these heights, and level these mountains into valleys. It is patience, which must smooth off the ruggedness of passion and the unruliness of appetite; and so make plain a way for reason and religion to run their course in. I shewed before, that there was a natural stubbornness and averseness in every faculty of the soul to a compliance with the divine will, especially in those severer instances of it, which call upon a man to take the yoke upon his neck, and the burden upon his shoulders, and to be quiet, humble, and content in the most calamitous condition. It is an hard lesson to do God's will, but a much harder to suffer it. Nature has not only an insufficiency for, but also a contrariety to this. For reason will be disputing, the will disobeying, and the passions will murmur and rebel: and what is there in bare nature that can overrule all these? and from such a posture of defiance, compose and quell them into the contrary posture of the meekest submission? This is that, which both scripture and philosophy style a man's conquering of himself. A victory, in the judgment of all wise and sober men, more glorious and more difficult too, than any that crown the memory of Cæsar and Alexander. So much harder, and consequently so much greater a thing is it, for one to endure another man's rage, than to vent his own. 2. The other cause of the difficulty of attaining to such a patient, submissive frame of spirit, is from the contempt and disregard attending it, through the false estimate which the generality, or rather vulgarity of men have of it. For when patience must pass for pusillanimity, who would take pains to procure himself so disadvantageous a character? and endeavour to conquer his passions, if for the greatest conquest in the world he must be accounted a coward? Desire of glory is generally the great principle that animates men to high and difficult attempts. But when huffing and hectoring must be looked upon as the only badges of gallantry and courage, what can can recommend the exercise of patience against the disgrace of it? or induce a man to put up an affront, when the result of virtue shall be reputed the want of spirit? This indeed is a discouraging consideration; but it is so only from a most unjust and false judgment of things. For patience is not the want of spirit, but the government of it. It is a virtue; and therefore the ingredients of it are choice in the agent, and difficulty in the object. And he only is or can be a patient man, who is first a man of courage; who has sense enough to resent a provocation, spirit enough to prompt, and opportunity to enable him to revenge it: and yet, in the midst of all these tempting circumstances, chooses rather to offer up his passion a sacrifice to his virtue ; and by a fixed, settled judgment of mind, thinks it as much nobler to pass by an injury, than to repay it, as it is to slight an unworthy person, than to strive to be like him. But still, I say, when the generality of men judge otherwise, though by error and mistake, yet the tyranny of a general mistake is so imperious and intolerable, that for the most part it is too hard for an ordinary virtue to contend with. And that which puts patience out of credit will (with some) quickly put it out of countenance too: unless grace comes in as a second to nature, and the conscience of a practice overcomes the disrepute of it. (3.) And lastly, we learn from what has been delivered, the necessity of an early and long endeavour after such an excellent frame of mind. The con quest, which the patient man is to make, is not by battle, but by siege; one is quickly over, but the other is often a long and a tedious task. The apostle calls upon us to let patience have its perfect work: and few things, we know, arrive to perfection but by degrees. It is an high and a glorious ascent, and there is no getting up to it but by steps. It must make its entrance into the soul by a total extirpation of the contrary habits: and no habit can be presently rooted up, where nature is the soil in which it grows. For do we think it possible for a proud man to grow humble in a day? or for a passionate man to get the absolute command of his passions in a few weeks? It is, I confess, possible with God, and omnipotence can effect it; but what God can do, is not the measure of what he will. According to the stated method of the divine actings upon the soul of man, the Spirit of God proceeds gradually, and grace imitates even where it exceeds the course of nature. So that where it rids the soul of any vicious habit, it destroys it insensibly and by degrees; and where it infuses good habits, it instils them into the soul by small proportions: they are an oil that is dropt, not poured into it. And it is the judgment of all divines, that infused habits come into the soul after the same manner with those that are acquired. Grace acts like na He therefore who would cooperate with the grace of God, for the working of so noble a change upon himself, as to keep his passions calm and regular in spite of all provocations that would inflame them; he who, in all the cross accidents of life, would have his own will, as it were, wrapt up in the divine will, and be able to say with his great master and example, Christ himself, Not my will, but thine be done : he, I say, who would arrive to such an height of Christianity, let him begin early; let him consider with himself the length, the difficulty, and the fatigue of the race that is before him, and set out betimes; let him inure himself in his minority to lesser self-denials and mortifications; let him learn to put up and pass by a slighting, undervaluing word, and in time he shall find himself strong enough to conquer and digest an injurious action; let him learn to overlook his neighbour's incivility, and in time he shall be able with patience and firmness of mind to endure his insolence and his cruelty, and that without being discomposed by any instigations to revenge: and let him accustom himself to do this often, and at length he shall be able to do it always. But if a man suffers his impatience to grow up with him, and gives it its free, outrageous, unbounded scope to the greatest part of his age, he must not hope to master and dispossess such a giant of his strong hold by a few assaults; he must not think wholly to alter and transform himself, and pick up such a virtue as patience on a sudden. He who has allowed his passion to live, and rage, and domineer to the age of forty or fifty, must not expect, without a very extraordinary grace indeed, to be patient at threescore. So infinitely sottish and ignorant of hu man nature are those men, who think it in their own power to change and reform their manners when they please. No, it is a long and a severe discipline; and the wisest and best of men have found it task enough for their whole lives. And therefore, certainly none deceive themselves so foolishly, and so fatally too, as those, who design to learn, just as they are leaving off to live. The times of youth and prosperity are the proper times to strengthen and to ballast the mind with pious principles and wise customs against the trying, searching times of age and adversity. For if these seasons do not find a man patient, they seldom make him so. They are the seasons to spend upon a stock, and not to gather one; to crop the fruits of a virtuous habit, and not to plant it. For surely no man goes about to careen and fit up his ship in the midst of a storm, nor to buckle on his armour in the heat and fury of the battle. No, this is a work that should have been done before. It is a work of preparation; and it can be no time for a man to prepare a thing, when he is just about to use it. This is certain, that afflictions will come, trials and perplexing providences will some time or other overtake us, and God knows how suddenly and how severely. And then happy, and only happy, is that man, who, by a long and daily exercise of this great virtue, has forearmed and fortified himself against the fierce and critical day of trial; who, to temperance has added patience; that is, to the proper virtue for prosperity, has joined the proper one for adversity I say, blessed is that faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord, when he cometh, shall find so prepared. Verily, as patience has made him ruler over : |