this is not to be done in great designs, and fwelling fortunes.

To get more than a man needs, he must labour infinitely. But to drive away thirst and hunger, a man needs not fit in the fields of the oppreffed poor, nor lead armies, nor break his fleep, nor fuffer fhame and danger, and envy, and affront. If men did but know, what felicity dwells in the cottage of a virtuous poor man, how found his fleeps, how quiet his breaft, how compofed his mind, how free from care, how eafy his provision, how healthful his morning, how fober his night, how joyful his heart; they would never admire the noises, and the diseases, the throng of paffions, and the violence of unnatural appetites, that fill the houfes of the luxurious, and the heart of the ambitious.

Those which we call pleafures, are but imagery, and fantastic appearances; and fuch appearances even poor men may have. If a man loves privacy; a poor fortune can have that, when princes cannot. If he loves noifes; he can go to the places of publick concourse, and may glut himself

with ftrange faces, and ftrange manners, and the wild defigns of all the world. And when that day comes in which we shall die, nothing of the eating and drinking remains, nothing of the pomp and luxury, but the forrow to part with it, and fhame to have dwelt there where wifdom feldom comes, unless it be to call men to fober counfels, to a plain, and fevere, and more natural way of living.

The refult is this: The private life, that which is freeft from tumult and vanity, noise and luxury, bufinefs and ambition, nearest to nature, and a juft entertainment of our neceffities; that life is neareft to felicity.

Therefore let us learn to defpife the fwellings and the diseases of a difordered life, and a proud vanity. Let us be troubled for no outward thing beyond its merit. Let us enjoy the present temperately. And then we fhall be pleased to fee, that we have fo little fhare in the follies and miferies of the intemperate world.

HAVING thus fhewn, that plenty and

E 2

the

the pleasures of the world are no proper inftruments of felicity; I proceed,

Ildly, To fhew, further, that intemperance is a certain enemy to it; making life unpleasant, and death troublesome and intolerable.

It is an enemy, in the first place, to health; which is the handle by which we take hold of pleasures, and is the relish and seasoning of life. For, what content can a full table administer to a man in a fever? And he that hath a fickly stomach, admires at his happiness, that can feaft upon coarse fare.

Health is the opportunity of wisdom, and the fairest scene of religion. It is a state of joy and thanksgiving; and, in every of its periods, feels a pleasure, from the blessed emanations of a merciful providence.

The world doth not administer, nor feel, a greater pleasure, than for a man to be newly delivered from the tortures of the ftone, or the convulfions of a cholic. And no instrument can found out the praises of the Almighty fo chearfully, as the man that rifes from his bed of forrows, and

confiders

confiders what an excellent difference he feels from the groans and intolerable accents of yesterday. Health carries us to church, and makes us rejoice in the communion of faints; and intemperance makes us to lose all this.

But there is nothing that fhews the excellency of temperance, in order to our temporal felicity and health, more than this; that they who have been guilty of excefs, and have left virtue and fober counfels, and firft loft their temperance, and then loft their health, are forced to run to temperance and abftinence for their cure. Then, a spare diet and an humbled body, fafting and emptinefs, and arts of destroying their fin and fickness, are in season. But by the fame means they might preferve their health, by which they do reftore it.

It is indeed to be wondred at, that men eat and drink fo much for pleasure fake; and yet for the fame pleasure should not give over, and betake themselves to the delights of temperance: fince to be healthful and holy, is fo great a pleasure. However, certain it is, that no man ever repented, E 3 that

that he arofe from the table fober, health

ful, and with his wits about him; but very 'many have repented, that they fat fo long, till their health, and their virtue, and their God was departed from them.

For as intemperance is an enemy to health, fo is it alfo to pleafure. Whilst a man is fatisfied with nature's provifions, he can never want pleasure; but all excess destroys it. It is an excellent pleasure to be fatisfied with a moderate diet; and a man can never then want pleasure, when it is fo ready for him, that nature hath fpread it over all its provifions. Fortune and art give delicacies: Nature gives meat and drink. And what nature gives, fortune cannot take away. And if in fatisfaction and freedom from care, and fecurity and proportions to our own natural appetite, there can be pleasure; then we may know how to value the fober and natural tables of the virtuous and wife, before that ftate of affluence which a war can leffen, and a tyrant take away, or a pirate may intercept, or a blast may spoil, and is always