tion with great objects, so they entertain it also with new and novelty we know is the great parent of pleasure; upon which account it is that men are so much pleased with variety, and variety is nothing else but a continued novelty. The Athenians, who were the professed and most diligent improvers of their reason, made it their whole business "to hear or to tell some new thing;" for the truth is, newness, especially in great matters, was a worthy entertainment for a searching mind; it was (as I may so say) a high taste, fit for the relish of an Athenian reason. And thereupon the mere unheard-of strangeness of Jesus and the resurrection, made them desirous to hear it discoursed of to them again, Acts xvii. 23. But how would it have employed their searching faculties, had the mystery of the Trinity, and the incarnation of the Son of God, and the whole economy of man's redemption, been explained to them! For how could it ever enter into the thoughts of reason, that a satisfaction could be paid to an infinite justice? or, that two natures so inconceivably different, as the human and divine, could unite into one person? The knowledge of these things could derive from nothing else but pure revelation, and consequently must be purely new to the highest discourses of mere nature. Now that the newness of an object so exceedingly pleases and strikes the mind, appears from this one consideration; that every thing pleases more in expectation than fruition: and expectation supposes a thing as yet new, the hoped-for discovery of which is the pleasure that entertains the expecting and inquiring mind: whereas actual discovery, as it were, rifles and deflowers the newness and freshness of the object, and so, for the most part, makes it cheap, familiar, and contemptible.

It is clear, therefore, that if there be any pleasure to the mind from speculation, and if this pleasure of speculation be advanced by the greatness and newness of the things contemplated upon, all this is to be found in the way of religion.

2. In the next place, religion is a pleasure to the mind, as it respects practice, and so sustains the name of conscience. And conscience undoubtedly is the great repository and magazine of all those pleasures that can afford any solid refreshment to the soul. For when this is calm, and serene, and absolving, then, properly, a man enjoys all things, and what is more, himself; for that he must do, before he can enjoy any thing else. But it is only a pious life, led exactly by the rules of a severe religion, that can authorize a man's conscience to speak comfortably to him it is this that must word the sentence, before the conscience can pronounce it, and then it will do it with majesty and authority; it will not whisper but proclaim a jubilee to the mind; it will not drop, but pour in oil upon the wounded heart. And is there any pleasure comparable to that which springs from hence? The pleasure of conscience is not only greater than all other

pleasures, but may also serve instead of them: for they only please and affect the mind in transitu, in the pitiful narrow compass of actual fruition; whereas that of conscience entertains and feeds it a long time after with durable, lasting reflections.

And thus much for the first ennobling property of the pleasure belonging to religion; namely, that it is the pleasure of the mind; and that both as it relates to speculation, and is called the understanding, and as it relates to practice, and is called the conscience.

II. The second ennobling property of it is, That it is such a pleasure as never satiates or wearies: for it properly affects the spirit, and a spirit feels no weariness,. as being privileged from the causes of it. But can the epicure say so of any of the pleasures that he so much dotes upon? Do they not expire while they satisfy; and, after a few minutes' refreshment, determine in loathing and unquietness? How short is the interval between a pleasure and a burden! How undiscernible the transition from one to the other! Pleasure dwells no longer upon the appetite, than the necessities of nature, which are quickly and easily provided for; and then all that follows is a load and an oppression. Every morsel to a satisfied hunger, is only a new labour to a tired digestion. Every draught to him that has quenched his thirst, is but a farther quenching of nature; a provision for rheum and diseases, a drowning of the quickness and activity of the spirits.

He that prolongs his meals, and sacrifices his time, as well as his other conveniences, to his luxury, how quickly does he outsit his pleasure! And then, how is all the following time bestowed upon ceremony and surfeit! till at length, after a long fatigue of eating, and drinking, and babbling, he concludes the great work of dining genteelly, and so makes a shift to rise from table, that he may lie down upon his bed: where, after he has slept himself into some use of himself, by much ado he staggers to his table again, and there acts over the same brutish scene: so that he passes his whole life in a dozed condition between sleeping and waking, with a kind of drowsiness and confusion upon his senses; which, what pleasure it can be, is hard to conceive; all that is of it, dwells upon the tip of his tongue, and within the compass of his palate a worthy prize for a man to purchase with the loss of his time, his reason, and himself.

Nor is that man less deceived, that thinks to maintain a constant tenure of pleasure, by a continual pursuit of sports and recreations: for it is most certainly true of all these things, that as they refresh a man when he is weary, so they weary 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 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 befall him; he would fly to the mines and the galleys for his recreation, and to the spade and the mattock for a diversion 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 it, 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 naturalized 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 well-governed 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 weary, because they transport, and all transportation is violence: and no violence can be lasting, but determines upon the falling of the spirits, which are not able to keep up that height of motion that the pleasure of the senses raise them to: and therefore how inevitably does 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 boundlessness of his voluptuous desires, by stinting his strength, and contracting his capacities.

