never exert their sting till knowledge displays them, and slides them into the apprehension.

Nihil scire, vita jucundissima est. It is the empty vessel that makes the merry sound; which is evident from those whose intellectuals are ruined with phrensy or madness; who so merry, so free from the lash of care their understanding is gone, and so is their trouble.

It is the philosopher that is pensive, that looks downwards in the posture of the mourner. It is the open eye that weeps.

Aristotle affirms, that there was never a great scholar in the world, but had in his temper a dash and mixture of melancholy; and if melancholy be the temper of knowledge, we know that also it is the complexion of sorrow, the scene of mourning and affliction.

Solomon could not separate his wisdom from vexation of spirit. We are first taught our knowledge with the rod, and with the severities of discipline. We get it with some smart, but improve it with more.

The world is full of objects of sorrow, and knowledge enlarges our capacities to take them in. None but the wise man can know himself to be miserable."

"Pass we now to show, how that knowledge is the cause of sorrow, in respect to the troublesome acquisition of it. For is there any labor comparable to that of the brain? any toil like a continual digging in the mines of knowledge? any pursuit so dubious and difficult as that

of truth? any attempt so sublime as to give a reason of things?

A man must be always engaged in difficult speculation, and endure all the inconveniences that attend it; which indeed are more than attend any other sort of life whatso

ever.

The soldier, it is confessed, converses with dangers, and looks death in the face; but then he

bleeds with honor, he grows pale gloriously, and dies with the same heat and fervor that gives life to others.

But he does not, like the scholar, kill himself in cold blood; sit up and watch when there is no enemy; and, like a silly fly, buzz about his own candle till he has consumed himself.

:

Then again the husbandman who has the toil of sowing and reaping, he has his reward in his very labor; and the same corn that employs, also fills his hand. He who labors in the field indeed wearies, but then he also helps and preserves his body.

But study, it is a weariness without exercise, a laborious sitting still, that wracks the inward, and destroys the outward man; that sacrifices health to conceit, and clothes the soul with the spoils of the body; and, like a stronger blast of lightning, not only meets the sword, but also consumes the scabbard.

Nature allows men a great freedom, and never gave an appetite but to be an instrument of enjoyment; nor made a desire, but in order to the pleasure of its satisfaction. But he that will increase knowledge, must be content not to enjoy; and not only to cut off the extravagancies of luxury, but also to deny the lawful demands of convenience, to forswear delight, and look upon pleasure as his mortal enemy.

He must call that study, that is indeed confinement; he must converse with solitude, walk, eat, and sleep thinking, read volumes, devour the choicest authors, and (like Pharaoh's kine) after he has devoured all, look lean and meagre. He must be willing to be weak, sickly, and consumptive; even to forget when he is hungry, and to digest nothing but what he reads.

He must read much, and perhaps meet with little; turn over much trash for one grain of truth; study

antiquity till he feels the effects of it; and, like the cock in the fable, seek pearls in a dunghill, and perhaps rise to it as early. This is, Esse quod Arcesilas ærumnosique Solones:

To be always wearing a meditating countenance, to ruminate, mutter, and talk to a man's self, for want of better company; in short, to do all those things, which in other men are counted madness, but in a scholar pass for his profession.

We may take a view of all those callings, to which learning is necessary, and we shall find that labour and misery attend them all. And first, for the study of physic: Do not many lose their own health, while they are learning to restore it to others? Do not many shorten their days, and contract incurable diseases, in the midst of Galen and Hippocrates? get consumptions amongst receipts and medicines, and die while they are conversing with remedies?

Then for the law: Are not many called to the grave, while they are preparing for a call to the bar? Do they not grapple with knots and intricacies, perhaps not so soon dissolved as themselves? Do not their bodies wither and decay, and, after a long study of the law, look like an estate that has passed through a long suit in law?

But, above all, let the divine here challenge the greatest share; who, if he takes one in ten in the profit, I am sure, may claim nine in ten in the labour. 'Tis one part of his business, indeed, to prepare others for death; but the toil of his function is like to make the first experiment upon himself.

People are apt to think this an easy work, and that to be a divine is nothing else but to wear black, to look severely, and to speak confidently for an hour; but confidence and propriety is not all one; and if we fix but upon this one part of his employment, as easy as it seems to be,

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Expertus multum sudes, multumque labores.

But the divine's office spreads itself into infinite other occasions of labour; and, in those that reach the utmost of so great a profession, it requires depth of knowledge, as well as heights of eloquence.

To sit and hear is easy, and to censure what we have heard, much easier. But whatsoever his performance is, it inevitably puts us upon an act of religion; if good, it invites us to a profitable hearing; if otherwise, it inflicts a short penance, and gives an opportunity to the virtue of patience.

But, in sum, to demonstrate and set forth the divine's labour, I shall but add this, that he is the only person to whom the whole economy of Christianity gives no cessation, nor allows him so much as the Sabbath for a day of rest.-Robert South.

GODLY SORROW, AND THE SORROW OF THE WORLD.

Usually, the sting of sorrow is this, that it ne.ther 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, 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 ont 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 burthen upon his heart, as to give him opportunity thus to ease it, has one pleasure in this world yet to come.—Ibid.

