should think so of a good father. But besides the reasonableness of this faith and this hope, we have infinite experience of it: how innocent, how careless, how secure is infancy; and yet how certainly provided for? We have lived at God's charges all the days of our life, and have (as the Italian proverb says) sat down to meat at the sound of a bell; and hitherto he hath not failed us: we have no reason to suspect him for the future! we do not use to serve men so, and less time of trial creates great confidences in us towards them who for twenty years together never broke their word with us; and God hath so ordered it, that a man shall have had the experience of many years provision, before he shall understand how to doubt; that he may be provided for an answer against the temptation shall come, and the mercies felt in his childhood may make him fearless when he is a man.

Add to this, that God hath given us his Holy Spirit; he hath promised heaven to us; he hath given us his Son; and we are taught from scripture to make this inference from hence, How should he not with him give us all things else?

The Charge of many Children.

We have a title to be provided for as we are God's creatures, another title as we are his children, another because God hath promised; and every of our children hath the same title: and therefore it is a huge folly and infidelity to be troubled and full of

care because we have many children. Every child we have to feed is a new revenue, a new title to God's care and Providence; so that many children are a great wealth; and if it be said they are chargeable, it is no more than all wealth and great revenues are. For what difference is it? Titius keeps ten plows; Cornelia hath ten children. He hath land enough to employ, and to feed all his hinds: she blessings, and promises, and the provisions, and the truth of God to maintain all her children. His hinds and horses eat up all his corn, and her children are sufficiently maintained with her little. They bring in, and eat up; and she indeed eats up, but they also bring in from the store-houses of heaven, and the granaries of God: and my children are not so much mine as they are God's, he feeds them in the womb by ways secret and insensible; and would not work a perpetual miracle to bring them forth, and then to starve them.

Violent Necessities.

But some men are highly tempted, and are brought to a strait, that without a miracle they cannot be relieved; what shall they do? It may be their pride or vanity hath brought the necessity upon them, and it is not a need of God's making: and if it be not, they must cure it themselves by lessening their desires and moderating their appetites: and yet if it be innocent, though unnecessary, God does usually relieve such necessities; and he does not only, upon our prayers,

grant us more than he promised of temporal things, but also he gives many times more than we ask. This is no object of our faith, but ground enough for a temporal and prudent hope: and if we fail in the particular, God will turn it to a bigger mercy, if we submit to his dispensation, and adore him in the denial. But if it be a matter of necessity, let not any man, by way of impatience, cry out, that God will not work a miracle; for God, by miracle, did give meat and drink to his people in the wilderness, of which he had made no particular promise in any Covenant: and if all natural means fail, it is certain that God will rather work a miracle than break his word he can do that, he cannot do this. Only we must remember, that our portion of temporal things is but food and raiment: God hath not promised us coaches and horses, rich houses and jewels, Tyrian silks and Persian carpets; neither hath he promised to minister to our needs in such circumstances as we shall appoint, but such as himself shall choose. God will enable thee either to pay thy debt, (if thou beggest it of him) or else he will pay it for thee, i. e. take thy desire as a discharge of thy duty, and pay it to thy creditor in blessings, or in some secret of his providence. be he hath laid up the corn that shall feed thee in the granary of thy brother; or will clothe thee with his wool. He enabled St. Peter to pay his Gabel by the ministry of a fish; and Elias to be waited on by a crow, who was both his minister and his steward for provisions; and his only son rode in triumph upon

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an ass that grazed in another man's pastures: and if God gives to him the dominion, and reserves the use to thee, thou hast the better half of the two: but the charitable man serves God and serves thy need: and both join to provide for thee, and God blesses both. But if he takes away the flesh-pots from thee, he can also alter the appetite, and he hath given thee power and commandment to restrain it: and if he lessens the revenue, he will also shrink the necessity; or if he gives but a very little, he will make it go a great way; or if he sends thee but a coarse diet, he will bless it and make it healthful, and can cure all the anguish of thy poverty by giving thee patience, and the grace of contentedness. For the grace of God secures you with provisions, and yet the grace of God feeds and supports the spirit in the want of provisions: and if a thin table be apt to enfeeble the spirits of one used to feed better, yet the chearfulness of a spirit that is blessed will make a thin table become a delicacy, if the man was as well taught as he was fed, and learned his duty when he received Poverty therefore is in some senses eligible, and to be preferred before riches, but in all senses it is very tolerable.

the blessing.

Death of Children, or nearest Relatives and Friends.

There are some persons who have been noted for excellent in their lives and passions, rarely innocent, and yet hugely penitent for indiscretions and harmless infirmities: such was Paulina, one of the ghostly

children of St. Hierom: and yet when any of her children died, she was arrested with a sorrow so great as brought her to the margin of her grave. And the more tender our spirits are made by religion, the more easy we are to let in grief, if the cause be innocent, and be but in any sense twisted with piety and due affections. To cure which we may consider that all the world must die, and therefore to be impatient at the death of a person, concerning whom it was certain and known that he must die, is to mourn because thy friend or child was not born an angel; and when thou hast a while made thyself miserable by an importunate and useless grief, it may be thou shalt die thyself, and leave others to their choice whether they will mourn for thee or no: but by that time it will appear how impertinent that grief was which served no end of life, and ended in thy own funeral. But what great matter is it if sparks fly upward, or a stone falls into a pit? If that which was combustible be burned, or that which was liquid be melted, or that which is mortal to die? It is no more than a man does every day; for every night death hath gotten possession of that day, and we shall never live that day over again; and when the last day is come, there are no more days left for us to die. And what is sleeping and waking, but living and dying? What is spring and autumn, youth and old age, morning and evening, but real images of life and death, and really the same to many considerable effects and changes?