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loathsome prison, upon the presumption that he should serve God there with the more fervour, would very probably think least of him, and spend his time more in murmurs than in sighs. Too many, who know enough of him, endeavour little to please him, and were more happy if they knew. less; yet there is no question, that he who knows most of him, knows best how to serve him, and is most inexcusable if he doth not. He who in the great variety of spectacles, and of the several actions and designs of men of all tempers and inclinations, cannot but more observe the footsteps of God's providence, and the contradictions of that providence by wilful and affected tergiversations, must consequently know his own duty better than the poor artificer, who is confined to his proper work that he may get bread, and is without those visions, and could not make the same observations if he had them; nor can it be more doubted, that God expects another kind of account from the first than from the last. The man who is well instructed by his experience, and the improvement of his faculties, doth not only know better how to comply with his own obligations in doing all things that may please him, how uneasy soever it is to him, and in declining all things that will displease him, how pleasant and grateful soever those particulars would have been to his own desires and affections;

but knows likewise that God hath communicated that knowledge, and increased that understanding, that he may instruct and reform other men, who are without those immediate assistances; that he hath given him a cure of souls, a diocese to govern: and all the good operations which his informations and example hath upon the manners and the lives of other men, are so many services to God himself, a regiment or an army raised at his own particular › charge for the heavenly militia. It is no easy thing to conceive what contribution of this kind your retired men can bring in for his service: they pretend not to instruct others, whose company and conversation they chuse to abjure or avoid; and after a short solitude, grow to that sottishness of understanding, as to make an acquaintance with birds and beasts, and to affect their company till they have taught them to per-form many offices of life, and it is well if they es cape the working of miracles. It is true, they assume to themselves, or others attribute to them, a wonderful prerogative of prayer; the importunity and merit whereof, they would have it believed, doth contribute to the salvation of many active souls, which bear a little part towards it for themselves: whereas it will require some charity to believe, that they understand enough of the nature of prayer, or of the very existence of God himself,

to make their devotions prevalent for their own salvation: since there are as many difficulties to be overcome towards the right service of God, and as many knots to be untied in the knowledge of him as in any other science; which rude and unpolished understandings cannot comprehend; and it is an unpardonable presumption, not to call it worse, to imagine that the prayers of those who pretend to no other merit, than by denying to do somewhat that God gave them leave, and made it lawful for them to have done, should have force to draw down more blessings from heaven than will serve their own turn. Many, very many instances are not wanting of extraordinary men, who, satiated with the transactions of the world, have withdrawn themselves from the stage of action, to a quiet and industrious retirement; in which, by reflections upon what they have seen and done, the wonderful successes which could not be foreseen, and the great misfortunes that could not be prevented, they have raised such instructions for the attaining all kind of wisdom, that, if industryand advertency be not wanting, the journey is much shortened that leads to all degrees of happiness, by their travels, to all that follow them: but we are yet to seek for any one notable example of a man, who having spent the first part of his life in solitude, and hath no other knowledge of God, of

himself, and of other men, than he hath drawn out of the bowels of his own speculation; and hath after, upon or from that drowsy contemplation, raised a stock of discretion and ability to enter upon the government and conduct of any public affairs, upon what exigent soever he be called thereunto, with any tolerable advantage. When the pope found it necessary to command the Duke of Joyeuse, for the glory of God, to put off the habit of a Capuchin, and commanded him, under the penalty of sin, to undertake the conduct of a rebellious army against his own natural king, and absolved or dispensed with all those oaths and vows which he had made, and which were first to be removed, the poor Capuchin became not thereby so inspired in the art of war, though the holy father sent him a sword of his own blessing for the surer execution, as to obtain any victory upon his enemies; but gave occasion to Henry the Fourth to observe, that the pope had spoiled a good Capuchin, to make the worst general in the world. When those vigorous spirits are first mortified and moped with the absurd documents of contemplation, before they know any thing to contemplate upon, they can never be revived out of that dull and lazy lethargy, to be applied to any magnanimous activity.

The next consideration is, for the benefit of the

world, and good of mankind: in which the disquisition will be extended little farther, than whether a man who lives in the world is able to confer more and greater benefits upon it than he who lives out of it; whether he who converses freely amongst men be more like to do them good, to instruct and inform them what they are to do, than he who converses solely amongst walls and trees. What reverend esteem soever we are bound to have of the wonderful creation of the whole world, and of the most excellent part of that creation, in the beauty and glory of man, both in body and soul, yet we are no more obliged to believe that he created man with all that sharpness of understanding, and faculties of judging, with which he hath since endued him, than we are to think that the garden of Eden was cultivated with as much curiosity, as any hath been since in Italy or France; if Adam were so qualified, he quickly lost it; and we have as old records of the folly of mankind, as of their wickedness; and the greatest part of the world is yet inhabited by men as savage as the beasts who inhabit with them; and there is no nation that hath not elder records of their barbarity, than of the knowledge and manners with which they are now delighted. As God created man out of the earth, so he committed the earth to man to be by him cultivated and polished, and

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