In departing from this body and life, I must depart from all its ancient pleasures: I must taste no more sweetness in meat, drink, rest, sport, or any such thing that now delights me: house, lands, goods and wealth, must all be left; and the place where I live must know me no more. All my possessions must be no more to me, nor all that I laboured for or took delight in, than if they had never been at all.

What though it must be so? Consider, O my soul, thy ancient pleasures are all past already. Thou losest none of them by death, for they are all lost before, if immortal grace have not by sanctifying them, made the benefits of them to become immortal. All the sweet draughts, morsels, sports, and laughter; all the sweet thoughts of thy worldly possessions, or thy hopes, that ever thou hadst till this present hour, are past by, dead, and gone already. All that death doth to such as these, is to prevent such, that on earth thou shalt have no more.

Is not that the case of every brute, that hath no comfort from the prospect of another life, to repair his loss: and yet as our dominion diminishes their pleasure while they live, by our keeping them under fear and labour, so at our will their lives must end. To please a gentleman's appetite for half an hour or less, birds, beasts, and fishes, must lose life itself, and all the pleasure which light might have afforded them for many years; yea, perhaps many of these, birds and fishes at least, must die to become but one feast to a rich man, if not one ordinary meal.

Is not their sensual pleasure of the same nature as ours? Meat is as sweet to them, and ease as welcome, and desire as strong in season; and the pleasure that death deprives our flesh of, is such as is common to man with brutes: why then should it seem hard to us to lose that in the course of nature, which our wills deprive them of at our pleasure? When, if we are believers, we can say that we but exchange these delights of life, for the greater delights of a life with

Indeed the pleasures of life are usually imbit tered with so much pain, that to a great part of the world doth seem to exceed them: the vanity and vexation is so great and grievous, as the pleasure seldom countervails. It is true, that nature desires life, even under sufferings that are but tolerable, rather than to die: but that is not so much from the sensible pleasure of life, as from mere natural inclination; which God hath laid so deep, that free-will hath not full power against it. As before I said, that the body of man is such a thing, that could we see through the skin, as men may look through a glass-hive upon the bees, and see all the parts and motion, the filth that are in it, the soul would hardly be willing to actuate, love, and cherish such a mass of unclean matter, and to dwell in such a lothesome place, unless God had necessitated it by nature, deeper than reason or sense, to such a love, and such a labour, by the spring of inclination: even as the cow would not else lick the unclean calf, nor women themselves be at so much labour and trouble with their children, while there is little of them to be pleasing, but uncleanness, and crying, and helpless impatiency, to make wearisome, had not necessitating inclina tion done more hereto than any other sense or reason; even so I now say of the pleasure of living, that the sorrows are so much greater to multitudes than the sensible delight, that life would not be so commonly chosen and endured under so much trouble, were not men determined thereto by natural, necessitating inclination; or deterred from death by the fears of misery to the separated soul; and yet all this kept not some who are counted the best and wisest of the heathens, from taking it for the valour and wisdom of a man to take away his life in times of extremity, and from making this the great answer to them that grudge at God for making their lives so miserable, 'If the misery be greater than the good of life, why dost thou not end it? Thou mayst do that when thou wilt.'

Our meat and drink is pleasant to the healthful; but it costs poor men so much toil, labour, care, and trouble, to procure a poor diet for themselves and their families, that, I think, could they live without eating and drinking, they would thankfully exchange the pleasure of it all, to be eased of their care and toil in getting it: and when sickness comes, even the pleasantest food is lothesome.

Do we not willingly interrupt and lay by these pleasures every night, when we betake ourselves

to sleep? It is possible, indeed, that a man may then have pleasant dreams: but I think few go to sleep for the pleasure of dreaming: either no dreams, or vain, or troublesome dreams, are much more common. To say that rest and ease is my pleasure, is but to say that my daily labour and cares are so much greater than my waking pleasure, that I am glad to lay by both together for what is ease but deliverance from weariness and pain? For in deep and dreamless sleep there is little positive sense of the pleasure of rest itself. But indeed it is more from nature's necessitated inclination to this self-easing and repairing means, than from the positive pleasure of it, that we desire sleep. If we can thus be contented every night to die, as it were, to all our waking pleasures, why should we be unwilling to die to them at once.

If it be the inordinate pleasures forbidden of God, which you are loth to leave, those must be left before you die, or else it had been better for you never to have been born: yea, every wise and godly man doth cast them off with detestation you must be against holiness on that account as well as against death: indeed, the same cause which makes men unwilling to live a holy life, hath a great hand in making them unwilling to die; even because they are loth to leave the pleasure of sin: if the wicked be converted, he must be gluttonous and drunken no more; he must live in pride, vain glory, worldliness, and sensual pleasures, no more: therefore he draws back from a holy life, as if it were from death itself. So he is the more loth to die, because he must have no more of the pleasures of his riches, pomp, and honours, his sports and lust, and pleased appetite; no more for ever: but what is this to them that have mortified the flesh with the affeetions and lusts thereof?

Yea, it is these forbidden pleasures which are great impediments both of our holiness and our true pleasures: one of the reasons why God forbids them, is, because they hinder us from better. If for our own good we must forsake them when we turn to God, it must be supposed that they should be no reason against our willingness to die, but rather that to be free from the danger of them, we should be the more willing.

