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no man was ever honoured by any wise or discerning person for dining upon Persian carpets, nor rewarded with a crown for being at ease. It was the fire that did honour to Mutius Scævola, poverty made Fabritius famous, Rutilius was made excellent by banishment *, Regulus by torments, Socrates by prison, Cato by his death: and God hath crowned the memory of Job with a wreath of glory, because he sat upon his dunghill wisely and temperately; and his potsherd and his groans, mingled with praises and justifications of God, pleased him like an anthem sung by angels in the morning of the resurrection. God could not choose but be pleased with the delicious accents of martyrs, when in their tortures they cried out nothing but [Holy Jesus] and [Blessed be God] and they also themselves, who, with a hearty designation to the Divine pleasure, can delight in God's severe dispensation, will have the transportations of cherubims when they enter into the joys of God. If God be delicious to his servants when he smites them, he will be nothing but ravishments and ecstasies to their spirits, when he refreshes them with the overflowings of joy in the day of recompences. No mạn is more miserable than he that hath no adversity; that man is not tried whether he be good or bad; and God never crowns those virtues which are only,

* Non enim hilaritate, nec lasciviâ, nec risu, aut joco comite levitatis, sed sæpe etiam tristes firmitate et constantiâ suut beati. Cic. de Fin. 1. 22.

↑ Nihil infelicius eo cui nihil unquam contigit adversi. Non licuit illi se experiri, Seneca.

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faculties and dispositions; but every act of virtue is an ingredient into reward. And we see many children fairly planted, whose parts of nature were never dressed by art, nor called from the furrows of their first possibilities by discipline and institution, and they dwell for ever in ignorance, and converse with beasts; and yet if they had beend ressed and exercised, might have stood at the chairs of princes, or spoken parables amongst the rulers of cities. Our virtues are but in the seed when the grace of God comes upon us first: But this grace must be thrown into broken furrows, and must twice feel the cold, and twice feel the heat, and be softened with storms and showers, and then it will arise into fruitfulness and harvests. And what is there in the world to distinguish virtues from dishonours, or the value of Cæsar from the softness of the Egyptian eunuchs, or that can make any thing rewardable, but the labour and the danger, the pain and the difficulty? Virtue could not be any thing but sensuality, if it were the entertainment of our senses and fond desires; and Apicius had been the noblest of all the Romans, if feeding a great appetite, and despising the severities of temperance, had been the work and proper employment of a wise man. But otherwise do fathers, and otherwise do mothers, handle their children. These soften them with kisses and imperfect noises, with the pap and Illa seges votis respondent avari

Agricolæ, bis quæ solem, bis frigora sensit,

Virg. Georg into i

breast-milk of soft endearments, they rescue them from tutors, and snatch them from discipline, they desire to keep them fat and warm *, and their feet dry, and their bellies full, and then the children govern, and cry, and prove fools and troublesome, so long as the feminine republic does endure. But fathers, because they design to have their children wise and valiant, apt for counsel or for arms, send them to severe governments, and tie them to study, to hard labour, and afflictive contingencies. They rejoice when the bold boy strikes a lion with his huntingspear, and shrinks not when the beast comes to affright his early courage. Softness is for slaves and beasts, for minstrels and useless persons, for such who cannot ascend higher than the state of a fair ox, or a servant entertained for vainer offices: But the man that designs his son for nobler employments, to honours and to triumphs, to consular dignities and presidencies of counsels, loves to see him pale with study, or panting with labour, hardened with sufferance, or eminent by dangers. And so God dresses us for heaven. He loves to see us struggling with a dis ease, and resisting the devil, and contesting against the weakness of nature, and against hope to believe in hope, resigning ourselves to God's will, praying him

* Languent per inertiam saginata, nec labore tantum, sed mole et ipso sui onere deficiunt.

Seneca.

+ Callum per injurias ducunt,

Ut sit luminis atque aquæ cœlestis patiens latus.

+ Modestià filiorum delectantur; vernularum licentia et canum,

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to choose for us, and dying in all things but faith and its blessed consequence; ut ad officium cum periculo simus prompti; and the danger and the resistance shall endear the office*. For so have I known the boisterous north-wind pass through the yielding air, which opened its bosom, and appeased its violence by entertaining it with easy compliance in all the regions of its reception: But when the same breath of Heaven hath been checked with the stiffness of a tower, or the united strength of a wood, it grew mighty and dwelt there, and made the highest branches stoop, and make a smooth part for it on the top of all its glories. So is sickness, and so is the grace of God: When sickness hath made the difficulty, then God's grace hath made a triumph, and by doubling its power hath created new proportions of a reward: and then shews its biggest glory when it hath the greatest difficulty to master, the greatest weaknesses to support, the most busy temptations to contest with: for so God loves that his strength should be seen in our weakness and our danger. Happy is that state of life in which our services to God are the dearest and the most expensive.

5. Sickness hath some degrees of eligibility, at least by an after-choice: because to all persons which are within the possibilities and state of pardon, it becomes a great instrument of pardon of sin. For as God seldom rewards here and hereafter too, so it is not very often that he punishes in both states. In

* Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densæ
Occurrunt sylvæ, spatio diffusus inani.

+ Marcct sine adversario virtus.

Lætius est quoties magno tibi constat honestum.

Luc.

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great and final sins he doth so; but we find it expressed only in the case of sin against the Holy Ghost, which shall never be forgiven in this world, nor in the world to come; that is, it shall be punished in both worlds, and the infelicities of this world shall but usher in the intolerable calamities of this next. But this is in a case of extremity, and in sins of an unpardonable malice: In those lesser stages of death which are deviations from the rule, and not a destruction and perfect antinomy to the whole institution, God very often smites with the rod of sickness, that he may not for ever be slaying the soul with eternal death. (Psal. xxxix. 32, 33.) I will visit their offences with the rod, and their sin with scourges: Nevertheless my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my truth to fail. And there is in the New Testament a delivery over to Satan, and a consequent buffeting, for the mortification of the flesh, indeed, but that the soul may be saved in the day of the Lord. (1 Cor. v. 5. 1 Tim. i. 20.) And to some persons the utmost process of God's anger reaches but to a sharp sickness, or at most but to a temporal death; and then the little moment any anger is spent, and expires in rest and a quiet grave. Origen, St. Augustin, and Cassian say concerning Ananias and Sapphira *, that they were slain with a sudden death, that by such a judgment their sin might be punished, and

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* Digni erant in hoc seculo recidere epeccatum suum, ut mundiores exeant ab hac vitâ, mundati castigatione sibi illatâ per mortem communem, quoniam credentes erant in Christum.

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