But to look upon those pleasures, also, that have a higher object than the body; as those that spring from honour and grandeur of condition: yet we shall find that even these are not so

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fresh and constant, but the mind can nauseate them, and quickly feel the thinness of a popular breath. Those that are so fond of applause while they pursue it, how little do they taste it when they have it! Like lightning, it only flashes upon the face, and is gone, and it is well if it does not hurt the man. But for greatness of place, though it is fit and necessary that some persons in the world should be in love with a splendid servitude, yet certainly they must be much beholden to their own fancy, that they can be pleased at it. For he that rises up early and goes to bed late, only to receive addresses, to read and answer petitions, is really as much tied and abridged in his freedom, as he that waits all that time to present one. And what pleasure can it be to be encumbered with dependencies, thronged and surrounded with petitioners, and those perhaps sometimes all suitors for the same thing? whereupon all but one will be sure to depart grumbling, because they miss of what they think their due; and even that one scarce thankful, because he thinks he has no more than his due. In a word, if it is a pleasure to be envied and shot at, to be maligned standing, and to be despised falling, to endeavour that which is impossible, which is to please all, and to suffer for not doing it; then is it a pleasure to be great, and to be able to dispose of men's fortunes and preferments.

But farther, to proceed from hence to yet a higher degree of pleasure, indeed the highest on this side that of religion; which is the pleasure of friendship and conversation. Friendship must confessedly be allowed the top, the flower, and crown of all temporal enjoyments. Yet has not this also its flaws and its dark side? for is not my friend a man? and is not friendship subject to the same mortality and change that men are? And in case a man loves, and is not loved again, does he not think that he has cause to hate as heartily, and ten times more eagerly than ever he loved? And then to be an enemy, and once to have been a friend, does it not embitter the rupture, and aggravate the calamity? But admitting that my friend continues so to the end; yet, in the meantime, is he all perfection, all virtue, and discretion? Has he not humours to be endured, as well as kindnesses to be enjoyed? And am I sure to smell the rose without sometimes feeling the thorn?

And then, lastly, for company; though it may reprieve a man from his melancholy, yet it cannot secure him from his conscience, nor from sometimes being alone. And what is all that a man enjoys, from a week's, a month's, or a year's converse, comparable to what he feels for one hour when his conscience shall take him aside, and rate him by himself?

In short, run over the whole circle of all earthly pleasures, and I dare affirm, that had not God secured a man a solid pleasure from his own actions, after he had rolled from one to another, and enjoyed them all, he would be forced to complain, that either

they were not indeed pleasures, or that pleasure was not satisfaction.

III. The third ennobling property of the pleasure that accrues to a man from religion, is, that it is such a one as is in nobody's power, but only in his that has it; so that he who has the property may be also sure of the perpetuity. And tell me so of any outward enjoyment that mortality is capable of. We are generally at the mercy of men's rapine, avarice, and violence, whether we shall be happy or no. For if I build my felicity upon my estate or reputation, I am happy as long as the tyrant or the railer will give me leave to be so. But when my concernment takes up no more room or compass than myself, then so long as I know where to breathe and to exist, I know also where to be happy: for I know I may be so in my own breast, in the court of my own conscience; where, if I can but prevail with myself to be innocent, I need bribe neither judge nor officer to be pronounced so. The pleasure of the religious man is an easy and a portable pleasure, such a one as he carries about in his bosom, without alarming either the eye or envy of the world. A man putting all his pleasures into this one, is like a traveller's putting all his goods into one jewel; the value is the same, and the convenience greater.

There is nothing that can raise a man to that generous absoluteness of condition, as neither to cringe, to fawn, or to depend meanly; but that which gives him that happiness within himself, for which men depend upon others. For surely I need salute no great man's threshold, sneak to none of his friends or servants, to speak a good word for me to my conscience. It is a noble and a sure defiance of a great malice, backed with a great interest; which yet can have no advantage of a man, but from his own expectations of something that is without himself. But if I can make my duty my delight; if I can feast, and please, and caress my mind with the pleasures of worthy speculations, or virtuous practices; let greatness and malice vex and abridge me if they can: my pleasures are as free as my will; no more to be controlled than my choice, or the unlimited range of my thoughts and my desires.

Nor is this kind of pleasure only out of the reach of any outward violence, but even those things also that make a much closer impression upon us, which are the irresistible decays of nature, have yet no influence at all upon this. For when age itself, which of all things in the world will not be baffled or defied, shall begin to arrest, seize, and remind us of our mortality by pains, aches, deadness of limbs, and dullness of senses, yet then the pleasures of the mind shall be in its full youth, vigour, and freshness. A palsy may as well shake an oak, or a fever dry up a fountain, as either of them shake, dry up, or impair the delight