with us as with other things in nature, which by motion are preserved in their native purity and perfection, in their sweetness, in their lustre; rest corrupting, debasing, and defiling them. If the water runneth, it holdeth clear, sweet, and fresh; but stagnation turneth it into a noisome puddle: if the air be fanned by winds, it is pure and wholesome; but from being shut up it groweth thick and putrid: if metals be employed, they abide smooth and splendid; but lay them up, and they soon contract rust: if the earth be belaboured with culture, it yieldeth corn; but lying neglected, it will be overgrown with brakes and thistles; and the better its soil is, the ranker weeds it will produce: all nature is upheld in its being, order, and state by constant agitation: every creature is incessantly employed in action conformable to its designed end and use; in like manner, the preservation and improvement of our faculties depend on their constant exercise.

DR. ROBERT SOUTH.

DR ROBERT SOUTH (1633–1716), reputed as the wittiest of English divines, and a man of powerful though somewhat irregular talents, was the son of a London merchant, and born at Hackney. Having passed through a briliant career of scholarship at Oxford, he was elected public orator of the university in 1660, and soon afterwards became chaplain to Lord Chancellor Clarendon. He held several valuable livings in the church, including the rectory of Islip, in Oxfordshire, where, it is recorded to his honour, he gave his curate the then unprecedented salary of a hundred pounds, and spent the remainder of his income in educating poor children, and improving the church and parsonage-house. South was the most enthusiastic of the ultraloyal divines of the English Church at that period, and of course a zealous advocate of passive obedience and the divine right of sovereigns. In a sermon preached in Westminster Abbey in 1675, on the 'Peculiar Care and Concern of Providence for the Protection and Defence of Kings,' he ascribes the absolute subjection' which men yield to royalty to a secret work of the divine power, investing sovereign princes with certain marks and rays of that divine image which overawes and controls the spirits of men, they know not how or why. And yet they feel themselves actually wrought upon and kept under by them, and that very frequently against their will. And this is that property which in kings we call majesty.'

Of the old royalists, he says: 'I look upon the old Church of England royalists-which I take to be only another name for a man who prefers his conscience before his interest-to be the best Christians and the most meritorious subjects in the world; as having passed all those terrible tests and trials which conquering domineering and malice could put them to, and carried their credit and their conscience

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clear and triumphant through and above them all, constantly firm and immovable by all that they felt, either from their professed enemies, or their false friends.' And in a sermon preached before Charles II. he speaks of his majesty's father as a blessed saint, the justness of whose government left his subjects at a loss for an occasion to rebel; a father to his country, if but for this only, that he was the father of such a son!' During the encroachments on the church in the reign of James II. the loyalty of South caused him to remain quiet, and to use no other weapons but prayers and tears for the recovery of his sovereign from the wicked and unadvised counsels wherewith he was entangled.' But when the church was attacked by persons uninvested with marks and rays of the divine image,' he spared neither argument nor invective. The following sample of his declamation will illustrate this remark:

May the great, the just, and the eternal God judge between the Church of England and those men who have charged it with popery; who have called the nearest and truest copy of primitive Christianity, superstition; and the most detestable instances of schism and sacrilege, reformation; and, in a word, done all that they could, both from the pulpit and press, to divide, shake, and confound the purest and most apostolically reformed church in the Christian world; and all this, by the venomous gibberish of a few paltry phrases instilled into the minds of the furious, whimsical, ungoverned multitude, who have ears to hear, without either heads or hearts to understand.

For I tell you again, that it was the treacherous cant and misapplication of those words-popery, superstition, reformation, tender conscience, persecution, moderatiou, and the like, as they have been used by a pack of designing hypocrites-who believed not one word of what they said, and laughed within themselves at those who did-that put this poor church into such a flame heretofore, as burnt it down to the ground, and will infallibly do the same to it again, if the providence of God and the prudence of man does not timely interpose between her and the villainous arts of such incendiaries.

