heartedness, and the same good-nature makes them easy and compliant with drinking persons, and they die with drink, but cannot live with charity: And: their alms it may be shall deck their monument, or give them the reward of loving persons, and the poor man's thanks for alms, and procure many temporal blessings; but it is very sad that the reward should be all spent in this world. Some are really just persons, and punctual observers of their word with men, but break their promises with God, and make no scruple of that. In these and all the like cases the spiritual man must be careful to remark, that good proceeds from an entire and integral cause, and evil from every part: That one sickness can make a man die; but he cannot live and be called a sound man without an entire health, and therefore if any confidence arises upon that stock, so as that it hinders the strictness of the repentance, it must be allayed with the representment of this sad truth, That he who reserves one evil in his choice, hath chosen an evil portion, and coloquintida and death is in the poi: And he that worships the God of Israel with a frequent sacrifice, and yet upon the anniversary will bow in the house of Venus, and loves to see the follies and the nakedness of Rimmon, may eat part of the flesh of the sacrifice, and fill his belly, but shall not be refreshed by the holy cloud arising from the altar, or the dew of heaven descending upon the mysteries.

13. And yet the minister is to estimate, that one or more good things is to be an ingredient into his judg

ment concerning the state of his soul, and the capacities of his restitution, and admission to the peace of the church: And according as the excellency and usefulness of the grace hath been, and according to the degrees and the reasons of its prosecution, so abatements are to be made in the injunctions and impositions upon the penitent. For every virtue is a degree of approach to God: And though in respect of the acceptation it is equally none at all, that is, it is as certain a death if a man dies with one mortal wound as if he had twenty; yet in such persons who have some one or more excellencies, though not an entire piety, there is naturally a nearer approach to the state of grace, than in persons who have done evils, and are eminent for nothing that is good. But in making judgment of such persons, it is to be enquired into and noted accordingly, why the sick person was so eminent in that one good thing; whether by choice and apprehension of his duty, or whether it was a virtue from which his state of life ministered nothing to dehort or discourage him, or whether it was only a consequent of his natural temper and constitution. If the first, then it supposes him in the neighbourhood of the state of grace, and that in other things he was strongly tempted. The second is a felicity of his education, and an effect of Providence. The third is a felicity of his nature and a gift of God in order to spiritual purposes. But yet, of every one of these advantages, are to be made. If the conscience. of his duty was the principle, then he is ready formed No. 12.

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to entertain all other graces upon the same reason, and his repentance must be made more sharp and penal: because he is convinced to have done against his conscience in all the other parts of his life; but the judgment concerning his final state ought to be more gentle, because it was a huge temptation that hindered the man, and abused his infirmity. But if either his calling or his nature were the parents of the grace, he is in the state of a moral mar, (in the just and proper meaning of the word) and to be handled accordingly: That virtue disposed him rarely well to many other good things, but was no part of the grace of sanctification: And therefore the man's repentance is to begin anew, for all that, and is to be finished in the returns of health, if God grants it; but if he denies it, it is much, very much the worse for all that sweet-natured virtue.

14. When the confession is made, the spiritual man is to exercise the office of a restorer and a judge, in the following particulars and manner.

SECT. IV.

Of the ministering to the Restitution and Pardon, or the Reconciliation of the sick Person, by administering the Holy Sacrament.

IF any man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness: That's the commission: (Gal. vi. 1.) And,

let the elders of the church pray over the sick man: and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven ! him; (James v. 14, 15.) that's the effect of his power and his ministry. But concerning this, some few things are to be considered.

1. It is the office of the presbyters and ministers of religion to declare public criminals and scandalous persons to be such, that when the leprosy is declared, the flock may avoid the infection; and then the man is excommunicate, when the people are warned to avoid the danger of the man, or the reproach of the crime, to withdraw from his society, and not to hid him God speed, not to eat and celebrate Synaxes and church-meetings, with such who are declared criminal and dangerous. And therefore excommunication is in a very great part the act of the congregation, and communities of the faithful: And St. Paul said to the church of the Corinthians, that they had inflicted the evil upon the incestuous person, that is, by excommunicating him. (1 Cor. v. 5, 12, i3. 11 Cor. ii. 6. All the acts of which are as they are subjected in the people, acts of caution and liberty; but no more acts of direct proper power or jurisdiction, than it was when the scholars of Simon Magus left his chair and went to hear St. Peter: But as they are actions of the rulers of the church, so they are declarative ministerial, and effective too by moral casualty, that is, by persuasion and discourse, by argument and prayer, by homily and material representment, by reasonableness of order, and the

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superinduced necessities of inen; though not by any real change of state as to the person, nor by diminution of his right, or violence to his condition.

2. He that baptizes and he that ministers the holy sacrament, and he that prays, does holy offices of great advantage; but in these also, just as in the former, he exercises no jurisdiction or pre-eminence after the manner of secular authority: And the same is also true if he should deny them. He that refuseth to baptize an indisposed person, hath by the consent of all no power or jurisdiction over the unbaptized man: And he that for the like reason refuseth to give him the communion, preserves the sacredness of the mysteries, and does charity to the indisposed man, to deny that to him which will do him mischief. And this is an act of separation, just as it is for a friend or physician to deny water to an hydropic person, or Italian wines to a hectic fever; or as if Cato should deny to salute Bibulus, or the censor of manners to do countenance to a wanton and a vicious person. And though this thing was expressed by words of power, such as separation, abstention, excommunication, deposition; yet these words we understand by the thing itself, which was notorious and evident to be matter of prudence, security, and a free unconstrained discipline; and they passed into power by consent and voluntary submission, having the same effect of constraint, fear and authority, which we see in secular jurisdiction; not because ecclesiastical discipline hath a natural proper coercion as lay tri