him when he is refreshed; which is an evident demonstration that God never designed the use of them to be continual; by putting such an emptiness in them as should so quickly fail and lurch (disappoint) the expectation.

The most voluptuous and loose person breathing, were he but tied to follow his hawks and his hounds, his dice, and his courtships, every day, would find it the greatest torment and calamity that could befal him: he would fly to the mines and the galleys for his recreation,1 and to the spade and mattock for a diversion1 from the misery of a continual unintermitted pleasure.

But, on the contrary, the providence of God has so ordered the course of things that there is no action, the usefulness of which has made it the matter of duty and of a profession, but a man may bear the continual pursuit of without loathing or satiety. The same shop and trade that employs a man in his youth employs him also in his age. Every morning he rises fresh to his hammer and his anvil; he passes the day singing: custom has naturalised his labour to him: his shop is his element, and he cannot with any enjoyment of himself live out of it. Whereas no custom can make the painfulness of a debauch easy or pleasing to a man; since nothing can be pleasant that is unnatural. But now, if God has interwoven such a pleasure with the works of our ordinary calling, how much superior and more refined must that be that arises from the survey of a pious and wellgoverned life! surely as much as Christianity is nobler than a trade.

And then for the constant freshness of it; it is such a pleasure as can never cloy or overwork the mind: for surely no man was ever weary of thinking, much less of thinking that he had done well or virtuously, that he had conquered such and such a temptation, or offered violence to any of his exorbitant desires. This is a delight that grows and improves under thought and reflection; and while it exercises, does also endear itself to the mind; at the same time employing and inflaming the meditations. All pleasures that affect the body must needs

(1) Recreation, diversion. Recreation is that which creates anew what had failed or died; something peculiarly grateful after oppressive toil, to restore the jaled powers; diversion is a turning aside from the stated routine of life, whether very wearisome or not, for refreshment. It corresponds very nearly to the Fr. distraction. See extract "Recreations," from Fuller, p. 153.

(2) Debauch, formerly also written debosh, fr. Fr. desbaucher, literally, to lead away from right, mar, corrupt; hence a debauch is a corruption, abuse, or misuse of some good.

weary, because they transport, and all transportation is a violence; and no violence can be lasting, but determines (comes to an ent) upon the falling of the spirits, which are not able to keep up that height of motion that the pleasure of the senses raises them to. And therefore how inevitably dues an immoderate laughter end in a sigh! which is only nature's recovering itself after a force done to it. But the religious pleasure of a well-disposed mind moves gently, and therefore constantly. It does not affect by rapture and ecstasy; but is like the pleasure of health, which is still and sober, yet greater and stronger than those that call up the senses with grosser and more affecting impressions. God has given no man a body as strong as his appetites; but has corrected the boundlessr.ess of his voluptuous desires, by stinting his strengths and contracting his capacities.

2. CONTENTMENT.1

(FROM THE SAME WORK.)

CONTENT is the gift of Heaven, and not the certain effect of anything upon earth; and it is as easy for Providence to convey it without wealth as with it; [it] being the undeniable prerogative of the First Cause, that whatsoever it does by the mediation of second causes, it can do immediately by itself without them. The heavens can, and do every day derive2 water and refreshment upon the earth, without either pipes or conduits, though the weakness of human industry is forced to fly to these little assistances to compass the same effects. Happiness and comfort stream immediately from God himself, as light issues from the sun, and sometimes looks and darts itself into the meanest corners, while it forbears to visit the largest and the noblest rooms. Every man is happy or miserable as the temper of his mind places him, either directly under, or beside (away from), che influerces of the divine nature, which enlighten and enliven the well disposed mind with secret, ineffable joys, and such as the vicious or unprepared mind is wholly unacquainted with.

(1) Contentment, satisfaction. A contented man has enough, does not want more; a satisfied man has all that he has asked for, and ought not to want more. We say "contented with one's lot," "satisfied with the decision."

(2) Derive, fr. Lat. derivare, to divert a stream from its channel, to drain off, is here used in its classical sense, to direct the water upon the earth. To derive upon is quite obsolete.

3. SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS.

(FROM THE SAME WORK.)

GOD generally gives spiritual blessings and deliverances, as he does temporal, that is, by the mediation (means) of an active and vigorous industry. The fruits of the earth are the gift of God, and we pray for them as such but yet we plant, and we sow, and we plough for all that, and the hands which are sometimes lift (lifted) up in prayer, must at other times be put to the plough, or the husbandman must expect no crop. Everything must be effected in the way proper to its nature, with the concurrent influence of the divine grace, not to supersede the means, but to prosper and make them effectual.

4. ADAM.

(FROM THE SAME WORK.)

THE faculties of Adam, in his state of innocence, were clear and unsullied.' He came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appeared by his writing the nature of things upon their names; he could view essences in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their respective properties. He could see consequences yet dormant in their principles,3 and effects yet unborn, and in the womb of their causes; his understanding could almost pierce into future contingents (contingencies); his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or the certainties of prediction. Till his fall, he was ignorant of nothing but sin; or at least it (i.e. sin) rested in the notion, without the smart of the experiment. Could any difficulty

(1) Unsullied, unsoiled, unblemished. The word is not appropriate nere, and simply means not yet injured by use or abuse of what is perfect. When Shakspere ("Love's Labour Lost ") speaks of "maiden honour as pure as the unsullied bly," we perceive the peculiar beauty of the epithet; but faculties are not to be thus designated.

