and impetuous; that then, after all, his reason beginning to exert and put forth itself, finds the man prepossessed, and under another power? So that it has much ado, by many little steps and gradual conquests, to recover its prerogative from the usurpations of appetite, and so to subject the whole man to its dictates; the difficulty of which is not conquered by some men all their days. And this is one true ground of the difference between a state of nature and a state of grace, which some are pleased to. scoff at in divinity, who think that they confute all that they laugh at, not knowing that it may be solidly evinced by mere reason and philosophy.

These two considerations being premised, namely, that pleasure implies a proportion and agreement to the respective states and conditions of men; and that the estate of men by nature is vastly different from the estate into which grace or virtue transplants them; all that objection levelled against the foregoing assertion is very easily resolvable.

For there is no doubt, but a man, while he resigns himself up to the brutish guidance of sense and appetite, has no relish at all for the spiritual, refined delights of a soul clarified by grace and virtue. The pleasures of an angel can never be the pleasures of a hog. But this is the thing that we contend for; that a man, having once advanced himself to a state of superiority over the control of his inferior appetites, finds an infinitely more solid and sublime pleasure in the delights proper to his reason, than the same person had ever conveyed to him by the bare ministry of his senses. His taste is absolutely changed, and therefore that which pleased him formerly, becomes flat and insipid to his appetite, now grown more masculine and severe. For, as age and maturity passes a real and marvellous change upon the diet and recreations of the same person; so that no man at the years and vigour of thirty, is either fond of sugar-plums or rattles: in like manner, when reason, by the assistance of grace, has prevailed over, and out-grown the encroachments of sense, the delights of sensuality are to such a one but as a hobby-horse would be to a counsellor of state; or as tasteless as a bundle of hay to a hungry lion. Every alteration of a man's condition infallibly infers an alteration of his pleasures.

The Athenians laughed the physiognomist to scorn, who, pretending to read men's minds in their foreheads, described Socrates for a crabbed, lustful, proud, ill-natured person; they knowing how directly contrary he was to that dirty character. But Socrates bade them forbear laughing at the man, for that he had given them a most exact account of his nature; but what they saw in him so contrary at the present, was from the conquest that he had got over his natural disposition by philosophy. And now let any one consider, whether that anger, that revenge, that wantonness and ambition, that were the proper pleasures of

Socrates, under his natural temper of crabbed, lustful, and proud, could have at all affected or enamoured the mind of the same Socrates, made gentle, chaste, and humble by philosophy.

Aristotle says, that were it possible to put a young man's eye into an old man's head, he would see as plainly and clearly as the other; so, could we infuse the inclinations and principles of a virtuous person into him that prosecutes his debauches with the greatest keenness of desire, and sense of delight, he would loathe and reject them as heartily, as he now pursues them. Diogenes, being asked at a feast, why he did not continue eating as the rest did, answered him that asked him with another question, Pray, why do you eat? Why, says he, for my pleasure; why, so, says Diogenes, do I abstain for my pleasure. And therefore the vain, the vicious, and luxurious person argues at a high rate of inconsequence, when he makes his particular desires the general measure of other men's delights. But the case is so plain, that I shall not upbraid any man's understanding, by endeavouring to give it any farther illustration.

But still, after all, I must not deny that the change and passage from a state of nature, to a state of virtue, is laborious, and, consequently, irksome and unpleasant: and to this it is, that all the forementioned expressions of our Saviour do allude. But surely the baseness of one condition, and the generous excellency of the other, is a sufficient argument to induce any one to a change. For as no man would think it a desirable thing, to preserve the itch upon himself, only for the pleasure of scratching that attends that loathsome distemper: so neither can any man, that would be faithful to his reason, yield his ear to be bored through by his domineering appetites, and so choose to serve them for ever, only for those poor, thin gratifications of sensuality that they are able to reward him with. The ascent up the hill is hard and tedious, but the serenity and fair prospect at the top is sufficient to incite the labour of undertaking it, and to reward it, being undertook. But the difference of these two conditions of men, as the foundation of their different pleasures, being thus made out, to press men with arguments to pass from one to another, is not directly in the way or design of this discourse.

Yet, before I come to declare positively the pleasures that are to be found in the ways of religion, one of the grand duties of which is stated upon repentance; a thing expressed to us by the grim names of mortification, crucifixion, and the like; and that I may not proceed only upon absolute negations, without some concessions, we will see, whether this so harsh, dismal, and affrighting duty of repentance is so entirely gall, as to admit of no mixture, no allay of sweetness, to reconcile it to the apprehensions of reason and nature.

Now repentance consists properly of two things:-1. Sorrow for sin. 2. Change of life.

A word briefly of them both.

1. And first of sorrow for sin: usually, the sting of sorrow is this, that it neither removes nor alters the thing we sorrow for; and so is but a kind of reproach to our reason, which will be sure to accost us with this dilemma. Either the thing we sorrow for, is to be remedied, or it is not: if it is, why then do we spend the time in mourning, which should be spent in an active applying of remedies? But if it is not; then is our sorrow vain and superfluous, as tending to no real effect. For no man can weep his father or his friend out of the grave, or mourn himself out of a bankrupt condition. But this spiritual sorrow is effectual to one of the greatest and highest purposes that mankind can be concerned in. It is a means to avert an impendent wrath, to disarm an offended Omnipotence; and even to fetch a soul out of the very jaws of hell. So that the end and consequence of this sorrow sweetens the sorrow itself; and, as Solomon says, "In the midst of laughter, the heart is sorrowful;" so, in the midst of sorrow here, the heart may rejoice: for while it mourns, it reads, that "those that mourn shall be comforted;" and so while the penitent weeps with one eye, he views his deliverance with the other. But then for the external expressions, and vent of sorrow; we know that there is a certain pleasure in weeping; it is the discharge of a big and a swelling grief; of a full and a strangling discontent; and therefore, he that never had such a burden upon his heart, as to give him opportunity thus to ease it, has one pleasure in this world yet to

come.