But the great satisfying answer of this objection is, that death will pass us to far greater pleasures, with which all these are not worthy to be compared. But of this more in due place. But,

When I die, I must depart not only from sensual delights, but from the more manly pleasures of my studies, knowledge, and converse with

many wise and godly men, and from all my pleasure in reading, hearing, public and private exercises of religion, &c.; I must leave my library, and turn over those pleasant books no more: I must no more come among the living, nor see the faces of my faithful friends, nor be seen of man: houses and cities, fields and countries, gardens and walks, will be nothing as to me. shall no more hear of the affairs of the world, of man, or wars, or other news, nor see what becomes of that beloved interest of wisdom, piety, and peace, which I desire may prosper, &c.

Though these delights are far above those of sensual sinners, yet, alas, how low and little are they? How small is our knowledge in comparison of our ignorance? How little doth the knowledge of learned doctors differ from the thoughts of a silly child? For from our childhood we take it in by drops; and as trifles are the matter of childish knowledge, so words, and notions, and artificial forms, do make up more of the learning of the world, than is commonly understood; and many such learned men know little more of any great and excellent things themselves, than rustics that are contemned by them for their ignorance. God and the life to come, are little better known by them, if not much less, than by many of the unlearned. What is it but a child's game, that many logicians, rhetoricians, grammarians, yea, metaphysicians, and other philosophers, in their most eager studies and disputes, are exercised in? Of how little use is it to know what is contained in many hundreds of the volumes that fill our libraries? Yea, or to know many of the most glorious speculations in physics, mathematics, &c. which have given some the title of virtuosi and ingeniosi in these times, who have little the more wit or virtue to live to God, or overcome temptations from the flesh and world, and to secure their everlasting hopes: what pleasure or quiet doth it give to a dying man to know almost any of their trifles.

Yea, it were well if much of our reading and learning did us no harm, nay, more than good: I fear lest books are to some but a more honourable kind of temptation than cards or dice; lest many a precious hour be lost in them, that should be employed on much higher matters, and lest many make such knowledge but an unholy, natural, yea, carnal pleasure, as worldlings do the thoughts of their lands and honours; and lest they be the more dangerous by how much the less suspected: but the best is, it is a pleasure so fenced from the slothful with thorny labour of hard and long studies, that laziness saves more from it than grace and holy wisdom doth. But

The religious people of the several parts will say as they hear their teachers do, and be the militant followers of their too militant leaders: and it will be their house talk, their shop talk, their street talk, if not their church talk, that such a one is an erroneous, dangerous man, because he is not as ignorant and erroneous as they, especially if they be the followers of a teacher much exasperated by confutation, and engaged in the controversy; and also if it should be suffering confessors that are contracted, or men most highly esteemed for extraordinary degrees of piety: then what cruel censures must he expect, who ever so tenderly would suppress their errors?

things:' for now we see through a glass darkly, as men understand a thing by a metaphor, parable or riddle, but then face to face, even creatures intuitively as in themselves naked and open to our sight: now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as I am known: not as God knows us for our knowledge and his must not be so comparatively likened but as holy spirits know us both now and for ever, we shall both know and be known by immediate intuition.

If a physician be to describe the parts of man, and the latent diseases of his patient, he is anxious to search hard, and bestow many thoughts of it, besides his long reading and converse to make him capable of knowing: and when all is done, he goes much upon conjectures, and his knowledge is mixed with many uncertainties, yea, and mistakes; but when he opens the corpse, he sees all, and his knowledge is more full, more true, and more certain, besides that it is easily and quickly attained, even by a present look: a countryman knows the town, the fields, and rivers where he dwells, yea, and the plants and animals, with ease and certain clearness; when he that must know the same things by the study of geographical writings and tables, must know them, but with a general, an unsatisfactory, and often a much mistaken kind of knowledge: alas, when our present knowledge hath cost a man the study of forty, or fifty, or sixty years, how lean and poor, how doubtful and unsatisfactory is it after all? But when God will show us himself, and all things; and when heaven is known as the sun by its own light, this will be the clear, sure, and satisfactory knowledge; 'blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' And without holiness none can see him.' This sight will be worthy the name of wisdom, when our present glimpse is but philosophy, a love and desire of wisdom; so far should we be from fearing death through the fear of losing our knowledge, or any of the means of knowledge, that it should make us rather long for the world of glorious light, that we might get out of this darkness, and know all that with an easy look, to our joy and satisfaction, which here we know with troublesome doubtings, or not at all. Shall we be afraid of darkness in the heavenly light, or of ignorance, when we see the Lord of glory.

Q what sad instances of this are the case of the confessors in Cyprian's days, who, as many of his epistles show, became the great disturbers of that church; and of the Egyptian monks at Alexandria, in the days of Theophilus, who turned Anthropomorphites, and raised abominable tumults, with woeful scandal, and odious bloodshed. O that this age had not yet greater instances to prove the matter than any of these! Now should a man be loth to die, for fear of leaving such troublesome, costly learning and knowledge, as the wisest men can here attain? But the chief answer is yet behind. No knowledge is lost, but perfected, and changed for much nobler, sweeter, greater knowledge: let men be ever so uncertain in particular de modo, whether acquired habits of intellect and memory die with us, as being dependent on the body: yet, by what manner soever, that a far clearer knowledge we shall have, than is here attainable, is not to be doubted of. The cessation of our present mode of knowing, is but the cessation of our ignorance and imperfection as our wakening ends a dreaming knowledge, and our maturity ends the trifling knowledge of a child: for so saith the Holy Ghost, 'Love never faileth,' and we can love no more than we know: but whether there be prophesies they shall fail: that is, cease: whether there be tongues they shall cease: whether there be knowledge, notional and abstractive, such as we have now, it shall vanish

As for the loss of sermons, books, and other means, surely it is no loss to cease the means when we have attained the end : cannot we spare our winter clothes, as troublesome in the heat of