(2) Forms without, &c., admirably expressed, in accordance with the notion that there is one substance, an ideal form, existing independently of the properties of which alone our senses can take cognisance-a speculative doctrine.

(3) Principles, fr. Lat. principalis, chief, most import nt. The present spelling is of comparatively recent date. The old word was principal, as Joye, "If he but the chief principalls understand." The notion that principle is derived fr. p1incipium, beginning, is not to be sustained, though after being some time in use it received a tincture of meaning from this conjecture, and the spelling was altered accordingly. A principal, or principle, is a chief, or fundamental truth.

have been proposed, the resolution' would have been as early as the proposal; it could not have had time to settle into doubt. Like a better Archimedes, the issue of all his inquiries was an tuonka, (I have found it!) an evoŋka, the offspring of his brain, without the sweat of his brow.

Study was not then a duty; night watchings were needless. The light of reason wanted not the assistance of a candle.3 This is the doom of fallen man, to labour in the fire, to seek truth in profundis (in the depths), to exhaust his time, and impair his health, and perhaps to spin out his days and himself into one pitiful, controverted conclusion. There was then no poring, no struggling with memory, no straining with invention; his faculties were quick and expedite (unimpeded); they answered without knocking, they were ready upon the first summons, there was freedom and firmness in all their operations. The understanding was then sublime, clear, and aspiring, and as it were the soul's upper region, lofty and serene, free from the vapours and disturbances of the inferior affections. Discourse was almost as quick as intuition; it

(1) Resolution, fr. Lat. resolvere, to unloose. To resolve a difficulty, is to take it to pieces, to ascertain what the elements that constitute it are.

(2) Evρnκα. In reference to the story of Archimedes, who after long puzzling over a knotty problem, while in his bath suddenly saw the solution, and was so delighted that he ran out into the streets, shouting, "I have found it! I have found it!"

(3) Candle. Evidently a pun or play upon the words-light of reason and candle light.

(4) Expedite, fr. Lat. expedire, to clear out of the way of one's feet. This use of the adj. is obsolete; but the verb expedite means to clear away obstacles. Impedire (whence impede) means, on the contrary, to place in the way of one's feet; an impediment is something so placed.

(5) Discourse, intuition. It is important to have a clear notion of the meaning of these words, which were often used in contrast at this time. One meaning of discourse is seen in Shakspere

"Sure he that made us with such large discourse,

Looking before and after, gave us not

That capability and God-like reason

To rust in us unused."

So Milton ("Par. Lost," v.)-

"Whence the soul

Reason receives, and reason is her being,

Discursive or intuitive; discourse

Is oftest yours (man's), the latter (intuition) most is ours (i.e. angels')." Discourse, then, is reason, or the reasoning faculty in man as distinguished from

was nimble in proposing, firm in concluding; it could sooner determine, than now it can dispute. Like the sun, it had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion; no quiet but in activity. It did not so properly apprehend,' as irradiate the object; not so much find as make things intelligible. It was vegete (vigorous), quick and lively. Open as the day, untainted as the morning, full of the innocence and sprightliness of youth, it gave the soul a full and bright view into all things; and was not only a window, but itself a prospect. It is as difficult for us, who date our ignorance from our first being, and were still bred up with the same infirmities about us with which we were born, to raise our thoughts and imaginations to those intellectual perfections that attended our nature in the time of innocence, as it is for a peasant, bred up in the obscurities of a cottage, to fancy in his mind the unseen splendours of a court. But by rating positives by their privatives (by estimating what we have not by what we have), and other acts of reason by which discourse supplies the want of the reports of sense, we may collect the excellency of the understanding then, by the glorious remains of it now, and guess at the stateliness of the building by the magnificence of its ruins. All those arts, rarities, and inventions which vulgar minds gaze at, the ingenious pursue, and all admire, are but the "relicts" of an intellect defaced with sin and time. We admire it now, only as antiquaries do a piece of old coin, for the stamp it once bore, and not for those vanishing lineaments (features) and disappearing draughts (fading lines) that remain upon it at present. And certainly that must have been very glorious, the decays of which are so admirable. He that is comely when old and decrepid, surely was very beautiful when he was young. An Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise.

the instinct of brutes and the intuition of higher intelligences. It is by discourse, in this sense-i.e. by reasoning on premises, or drawing conclusions from themthat man obtains his knowledge of himself and of things about him. If his mental powers were greater, he might gain all he knows by intuition-i.e. by looking on or at things, and so becoming conscious of truth at once. Fuller says ("Worthies "), "As the intuitive knowledge is more perfect than that which insinuates itself into the soul gradually by discourse, so more beautiful is the prospect of that building which is all visible at one view, than that which discovers itself to the sight by parcels and degrees." Other uses of discourse will be noticed elsewhere.

(1) Apprehend. See note 1, p. 208.