would do well to speak it out, for surely they would speak that that was never heard of from any other before. No estate or course of life is exempted from the sad causes of that complaint. Consider yourselves and look about you a little, it may be useful for you, ye that so unnecessarily and vainly look so much at and consider one another: take notice of all.

Those of the poorer and meaner sort, they are troubled with necessities and wants and pursuit of those things they have not, to supply their necessities; and the greater and richer sort, they are troubled with the cares of managing what they have, and sometimes with the loss of it; and the middle sort between the two, they partake in common of the vexations of both, for their life is spent in turmoil and cares of keeping what they have and getting more; besides a world of miseries and evils that are common generally, and equally incident to all sorts of men. And this is one of them that is apparent here to have been David's case, sickness and pain of body; and it is one of the closest and sharpest of evils, one that sits hard upon a man, and that he is least able, by any strength of mind or by any art or rule, to bear off the sense of it. And you will find this guest as often in palaces as in the meanest cottages; as many groans of sick and diseased persons within silken curtains as in the meanest lodging. And David, that is here our instance, he was a king, and, as is most likely by the circumstances we find, was now well advanced in years and come to the kingdom, and in possession of it; and yet here he was, sick, smitten and sore vexed, and roared for grief of heart, as almost sinking, and forced to cry out, I am consumed by the blow of Thine hand. And for other things incident to the greatest persons, the ruin of their estates and places and of their greatness, we need not go far off to seek foreign and national examples. We know a very great and fresh instance of that kind, that we have before our eyes; so that, after fullest survey and inquiry, this conclusion still remains, and is again to be repeated, no instance can be found to infringe it at all; "Surely every man is altogether vanity."

(From Expository Lecture on Psalm xxxix.)

LIFE AND DEATH

NOT only public affairs, or the private concerns of others, but even our own matters should not concern us. It was a maxim of the Stoics that the necessities of life, such as food and raiment, are to be looked after, but that all the rest are great impertinencies. Such things as rich coaches, gorgeous apparel, stately buildings, sumptuous feasts, they are but for the pleasure and show of the world. A man that hath twenty lodgings can be but in one at once; and though he have twenty different suits of attire, yet hath he but one body to cover, and can wear but one suit at a time; and he that hath twenty dishes of meat on his table has but one belly to fill; and for the rest ad supervacua sudamus, they are vain superfluities which we strain and strive after. All a rich man's furniture cannot cure a headache; he may perhaps have more physicians and drugs than others, but for that he may have the less health. As for riches, we have had amongst us lately many lectures of their uncertainty; they take wings and flee away, leaving those minds that idolised them sinking down to hell and desperation. It is an excellent posture of soul to be so fixed that although the frame of the creation should crack, it would be unmoved. The time is coming when they shall confess this, even when they are stretched upon their deathbeds; believe them then, for then they shall speak truth: like that courtier who, being on his death-bed, and being asked what he would have the king do for him, answered, "Nothing, except he can call back time again that I may repent.'

O Death! why do we not converse more with thee? Death shall shortly hurry all away before it; yea, it shall strip the nobles and judges of their robes, and shall pull away the amorous gallant from the embraces of his beautiful mistress, and the bewitched lovers of this world from all which they either have in their possession or grasp after in their hopes. Death shall shake the lap of all men as they go out of this world suffering them to take nothing forth but what they brought into the world with them, save the guilt of their sins, and of their luxury in abusing what God bestowed upon them. That and other sins shall say to a man, Nos tua sumus, et te sequemur, we are thine, and we will follow thee. These black troops clapping an arrest upon the soul, quit her not until they have delivered her to the jailor of the bottomless pit.

(From A Sermon upon Present Duty.)

DAVID AND SOLOMON: THEIR EXPERIENCE OF

LIFE

THIS same verdict we have from his son Solomon, after much experience in all things; who, having the advantage of peace and riches, did particularly set himself to this work, to a most exact enquiry after all things of this earth. He set nature on the rack, to confess its utmost strength for the delighting and satisfying of man; with much pains and art he extracted the very spirit of all, and, after all, he gives the same judgment we have here; his book writ on the subject being a paraphrase on this sentence, dilating the sense and confirming the truth of it. It carries its own sum in those two words which begin and end it; the one, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity," and the other, "Fear God and keep His commandments, for that is the whole duty of man." And these here are just the equivalent of those two; the former of that beginning word, "I have seen an end of all perfection," and the latter of that concluding one, “But Thy commandment is exceeding broad."

