panies all guilt. Whosoever is conscious to himself of sin, feels in himself (whether he will own it or no) a proportionable shame, and a secret depression of spirit thereupon. And this is so irksome, and uneasy to man's mind, that he is restless to relieve and rid himself from it: for which, he finds no way so effectual, as to get company in the same sin. For company, in any action, gives both credit to that, and countenance to the agent; and so much as the sinner gets of this, so much he casts off of shame. Singularity in sin puts it out of fashion; since to be alone in any practice, seems to make the judgment of the world against it; but the concurrence of others is a tacit approbation of that, in which they concur. Solitude is a kind of nakedness, and the result of that, we know, is shame. is company only that can bear a man out in an ill thing; and he who is to encounter and fight the law, will be sure to need a second. No wonder therefore if some take delight in the immoralities and baseness of others; for nothing can support their minds drooping, and sneaking, and inwardly reproaching them, from a sense of their own guilt, but to see others as bad as themselves.

It

To be vicious amongst the virtuous, is a double disgrace and misery; but where the whole company is vicious and debauched, they presently like, or at least easily pardon one another. And as it is observed by some, that there is none so homely, but loves a looking-glass; so it is certain, that there is no man so vicious, but delights to see the image of his vice reflected upon him, from one who exceeds, or at least equals him in the same.

Sin in itself is not only shameful, but also weak ;

and it seeks a remedy for both in society: for it is this that must give it both colour and support. But on the contrary, how great and (as I may so speak) how self-sufficient a thing is virtue! It needs no credit from abroad, no countenance from the multitude. Were there but one virtuous man in the world, he would hold up his head with confidence and honour; he would shame the world, and not the world him. For, according to that excellent and great saying, Prov. xiv. 14. A good man shall be satisfied from himself. He needs look no further. But if he desires to see the same virtue propagated and diffused to those about him, it is for their sakes, not his own. It is his charity that wishes, and not his necessity that requires it. For solitude and singularity can neither daunt nor disgrace him; unless we could suppose it a disgrace for a man to be singularly good.

But a vicious person, like the basest sort of beasts, never enjoys himself but in the herd. Company, he thinks, lessens the shame of vice, by sharing it; and abates the torrent of a common odium, by deriving it into many channels; and therefore, if he cannot wholly avoid the eye of the observer, he hopes to distract it at least by a multiplicity of the object. These, I confess, are poor shifts, and miserable shelters, for a sick and a self-upbraiding conscience to fly to; and yet they are some of the best that the debauchee has to cheer up his spirits with in this world. For if, after all, he must needs be seen, and took notice of, with all his filth and noisomeness about him, he promises himself however, that it will be some allay to his reproach, to be but one of many, to march in a troop, and by a prepos

terous kind of ambition, to be seen in bad company.

5. The fifth and last cause, (that I shall mention,) inducing men to take pleasure in the sins of others, is a certain, peculiar, unaccountable malignity, that is in some natures and dispositions. I know no other name or word to express it by. But the thing itself is frequently seen in the temporal concerns of this world. For are there not some who find an inward, secret rejoicing in themselves, when they see or hear of the loss or calamity of their neighbour, though no imaginable interest or advantage of their own is or can be served thereby? But, it seems, there is a base, wolfish principle within, that is fed and gratified with another's misery; and no other account or reason in the world can be given of its being so, but that it is the nature of the beast to delight in such things.

And as this occurs frequently in temporals, so there is no doubt, but that with some few persons it acts the same way also in spirituals. I say, with some few persons; for, thanks be to God, the common, known corruption of human nature, upon the bare stock of its original depravation, does not usually proceed so far. Such an one, for instance, was that wretch, who made a poor captive renounce his religion, in order to the saving of his life; and when he had so done, presently run him through, glorying that he had thereby destroyed his enemy, both body and soul. But more remarkably such, was that monster of diabolical baseness here in England, who, some years since, in the reign of king Charles the first, suffered death for crimes scarce ever heard of before; having frequently boasted,

that as several men had their several pleasures and recreations, so his peculiar pleasure and recreation was to destroy souls, and accordingly to put men upon such practices as he knew would assuredly do it. But above all, the late saying of some of the dissenting brotherhood ought to be proclaimed and celebrated to their eternal honour; who, while there was another new oath preparing, which they both supposed and hoped most of the clergy would not take, in a most insulting manner gave out thereupon, that they were resolved either to have our livings, or to damn our souls. An expression, so fraught with all the spite and poison which the devil himself could infuse into words, that it ought to remain as a monument of the humanity, charity, and christianity of this sort of men for ever.

Now such a temper or principle as these and the like passages do import, I call a peculiar malignity of nature; since it is evident, that neither the inveterate love of vice, nor yet the long practice of it, and that even against the reluctancies and light of conscience, can of itself have this devilish effect upon the mind, but as it falls in with such a villainous preternatural disposition as I have mentioned. For to instance in the particular case of parents and children, let a father be never so vicious, yet, generally speaking, he would not have his child so. Nay, it is certain, that some, who have been as corrupt in their morals as vice could make them, have yet been infinitely solicitous to have their children soberly, virtuously, and piously brought up: so that, although they have begot sons after their own likeness, yet they are not willing to breed them

so too.

Which, by the way, is the most pregnant demonstration in the world, of that self-condemning sentence, that is perpetually sounding in every great sinner's breast; and of that inward, grating dislike of the very thing he practises, that he should abhor to see the same in any one, whose good he nearly tenders, and whose person he wishes well to. But if now, on the other side, we should chance to find a father corrupting his son, or a mother debauching her daughter, as (God knows such monsters have been seen within the four seas) we must not charge this barely upon an high predominance of vice in these persons, but much more upon a peculiar anomaly and baseness of nature: if the name of nature may be allowed to that which seems to be an utter cashiering of it; a deviation from, and a contradiction to, the common principles of humanity. For this is such a disposition, as strips the father of the man; as makes him sacrifice his children to Moloch; and as much outdo the cruelty of a cannibal or a Saturn, as it is more barbarous and unhuman to damn a child than to devour him. We sometimes' read and hear of monstrous births, but we may often see a greater monstrosity in educations: thus when a father has begot a man, he trains him up into a beast, making even his own house a stews, a bordel, and a school of lewdness, to instill the rudiments of vice into the unwary, flexible years of his poor children, poisoning their tender minds with the irresistible, authentic venom of his base example; so that all the instruction they find within their father's walls shall be only to be disciplined to an earlier practice of sin, to be catechized into all the mysteries of iniquity, and, at length, confirmed in a mature,