HE that prolongs his meals, and sacrifices his time, as well as his other conveniences, to his luxury, how quickly does he out-sit 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 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.-Ib.

lights," seize upon some text, from whence they draw something, (which they call a doctrine) and well may it be said to be drawn from the words; forasmuch as it seldom naturally flows from them. In the next place, they branch it into several heads; perhaps twenty, or thirty, or upwards. Whereupon, for the prosecution of these, they repair to some trusty Concordance, which never fails them, and by the help of that, they range six

or

But

seven scriptures under each head; which scriptures they prosecute one by one, enlarging upon one, for some considerable time, till they have spoiled it; and then that being done, they pass to another, which in its turn suffers accordingly. And these impertinent and unpremeditated enlargements they look upon as the motions and breathings of the Spirit, and therefore much beyond those carnal ordinances of sense and reason, supported by industry and study; and this they call a saving way of preaching, as it must be confessed to be a way to save much labour, and nothing else that I know of. * * * to pass from these indecencies to others, as little to be allowed in this sort of men, can any tolerable reason be given for those strange, new postures used by some in the delivery of the word? Such as shutting the eyes, distorting the face, speaking through the nose, which, I think, cannot so properly be called preaching, as toning of a sermon. Nor do I see, why the word may not be altogether as effectual for the conversion of souls, delivered by one who has the manners to look his auditory in the face, using his own countenance, and his own native voice, without straining it to a lamentable and doleful whine. **** It is clear therefore, that the men of this method have sullied the noble science of divinity, and can never warrant their practice.

either from religion or reason, or the rules of decent behaviour, nor yet from the example of the apostles, and least of all from that of our Saviour himself. For none surely will imagine, that these men's speaking as never man spoke before, can pass for any imitation of him. Ib.

Divers notions not simply passing our capacity to know, we are not yet in condition to ken, by reason of our circumstances here, in this dark corner of things to which we are confined, and wherein we lie under many disadvantages of attaining knowledge. He that is shut up in a close place, and can only peep through chinks, who standeth in a valley, and hath his prospect intercepted, who is encompassed with fogs, who hath but a dusky light to view things by, whose eyes are weak or foul, how can he see much or far, how can he discern things remote, minute or subtile, clearly and distinctly? Such is our case; our mind is pent up in the body, and looketh only through those clefts by which objects strike our sense; its intuition is limited within a very small compass; it resideth in an atmosphere of fancy, stuft with exhalations from temper, appetite, passion, interest; its light is scant and faint (for sense and experience do reach only some few gross matters of fact, light infused, and revelation imparted to us, proceed from arbitrary dispensation in definite measures) our ratiocination consequently from such principles, must be very short and defective; nor are our minds ever thoroughly sound, or pure and defecate from prejudices: hence no wonder, that now we are wholly ignorant of divers great truths, or have but a glimmering notion of them, which we may, and hereafter

shall come fully and clearly to understand; so that even the apostles, the secretaries of heaven, might say, We know in part, and we prophesy in part; We now see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.-Barrow.

We are also uncapable thoroughly to discern the ways of providence, from our moral defects, in some measure common to all men; from our stupidity, our sloth, our temerity, our impatience, our impurity of heart, our perversness of will and affections: we have not the perspicacity to espy the subtle tracts, and secret reserves of divine wisdom; we have not the industry, with steady application of mind, to regard and meditate on God's works; we have not the temper and patience to wait upon God, until he discover himself in the accomplishment of his purposes; we have not that blessed purity of heart which is requisite to the seeing God in his special dispensations, we have not that rectitude of will and government of our passions, as not to be scandalized at what God doeth, if it thwarteth our conceit or humor; such defects are observable in the best men, who therefore have misapprehended, have disrelished, have fretted and murmured at the proceedings of God: we might instance in Job, in David, in Elias, in Jonah, in the holy apostles themselves, by whose speeches and deportments in some cases, it may appear how difficult it is for us, who have eyes of flesh (as Job speaketh) and hearts too never quite freed of carnality, to see through, or fully to acquiesce in the dealings of God.

It is indeed a distemper incident to us, which we can hardly shun, or cure, that we are apt to measure the equity and expedience of things according to our opinions and pas

sions; affecting consequently to impose on God our silly imaginations as rules of his proceeding, and to constitute him the executioner of our sorry passions; what we conceit fit to be done, that we take God bound to perform; when we feel ourselves stirred, then we presume God must be alike concerned to our apprehensions every slight inconvenience is a huge calamity, every scratch of fortune is a ghastly wound; God, therefore, we think, should have prevented it, or must presently remove it; every pitiful bauble, every trivial accommodation is a matter of high consequence, which if God withhold, we are ready to clamour on him; and wail as children for want of a trifle. Are we soundly angry or inflamed with zeal? Then fire must come down from heaven, then thunderbolts must fly about, then nothing but sudden woe and vengeance are denounced: Are we pleased? Then showers of blessings must de

scend on the heads, then floods of wealth must run into the laps of our favourites, otherwise we are not satisfied; and scarce can deem God awake, or mindful of his charge. We do beyond measure hate or despise some persons, and to those God must not afford any favour, any mercy, any forbearance, or time of repentance; we excessively admire or dote on others, and those God must not touch or cross; if he doth not proceed thus he is in danger to forfeit his authority: He must hardly be allowed to govern the world, in case he will not square his administrations to our fond conceit, or froward humour: hence no wonder, that men often are stumbled about providence; for God will not rule according to their fancy or pleasure (it would be a mad world if he should) neither indeed could he do so if he would, their judgments and their desires being infinitely various, inconsistent and repugnant.—1b.

hibit the progress or decline of religion at different periods in the church, and its peculiar characteristics and modifications in different countries. A collection of sermons from the Christian era down to the present time, would afford a comprehensive view highly interesting and instructive, on this subject. We are not aware indeed that this could be done to a desirable extent from the want of records at the beginning. Had the discourses or rather the expositions of the earliest Christian teachers been published and preserved, it would constitute a body of testimony, of the most unexceptionable character, respecting the Church immediately succeeding the age of the apostles.