2. As for the other part of repentance, which is change of life, this indeed may be troublesome in the entrance; yet it is but the first bold onset, the first resolute violence and invasion upon a vicious habit, that is so sharp and afflicting. Every impression of the lancet cuts, but it is the first only that smarts. Besides, it is an argument hugely unreasonable, to plead the pain of passing from a vicious estate, unless it was proved, that there was none in the continuance under it; but surely, when we read of the service, the bondage, and the captivity of sinners, we are not entertained only with the air of words and metaphors; and instead of truth, put off with similitudes. Let him that says it is a trouble to refrain from a debauch, convince us, that it is not a greater to undergo one; and that the confessor did not impose a shrewd penance upon the drunken man, by bidding him go and be drunk again; and that lisping, raging, redness of eyes, and what is not fit to be named in such an audience, is not more toilsome, than to be clean, and quiet, and discreet, and respected for being so. All the trouble that is in it, is the trouble of being sound, being cured, and being recovered. But if there be great arguments for health, then certainly there are the same for the obtaining of it; and so, keeping a due proportion between spirituals

and temporals, we neither have nor pretend to greater arguments for repentance.

Having thus now cleared off all that by way of objection can lie against the truth asserted, by showing the proper qualification of the subject, to whom only the "ways of wisdom" can be "ways of pleasantness;" for the further prosecution of the matter in hand, I shall show what are those properties that so peculiarly set off and enhance the excellency of this pleasure.

I. The first is, that it is the proper pleasure of that part of man, which is the largest and most comprehensive of pleasure, and that is his mind: a substance of a boundless comprehension. The mind of man is an image, not only of God's spirituality, but of his infinity. It is not like any of the senses, limited to this or that kind of object; as the sight intermeddles not with that which affects the smell; but, with a universal superintendence, it arbitrates upon and takes them all in. It is, as I may so say, an ocean, into which all the little rivulets of sensation, both external and internal, discharge themselves. It is framed by God to receive all, and more than nature can afford it; and so to be its own motive to seek for something above nature. Now this is that part of man, to which the pleasures of religion properly belong; and that in a double respect:

1. In reference to speculation, as it sustains the name of understanding. 2. In reference to practice, as it sustains the name of conscience.

1. And first for speculation: the pleasures of which have been sometimes so great, so intense, so engrossing of all the powers of the soul, that there has been no room left for any other pleasure. It has so called together all the spirits to that one work, that there has been no supply to carry on the inferior operations of nature. Contemplation feels no hunger, nor is sensible of any thirst, but of that after knowledge. How frequent and exalted a pleasure did David find from his meditation in the divine law! "All the day long" it was the theme of his thoughts. The affairs of state, the government of his kingdom, might indeed employ, but it was this only that refreshed his mind.

How short of this are the delights of the epicure! How vastly disproportionate are the pleasures of the eating, and of the thinking man! Indeed as different as the silence of an Archimedes in the study of a problem, and the stillness of a sow at her wash. Nothing is comparable to the pleasure of an active and a prevailing thought: a thought prevailing over the difficulty and obscurity of the object, and refreshing the soul with new discoveries and images of things; and thereby extending the bounds of apprehension, and, as it were, enlarging the territories of reason.

Now this pleasure of the speculation of divine things is advanced upon a double account.

VOL. I.-2

(1.) The greatness.

(2.) The newness of the object.

(1.) And first for the greatness of it. It is no less than the great God himself, and that both in his nature and his works. For the eye of reason, like that of the eagle, directs itself chiefly to the sun, to a glory that neither admits of a superior, nor an equal. Religion carries the soul to the study of every divine attribute.

It possesses it with the amazing thoughts of omnipotence; of a power able to fetch up such a glorious fabric, as this of the world, out of the abyss of vanity and nothing, and able to throw it back into the same original nothing again. It drowns us in the speculation of the divine omniscience; that can maintain a steady infallible comprehension of all events in themselves contingent and accidental; and certainly know that, which does not certainly exist. It confounds the greatest subtilties of speculation, with the riddles of God's omnipresence; that can spread a single individual substance through all spaces; and yet without any commensuration of parts to any, or circumscription within any, though totally in every one. And then for his eternity; which nonplusses the strongest and clearest conception, to comprehend how one single act of duration should measure all periods and portions of time, without any of the distinguishing parts of succession. Likewise for his justice; which shall prey upon the sinner for ever, satisfying itself by a perpetual miracle, rendering the creature immortal in the midst of the flames; always consuming, but never consumed. With the like wonders we may entertain our speculations from his mercy, his beloved, his triumphant attribute; an attribute, if it were possible, something more than infinite; for even his justice is so, and his mercy transcends that. Lastly, we may contemplate upon his supernatural, astonishing works: particularly in the resurrection, and reparation of the same numerical body, by a re-union of all the scattered parts, to be at length disposed of into an estate of eternal woe or bliss; as also the greatness and strangeness of the beatific vision; how a created eye should be so fortified, as to bear all those glories that stream from the fountain of uncreated light, the meanest expression of which light is, that it is inexpressible. Now what great and high objects are these, for a rational contemplation to busy itself upon! Heights that scorn the reach of our prospect; and depths in which the tallest reason will never touch the bottom: yet surely the pleasure arising from thence is great and noble; forasmuch as they afford perpetual matter and employment to the inquisitiveness of human reason; and so are large enough for it to take its full scope and range in: which, when it has sucked and drained the utmost of an object, naturally lays it aside, and neglects it as a dry and empty thing.

(2.) As the things belonging to religion entertain our specula