lighted in doing good to other men, there is no man so seldom crossed as pleasured at the hands of others; whereupon it cannot be chosen but every man's woes must double, in that respect, the number and measure of his delights. Besides, concerning the very choice which oftentimes we are to make, our corrupt inclination well considered, there is cause why our Saviour should account them happiest that do most mourn, e and why Solomon might judge it better to frequent mourning than feasting houses:f not better simply and in itself, for then would nature that way incline, but in regard of us and our common weakness better. Job was not ignorant that his children's banquets, though tending to amity, needed sacrifice; neither doth any of us all need to be taught, that in things which delight we easily swerve from mediocrity, and are not easily led by a direct line. On the other side; the sores and diseases of mind which inordinate pleasure breedeth, are by dolour and grief cured: for which cause as all f Eccles. vii. 2, 4. g Job i. 5.

e Matt. v. 4.

offences use to seduce by pleasing, so all punishments endeavour by vexing to reform transgressions. We are of our own accord apt enough to give entertainment to things delectable, but patiently to lack what flesh and blood doth desire, and by virtue to forbear what by nature we covet; this, no man attaineth unto but by labour and long practice. From hence it ariseth, that in former ages, abstinence and fasting more than ordinary, was always a special branch of their praise in whom it could be observed and known; were they such as continually gave themselves to austere life, or men that took often occasions, in private virtuous respects, to lay Solomon's counsel aside : "Eat thy bread with joy?"h and to be followers of David's example, who saith, I humbled my soul with fasting;"i or but they who, otherwise worthy of no great commendation, have made of hunger, some their gain, some their physic, some their art; that, by mastering sensual appetites without constraint, they might grow

able to endure hardness whensoever need should require; for the body accustomed to emptiness, pineth not away so soon as having still used to fill itself.

The very purpose of the Church of God both in the number and the order of her fasts, hath been not only to preserve thereby throughout all ages the remembrance of miseries heretofore sustained, and of the causes in ourselves out of which they have risen, that men considering the one might fear the other the more, but farther also to temper the mind, lest contrary affections coming in place should make it too profuse and dissolute; in which respect it seemeth that fasts have been set as ushers of festival days, for prevention of those disorders as much as might be; wherein, notwithstanding, the world always will deserve, as it hath done, blame ; because such evils being not possible to be rooted out, the most we can do is in keeping them low, and, which is chiefly the fruit we look for, to create in the minds of men a love towards a frugal and severe life, to undermine

the palaces of wantonness; to plant parsimony as nature where riotousness hath been studied; to harden whom pleasure would melt; and to help the tumours which always fulness breedeth; that children as it were in the wool of their infancy dyed with hardness, may never afterwards change colour; that the poor whose perpetual fasts are of necessity may with better contentment endure the hunger which virtue causeth others so often to choose; and by advice of religion itself so far to esteem above the contrary; that they who for the most part do lead sensual and easy lives, they who as the prophet David describeth them, are not plagued like other men,' "h may by the public spectacle of all be still put in mind what themselves are; finally, that every man may be every man's daily guide and example, as well by fasting to declare humility, as by praise to express joy in the sight of God, although it have herein befallen the Church as sometimes David, so that the speech of the one may be

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h Psalm lxxiii. 5.

truly the voice of the other, "My soul fasted, and even that was also turned to my reproof."k

SECTION LIX.

CELEBRATION OF MATRIMONY.

In this world there can be no society durable otherwise than only by propagation. Albeit therefore single life be a thing more angelical and divine, yet since the replenishing first of earth with blessed inhabitants, and then of heaven with saints everlastingly praising God, did depend upon conjunction of man and woman; He who made all things complete and perfect, saw it could not be good to leave man without a helper unto the fore-alleged end. In things which some farther end doth cause to be desired, choice seeketh rather proportion than absolute perfection of goodness. So that woman being created for man's sake

k Psalm lxix. 10.