Against the Puritans, Independents, and Presbyterians, South was in the habit of pouring forth unbounded ridicule. He resolutely opposed even the slightest concessions to them on the part of the church, with the view of effecting an accommodation. His disposition was that of a persecutor, and made him utterly hostile to the Toleration Act, a measure of which he declares one consequence to be 'certain, obvious, and undeniable; and that is, the vast increase of sects and heresies among us, which, where all restraint is taken off, must of necessity grow to the highest pitch that the devil himself can raise such a Babel to; so that there shall not be one bold ringleading knave or fool who shall have the confidence to set up a new sect, but shall find proselytes enough to wear his name, and list themselves under his banner; of which the Quakers are a demonstration past dispute. And then, what a vast party of this poor deluded people must of necessity be drawn after these impostors!'

In 1693, South published Animadversions' on Sherlock's 'Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity.' The violence and personality displayed by both parties on this occasion gave just offense to the friends of religion and the church; and at length, after the contro

versy had raged for some time, the king was induced by the bishops to put an end to it, by ordaining that all preachers should carefully avoid all new terms, and confine themselves to such ways of explication as have been commonly used in the church.'

Notwithstanding his intolerant and fiery temper, South was fully conscious of the nature of that Christian spirit in which a clergyman, above all others, ought to abound. The third of the following passages in his Sermons is but another proof of the trite observation, that men are too frequently unable to reduce to practice the virtuous principles which they really and honestly hold.

The Will for the Deed.

The third instance in which men used to plead the will instead of the deed, shall be in duties of cost and expense.

Let a business of expensive charity be proposed; and then, as I shewed before, that, in matters of labour, the lazy person could find no hands wherewith to work; so neither, in this case, cau the religious miser find any hands wherewith to give. It is wonderful to consider how a command or call to be liberal, either upon a civil or religious account, all of a sudden impoverishes the rich, breaks the merchant, shuts np every private mau's exchequer, and makes those men in a minute have nothing who, at the very same instant, want nothing to spend. So that, instead of relieving the poor, such a command strangely increases their number, and transforms rich men into beggars presently. For, let the danger of their prince and country knock at their purses, and call upon them to contribute against a public enemy or calamity, then immediately they have nothing, and their riches upon such occasions as Solomon expresses it-never fail to make themselves wings, and fly away.

To descend to matters of daily and common occurrence; what is more usual in conversation than for men to express their unwillingness to do a thing by saying they cannot do it; and for a covetous man, being asked a little money in private charity, to answer that he has none? Which, as it is, if true, a sufficient answer to God and man; so, if false, it is intolerable hypocrisy towards both.

But do men in good earnest think that God will be put off so? or can they imagine that the law of God will be baffled with a lie clothed in a scoff?

For such pretences are no better, as appears from that notable account given us by the apostle of this windy, insignificant charity of the will, and of the worthlessness of it, not enlivened by deeds (James, ii. 15, 16): 'If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit ?" "Profit, does he say? Why, it profits just as much as fair words command the market, as good wishes buy food and raiment, and pass for current payment in the shops. Come to an old rich professing vulpony, and tell him that there is a church to be built, beautified, or endowed in such a place, and that he cannot lay out his money more to God's honour, the public good, and the comfort of his own conscience, than to bestow it liberally upon such an occasion; and, in answer to this, it is ten to one but you shall be told, how much God is for the inward, spiritual worship of the heart; and that the Almighty neither dwells nor delights in temples made with hands, but hears and accepts the prayers of his people in dens and caves, barns and stables; and in the the home'iest and meanest c tges, as well as in the stateliest and most magnificent churches.' Thus, I say, you ar like to be answered. In reply to which, I would have all such sly sanctified cheats-who are so often harping on this string-to know, once for all, that God, who accepts the prayers of his people in dens and caves, barns and stables, when, by his afflicting providence, he has driven them from the appointed places of his solemn worship, so that they cannot have the use of them, will not for all this endure to be served or prayed to by them in such places, nor accept of their barn-worship, nor their hog-sty worship; no, nor yet their parlour or their chamber worship, where he has given them both wealth and power to build churches. For he that commands us to worship him in the spirit, commands us also

to honour him with our substance. And never pretend that thou hast a heart to pray while thou hast no heart to give, since he that serves Mammon with his estate cannot possibly serve God with his heart. For as in the heathen worship of God, a sacrifice without a heart was accounted ominous, so, in the Christian worship of him, a heart without a sacrifice is worthless and impertinent.

