yovu, hoping to thaw their joints with the waters of the stream; but there the frost overtook them, and bound them fast in ice, till the young herdsmen took them in their stronger snare. It is the unhappy chance of many men, finding many inconveniences upon the mountains of single life, they descend into the valleys of marriage to refresh their troubles, and there they enter into fetters, and are bound to sorrow by the cords of a man's or woman's peevishness.

Every little thing can blast an infant blossom; and the breath of the south can shake the little rings of the vine, when first they begin to curl like the locks of a new weaned boy; but when by age and consolidation they stiffen into the hardness of a stem, and have, by the warm embraces of the sun, and the kisses of heaven, brought forth their clusters, they can endure the storms of the north, and the loud noises of a tempest, and yet never be broken; so are the early unions of an unfixed marriage; watchful and observant, jealous and busy, inquisitive and careful, and apt to take alarm at every unkind word. For infirmities do not manifest themselves in the first scenes, but in the succession of a long society; and it is not chance or weakness, when it appears at first, but it is want of love or prudence, or it will be so expounded; and that which appears ill at first usually affrights the unexperienced man or woman, who makes unequal conjectures, and fancies mighty sorrows, by the proportions of the new and early unkindness. It is a very great passion, or a huge folly,

or a certain want of love, that cannot preserve the colours and beauties of kindness, so long as public honesty requires a man to wear their sorrows for the death of a friend.

There is nothing can please a man without love; and if a man be weary of the wise discourses of the Apostles, and of the innocency of an even and private fortune, or hates peace, or a fruitful year, he hath reaped thorns and thistles from the choicest flowers of paradise; for nothing can sweeten felicity itself, but love.

No man can tell, but he that loves his children, how many delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities are so many little emanations of joy and comfort to him, that delights in their persons and society; but he, that loves not his wife and children, feeds a lioness at home, and broods a nest of sorrows; and blessing itself cannot make him happy; so that all the commandments of God, enjoining a man to love his wife, are nothing but so many necessities and capacities of joy.

REPENTANCE.

He that repents, confesses his own error, and the righteousness of God's laws, and by judging himself, acknowledges that he deserves punishment; and there

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fore that God is righteous, if he punishes him; and, by returning, confesses God to be the fountain of felicity, and the foundation of true, solid, and permanent joys, saying, in the sense and passion of the disciples, "whither shall we go, for thou hast the words of eternal life?" and, by humbling himself, exalts God, by making the proportions of distance more immense and vast. And

as repentance does contain in it all the parts of holy life, which can be performed by a returning sinner, (all the acts and habits of virtue being but parts, or instances, or effects of repentances ;) so all the actions of a holy life do constitute the mass and body of all those instruments, whereby God is pleased to glorify himself.

For if God is glorified in the sun and moon, in the rare fabric of the honey comb, in the discipline of bees, in the economy of ants, in the little houses of birds, in the curiosity of an eye, God being pleased to delight in those little images and reflexes of himself from those pretty mirrors, which like a crevice in a wall, through a narrow perspective transmit the species of a vast excellency; much rather shall God be pleased to behold himself in the glasses of our obedience, in the emissions of our will and understanding; these being rational and apt instruments to express him, far better than the natural, as being nearer communications of himself.

DEPENDANCE OF RELIGION ON GOVERNMENT.

Above all things those sects of Christians, whose professed doctrine brings destruction and diminution to

government, give the most intolerable scandal and dishonour to the institution; and it had been impossible, that Christianity should have prevailed over the wisdom and power of the Greeks and Romans, if it had not been humble to superiors, patient of injuries, charitable to the needy, a great exacter of obedience to kings, even to heathens, that they might be won and convinced; and to persecutors that they might be sweetened in their anger, or upbraided for their cruel injustice; for so doth the humble ivy creep at the foot of the oak, and leans upon its lowest base, and begs shade and protection, and leave to grow under its branches, and to give and take mutual refreshment, and pay a friendly influence for a mighty patronage; and they grow and dwell together, and are the most remarkable of friends and married pairs of all the leafy nation. Religion of itself is soft, easy, and defenceless, and God hath made it grow up with empires, and lean upon the arms of kings, and it cannot well grow alone; and if it shall, like the ivy, suck the heart of the oak, upon whose body it grew and was supported, it will be pulled down from its usurped eminence, and fire and shame shall be its portion.

SAFETY OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

The righteous is safe, but by intermedial difficulties; he is safe in the midst of his persecutions; they may disturb his rest, and discompose his fancy, but they are

like the fiery chariot of Elias; he is encircled with fire, and rare circumstances, and strange usages, but is carried up to heaven in a robe of flames. And so was Noah safe when the flood came, and was the great type, and instance too, of the verification of this proposition; he was ὁ δίκαιος and δικαιοσύνης κήρυξ; he was put into a strange condition, perpetually wandering, shut up in a prison of wood, living upon faith, having never had the experience of being safe in floods.

And so have I often seen young and unskilful persons sitting in a little boat, when every little wave, sporting about the sides of the vessel, and every motion and dancing of the barge, seemed a danger, and made them cling fast upon their fellows; and yet all the while they were as safe, as if they sate under a tree, while a gentle wind shaked the leaves into a refreshment and a cooling shade; and the unskilful, unexperienced Christian shrieks out whenever his vessel shakes, thinking it always in danger, that the watery pavement is not stable and resident like a rock; and yet all his danger is in himself, none at all from without; for he is indeed moving upon the waters, but fastened to a rock; faith is his foundation, and hope is his anchor, and death is his harbour, and Christ is his pilot, and heaven is his country; and all the evils of his poverty, or affronts of tribunals, and evil judges, of fears and sudden apprehensions, are but like the loud wind blowing from the right point, they make a noise, and drive faster to the harbour; and if we do not leave the