verence to my carriage and constancy, began to repent the ill they had done; and whosoever is truly repenting, thinks at the same time of repairing. I doubt many men in these ill times have found themselves unhappily engaged in a partnership of mischief, before they apprehended they were out of the right way, by seriously believing what this man said (whose learning and knowledge was confessedly eminent) to be law, and implicitly concluding what another did (whose reputation for honesty and wisdom was as general) to be just and prudent; and I pray God, the faults of those misled men may not be imputed to the other, who have weight enough of their own, and their very knowledge and honesty increase their damnation, "If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small," says Solomon, Prov. xxiv. 10. "Si desperaveris lassus," says the vulgar Latin; if being weary or faint, thou despair, thy strength is small: it shows thou hast done well out of design, and in expectation of prospering by it; and being disappointed, thou even repentest the having done thy duty: for thy strength and courage being grounded only on policy, it must needs be small; whereas, if it had been grounded on conscience and piety towards God, thou couldest never despair of his assistance and protection. Tremellius renders that text more severely, "Si remisse te geras tempore angustiæ, angusta erit virtus tua;" If thou art less vigorous in the time of trouble, thy virtue is not virtue, but a narrow slight disposition to good, never grown into a habit. " In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider," says the preacher. Tremellius renders it, "Tempore

thou convert thy adversary to an admiration and value and affection to thee, to a true sense of the wrong he hath done thee, there is no such way, as by letting him see by thy firm and cheerful submitting to adversity, that thou hast a peace about thee of which thou canst not be robbed by him, and of which in all his power he is not possessed. If his heart be so hardened, and his conscience seared, that thou canst this way make no impression on him toward his conversion, thou shalt however more perplex and grieve and torment his mind with envy of thy virtue, than he can thine with all his insolence and oppression.

X. OF CONTEMPT OF DEATH, AND THE BEST
PROVIDING FOR IT.

Montpellier, 1669.

"O DEATH, how bitter is the remembrance of thee to a man that liveth at rest in his possessions, and to the man that hath nothing to vex him, and that hath prosperity in all things; yea, unto him that is yet able to receive meat: O Death, acceptable is thy sentence to the needy, and unto him whose strength faileth, that is now in the last age, and is vexed with all things, and to him that despaireth, and hath lost patience;" was the reflection of the son of Sirach, upon the several affections and humours and contingencies in the life of man. (xli. 1, 2.) But without doubt, the very prosperous man, who seems to be most at ease, and without any visible outward vexation, is as weary very frequently of life (for satiety of all things naturally

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as the contradiction of that liberty in which man was born, as very few of them in their practice parted voluntarily with their lives, so in their discourses they kept the balance equal; and as they would not have their disciples too much in love with life, to set too high and too great a value upon it, so they would by no means suffer them to contemn, much less hate, it; "Ne nimis amemus vitam, et ne nimis oderimus:" they had so many cautions and hesitations and distinctions about the abandoning of life, that a man may see that death was no pleasant prospect to them. He who would kill himself ought to do it with deliberation and decency, "Non fugere debet e vitâ, sed exire;" and above all, that "libido moriendi" was abominable. It must not be a dislike of life, but a satiety in it, that disposed them to part with it. The truth is, though they could have no farther reflections in this disquisition, than were suggested to them by a full consideration of the law of nature, and the obligations thereof, and could not consider it as a thing impious in itself as it related to heaven and hell, yet the difference that was in their view was very great between being and not being, and their little or no comprehension what was done after death, or whether any thing succeeded or no, that many of them from thence valued life the more, and some 'of them the less.

The best Christians need not be ashamed to sharpen, to raise their own contemplations and devotions, by their reflection upon the discourse of the heathen philosophers; but they may be ashamed if from those reflections their piety be not indeed both instructed and exalted; and if their