tune; but knew not that he nourished scorpions in his breast, and that his liver and his heart were eaten up with spectres and images of death; his thoughts were full of interruptions, his dreams of illusions:* his fancy was abused with real troubles and fantastic images, imagining that he saw the Scythians flaying him alive, his daughters like pillars of fire, dancing round about a cauldron in which himself was boiling, and that his heart accused itself to be the cause of all these evils. Does he not drink more sweetly that takes his beverage in an earthen vessel, than he that looks and searches into his golden chalices, for fear of poison, and looks pale at every sudden noise, and sleeps in armour, and trusts no body, and does not trust God for his safety. Can a man bind a thought with chains, or carry imaginations in the palm of his hand? can the beauty of the peacock's train, or the ostrich plume, be delicious to the palate and the throat? does the hand intermeddle with the joys of the heart? or darkness, that hides the naked, make him * See Dr. Franklin's letter upon the art of procuring pleasant dreams, which thus concludes,-These are the rules of the art that, though they generally prove effectual in producing the end intended, there is a case in which the most punctual observance of them will be totally fruitless. I need not mention the case to you, my dear friend: but my account of the art would be imperfect without it. The case is, when the person who desires to have pleasant dreams has not taken care to preserve, what is necessary above all things-A good eonscience. warm ? does the body live, as does the spirit? or can the body of Christ be like to common food? indeed the sun shines upon the good and bad; and the vines give wine to the drunkard, as well 'as to the sober man; pirates have fair winds, and a calm sea, at the same time when the just and peaceful merchant-man hath them. But although the things of this world are common to good and bad, yet sacraments and spiritual joys, the food of the soul, and the blessing of Christ, are the peculiar right of saints. ON SUPERSTITION. I HAVE seen a harmless dove made dark with an artificial night, and her eyes sealed and locked up with a little quill, soaring upward and flying with amazement, fear, and an undiscerning wing; she made towards heaven, but knew not that she was made a train and an instrument, to teach her enemy to prevail upon her and all her defenceless. kindred. So is a superstitious man, jealous and blind, forward and mistaken; he runs towards heaven as he thinks, but he chooses foolish paths, and out of fear takes any thing that he is told; or fancies and guesses concerning God, by measures taken from his own diseases and imperfections.* Sermon on Godly Fear: Serm. ix. part 3. ADVERSITY.* ALL is well as long as the sun shines, and the fair breath of heaven gently wafts us to our own purposes. But if you will try the excellency, and feel the work of faith, place the man in a persecution; let him ride in a storm, let his bones be broken with sorrow, and his eyelids loosed with sickness, let his bread be dipped with tears, and all the daughters of music be brought low; let us come to sit upon the margent of our grave, and let a tyrant lean hard upon our fortunes, and dwell upon our wrong; let the storm arise, and the keels toss till the cordage crack, or that all our hopes bulge under us, and descend into the hollowness of sad misfortunes.† . In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth, Upon her patient breast, making their way With those of nobler bulk! But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The gentle Thetis, and anon, behold The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid mountains cuts, Like Perseus' horse; where's then the saucy boat, Co-rival'd greatness? TROILUS AND CRESSIDA. See Bacon's beautiful Essay on Adversity, where he says— "But to speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroical virtue. Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, Adversity is the blessing of the new, which carrieth the greater benediction, and the clearer revelation of God's favour. Yet even in the Old Testament, if you listen to David's harp, you shall hear as many herse-like airs as carols." + Holy Dying, ch. 3. ON THE MISERIES OF MAN'S LIFE. How few men in the world are prosperous! What an infinite number of slaves and beggars, of persecuted and oppressed people, fill all corners of the earth with groans, and heaven itself with weeping, prayers, and sad remembrances! How many provinces and kingdoms are afflicted by a violent war, or made desolate by popular diseases! Some whole countries are remarked with fatal evils, or periodical sicknesses. Grand Cairo in Egypt feels the plague every three years returning like a quartan ague, and destroying many thousand of persons. All the inhabitants of Arabia the desart are in continual fear of being buried in huge heaps of sand, and therefore dwell in tents and ambulatory houses, or retire to unfruitful mountains, to prolong an uneasy and wilder life. And all the countries round about the Adriatic sea feel such violent convulsions, by tempests and intolerable earthquakes, that sometimes whole cities find a tomb, and every man sinks with his own house, made ready to become his monument, and his bed is crushed into the disorders of a grave. It were too sad if I should tell how many persons are afflicted with evil spirits, with spectres and illusions of the night. He that is no fool, but can consider wisely, if he be in love with this world, we need not despair but that a witty man might reconcile him with tortures, and make him think charitably of the rack, and be brought to dwell with vipers and dragons, and entertain his guests with the shrieks of mandrakes, cats, and screech-owls, with the filing of iron and the harshness of rending of silk, or to admire the harmony that is made by a herd of evening wolves, when they miss their draught of blood in their midnight revels. The groans of a man in a fit of the stone are worse than all these; and the distractions of a troubled conscience are worse than those groans; and yet a merry careless sinner is worse than all that. But if we could, from one of the battlements of heaven, espy how many men and women at this time lie fainting and dying for want of bread; how many young men are hewn down by the sword of war; how many poor orphans are now weeping over the graves of their father, by whose life they were enabled to eat; if we could but hear how mariners and passengers are at this present in a storm, and shriek out because their keel dashes against a rock or bulges under them; how many people there are that weep with want, and are mad with oppression, or are desperate by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity; in all reason we should be glad to be out of the noise and participation of so many evils. This is a place of sorrows and tears, of so great evils and a constant calamity: let us remove from hence, at least, in affections and preparation of mind.* *Holy Dying, ch. 1. From the place of my birth I shall only desire to remem |