And thus much for men's pretences of the will when they are called upon to give upon a religious account; according to which, a man may be well enough said-as the common word is-to be all heart, and yet the arrantest miser in the world.

But come we now to this rich old pretender to godliness in another case, and teli him that there is such a one, a man of good family, good education, and who has lost all his estate for the king, now ready to rot in prison for debt; come, what will you give towards his release? Why, then answers the will instead of the deed as inuch the readier speaker of the two. The truth is, I always had a respect for such men; I love them with all my heart; and it is a thousand pities that any that had served the king so faithfully should be in such want.' So say I too, and the more shame is it for the whole nation that they should be so. But still, what will you give? Why, then, answers the mau of mouth-charity again, and tells you that you could not come in a worse time; that nowadays money is very scarce with him, and that therefore he can give nothing; but he will be sure to pray for the poor gentle

man.'

Ah, thou hypocrite! when thy brother has lost all that ever he had, and lies languishing, and even gasping under the utmost extremities of poverty and distress, dost thou think thus to lick him up again only with thy tongue? Just like that old formal hocus who denied a beggar a farthing, and put him off with his blessing.

Ill-natured and Good-natured Men.

A stanch resolved temper of mind, not suffering a man to sneak, fawn, cringe, and accommodate himself to all humours, though never so absurd and unreasonable, is commonly branded with, and exposed under the character of pride, morosity, and ill-nature: an ugly word, which you may from time to time observe many honest, worthy, inoffensive persons, and that of all sorts, ranks, and professions, strangely and unaccountably worried and run down by. And therefore I think I cannot do truth, justice, and common honesty better service, than by ripping up so malicious a cheat, to vindicate such as have suffered by it.

Certain it is that, amongst all the contrivances of malice, there is not a surer engine to pull men down in the good opinion of the world, and that in spite of the greatest worth and innocence, than this imputation of ill-nature; an engine which serves the ends and does the work of pique and envy both effectually and safely. Forasmuch as it is a loose and general charge upon a man, without alleging any particular reason for it from his life or actions; and consequently does the more mischief, because, as a word of course, it passes currently, and is seldom looked into or examined. And, therefore, as there is no way to prove a paradox or false proposition but to take it for granted, so, such as would stab any man's good name with the accusation of ill-nature, do very rarely descend to proofs or particulars. It is sufficient for their purpose that the word sounds odiously, and is believed easily and that is enough to do any cne's business with the generality of men, who seldom have so much judgment or charity as to hear the cause before they pronounce sentence. But that we may proceed with greater truth, equity, and candour in this case, we will endeavor to find out the right sense and meaning of this terrible confounding word, ill-nature, by coming to particulars.

And here, first, is the person charged with it false or cruel, ungrateful or revengeful? is he shrewd and unjust in his dealings with others? does he regard no promises, and pay no debts? does he profess love, kindness, and respect to those whom underhand, he do s all the mischief to that possibly he can? is he unkind, rude, or niggardly to his friends? Has he shut up liis heart and his hand towards the poor, and has no bowels of compassion for such as are in want and misery? is he insensible of kindness done him, and withal careless and backward to acknowledge or requite them? or, lastly, is he bitter and implacable in the prosecution of such as have wronged or abused him?

No; generally none of these ill things-which one would wonder at-are ever meant, or so much as thought of, in the charge of ill-nature; but, for the most part,