'When mean men speak of the vanity of this world's greatness, and poor men cry down riches, it passes but for a querulous, peevish humour to discredit things they cannot reach, or else an ignorant misprision of things they do not understand; or, taking it a little further, but a self-pleasing shift, a willingly under-prizing of these things of purpose to allay the displeasure of the want of them; or, at the best, if something of truth and goodness be in the opinion yet, that the assent of such persons is (like the temperance of sickly bodies) rather a virtue made of necessity than embraced of free choice. But to hear a wise man, in the height of these advantages, proclaim their vanity, yea, kings from the very thrones whereon they sit in their royal robes, give forth this sentence upon all the glories and delights about them, is certainly above all exception. Here are two, the father and the son: the one raised from a mean condition to a crown; instead of a shepherd's staff, to wield a sceptre, and that after many afflictions and dangers in the way to it, which, to some palates, gives a higher relish and sweetness to honour than if it had slid on them ere they could feel it, in the cheap, easy way of an undebated succession. Or, if any think David's best days a little cloudy, by the remains of insurrections and oppositions, in that

case usual, as the jumblings of the sea not fully quieted for a while after the storm is over; then, take the son, succeeding to as fair a day as heart can wish, both a complete calm of peace and a bright sunshine of riches and royal pomp, and be able to improve these to the highest. And yet both these are perfectly of the same mind on this great point. The son having peace and time for it, though a king, would make his throne a pulpit, and be a preacher of this one doctrine, to which the father's sentence is the fittest text I have seen.

(From A Sermon upon Imperfection and Perfection.)

RENUNCIATION

I. THOU shalt have much to do in mortifying of thy senses or five wits, which must be shut up in the crucified humanity of Christ, and be as they were plainly dead.

2. Thou must learn to have a continual eye inwardly to thy soul and spiritual life, as thou hast used heretofore to have all thy mind and regard to outward pleasure and worldly things.

3. Thou must submit and give thyself up to the discipline of Jesus, and become His scholar, resigning and compelling thyself altogether to obey Him in all things; so that thy willing and nilling thou do utterly cast away from thee, and do nothing without His license: at every word thou wilt speak, at every morsel thou wilt eat, at every stirring or moving of every article or member of thy body, thou must ask leave of Him in thy heart, and ask thyself whether, being so done, they be according to His will and holy example, and with sincere intention of His glory. And even the most necessary actions of thy life, though lawful, yet must be thus offered up with a true intention unto God, in the union of the most holy works and blessed merits of Christ.

4. Pray: "Lord Jesus, bind up in the merits of Thy blessed senses all my feeling and sensation, and all my wits and senses, that I hereafter never use them to any sensuality!"

5. Thus labour to come into this union and knitting up of thy senses in GOD and the Lord Jesus, and remain so fast unto the cross that thou never part from it, and st ll behave thy body and all thy senses as in the presence of the Lord thy God, and commit all things unto the most trusty providence of thy loving

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Lord, who will then order all things delectably and sweetly for thee. Reckon all things beside Him for right nought; and thus mayest thou come to wonderful illuminations and ghostly influences from the Lord thy God, if, for His love, thou canst crucify, renounce, and forsake perfectly thyself and all things.

6. Thou must so crucify thyself to all things, and love and desire God only with thy whole heart, that in this most strong and stedfast knot and union unto the will of God, if He would create hell in thee, or put thee therein, thou mightest be ready to offer thyself, by His grace, for His eternal honour and glory to suffer it, purely for His will and pleasure.

7. Thou must keep thy memory clean and pure, as it were a wedlock chamber, from all strange thoughts, fancies, and imaginations; and it must be trimmed and adorned with holy imaginations and virtues of Christ's holy crucified life and passion, that God may continually and for ever rest therein. Pray to Him and say,

8. "Lord, instead of knowing Thee, I have sought to know wickedness and sin; and whereas my will and desire were created to love Thee, I have lost that love, and declined to the creatures. While my memory ought to be filled with Thee; I have painted it with the memory of innumerable fancies, not only of creatures but of sinful wickedness. Lord, blot out these by Thy blood and imprint Thy own blessed image on my soul, blessed Jesus, by that blood which issued from Thy most loving heart when Thou hangedst on the cross. So knit my soul to Thy most holy will that I may have no other will but Thine, and may be most heartily and fully content with whatsoever Thou wilt do with me in this world and for ever; yea if Thou wilt put me in hell, to suffer all the pains there, so that I hate not nor sin against Thee, but retain Thy love, I may be content.

(From Rules and Instructions for a Holy Life.)

THE COMFORT OF BELIEF

EVERY one trusts to somewhat. As for honour and esteem and popularity, they are airy, vain things; but riches seem a more solid work and fence, yet they are but a tower in conceit, not really. The rich man's wealth is his strong city and as a high