if we turn away from him, or will not turn to him, there shall not one of us escape.

In the time of Gregory Nazianzene, if we may credit ecclesiastical records, there sprung up the direfulest mortality in Rome that mankind hath been acquainted with; scarce able were the living to bury the dead, and not so much but their streets were digged up for graves, which this holy Father (with no little commiserate heart-bleeding) beholding, commanded all the clergy (for he was at that time their chief bishop) to assemble in prayer and supplications, and deal forcingly beseeching with God, to intermit his fury and forgive them. For all this not any whit is abated, he took no pity on them. Therewith that reverend pastor, entranced to hell in his thoughts for the distress of his people, caused all the citizens, young and old, to be called forth their houses, and attend him in a howling procession. Up and down the streets, from one end of the city to the other he led them, and preachers, as captains over multitudes, were set to direct and encourage them in their invocations and orisons. Four days together, in this fervent exercise he detained them. In those places where the mortality raged most, a stand would he make half a day, and with reiterated solicitings, and prostrate voice-crazing vehemency, break ope a broad clouddispersing passage to the throne of mercy.

The four days concluded, and that with their bellowing clamours, and breast embolning sighs, they had enforced a sufficient breach in the firmament, there appeared a bright sun-arrayed angel, standing with a reeking bloody sword in his hand, in the chief gate of their city, which, they coming near, in all their sights, on his arm he wiped and put up; and, in that very instant, throughout the city the plague ceased. Some, peradventure, may take exceptions against the certainty thereof, but if we will authorise any thing in the Roman or ecclesiastical histories, we must ascribe truth as well unto this. I would see him that could give me any

other reason but this of the building of the yet extant gate and castle of St. Angelo's, on both which the angel with his sword drawn is artificially engraven. True or not true, the example can do no harm: we will not be too hasty to imitate it.

Instead of humbling ourselves after this manner, and wearying God with our cries and lamentations, we fall a drinking and boozing, and making jests of his frowning castigation. As babes smile and laugh in their sleep, so we (surprised with a lethargy of sin) do nothing but laugh and jest in the midst of our sleepy security. We scoff and are jocund, when the sword is ready to go through us. On our wine-benches we bid a fico for ten thousand plagues.

Him as a timorous milksop we deride, that takes any antidote against it. Upon the point of God's sword we will run as he is in striking; rush into houses that are infected, as it were to outface him. 66 My son," saith the apostle, " despise not the chastisement of the Lord'." The Lord's chastising we think to escape by despising it. Quod in communi possidetur ab omnibus negligitur. That which is dispersed, of all is despised. Est tentatio adducens peccatum, et tentatio probans fidem. There is a temptation leading to sin, and a temptation trying our faith. The temptation of this our visitation hath both led us to sin, and tried our faith. It hath led us to sin in that it hath hardened our hearts, and we have not humbled ourselves under it as we should. It hath tried our faith to be a presumptuous and rash faith, and that it is built on no firm foundation. "Blessed is the man," saith Job, "whom God correcteth'." Cursed are we, for God correcteth us and we regard

it not.

As the Holy Ghost willeth us not to despise the chastising of God, so he would have us not to faint when we are rebuked of him, and therefore he giveth a reason, "For whom the Lord loveth he chastiseth, and he scourgeth every son he receiveth." As there be

drunken despisers of God's present chastisement, so are there them that faint too much under it; that think it lies not in the Lord's power to restore them; that no prayers or repentance may reprieve them; that imagine (since God in this world hath forsook them,) he will for ever forsake them. Thus they argument against themselves. He that denieth us a small request of the prolongment of a few earthly days, he will surely stop his ears, when in a greater suit (for the life eternal) we shall importune him.

O, no, foolish men, you err; though long life on earth be a blessing, yet it follows not by contradiction, that God curseth all those whose days he shortens. Many except their days were shortened, would never be saved. Many in their prime and best years, are caught hence because the world is unworthy of them, and they are more worthy of heaven than the world. The good King Josias was taken away in his youth. Our Saviour was taken up in his best youthly age. Others for their sins the Lord by untimely death punisheth in this world, that they may be absolved in the world to come. A large account of them shall he demand, to whom he lendeth long life. Whom God chastiseth or cutteth off he loveth, half his account he cuts off. Every son he scourgeth that he receiveth.

Hath God chastised or scourged such a man by the sickness, he is not a greater sinner than thou whom he hath not chastised, but he loveth him better than thee, for in his chastising, he hath shewed more care over him than he hath over thee. Few men defamed with any notorious vice can I hear of, that have died of this sickness. God chastiseth his sons and not bastards. No sons of God are we, but bastards, until we be chastened1. The fathers of our earthly bodies for a few days chastise us at their pleasure, but God chastiseth us for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness. The fathers of our earthly bodies, though they beat us

Heb. 12. 8. 9.

and chastise us, yet cannot (for all the pain they put us to) enfeoff us in glory perpetual: for how should they do that for us, which they cannot do for themselves? Only because they are to benefit us with a little transitory chaff, they tyrannise and reign over us: and therefore more austere are they to keep us in obedience, for we should not (after their death) lavishly mispend the labours of their parsimony.

The guerdon they give us (for all their inflicted sorrow and smart,) is that which they must leave in spite of their hearts, and cannot themselves keep any longer. They give us place, that in self-same sort we may give place to others. But God, our redeemer, chastiser, and father, corrects us, that we may receive no corruptive inheritance (such as in this life we receive by the waning of our earthly fathers,) but a never-failing inheritance, where we shall have our Father himself for our inheritance.

O what a blessed thing it is to be chastised of the Lord! Is it not better, O London! that God correct thee, and love thee, than forbear thee, and forsake thee? He is a just God, and must punish either in this life or in the life to come. Though thou considerest only the things before thee, yet he being a loving foreseeing father for thee, and knowing the intolerableness of the never quenched furnace (which for sin he hath prepared,) will not consent to thine own childish wishes of winking at thee here on earth (where, though he did spare thee, thou shalt have no perfect tranquillity,) but with a short light punishment acquitteth thee from the punishment eternal, and eternally incomprehensible tortures.

When preachers threaten us for sin with this adjunct eternal, as pains eternal, eternal damnation, eternal horror and vexation, we hear them as words of course, but never dive right down into the bottomless sense. A confused model and misty figure of hell have we conglomerate in our brains, drowsily dreaming that it is a place under earth incessantly vomiting flames like Ætna or Mongibell,

and fraught full of fire and brimstone; but we never follow the meditation of it so far (were it nothing else,) as to think what a thing it is to live in it perpetually.

It is a thousand thousand times worse than to be stacked on the top of Ætna or Mongibell. A hundred thousand thousand times more than thought can attract, or supposition apprehend. But eternally to live in it, that makes it the hell, though the torment were but trifling. Signified this word eternal, but some six thousand years (which is about the distance from Adam,) in our comprehension it were a thing beyond mind, insomuch as we deem it an impatient spectacle to see a traitor but half an hour groaning under the hangman's hands. What then is it, to live in threescore times more grinding discruciament of dying, a year, a hundred years, a thousand years, six thousand years, sixty thousand years, more thousands than can be numbered in a thousand years; so much importeth this word eternal, or for ever.

Though all the men that ever God made were hundred-handed like Briareus, and should all at once take pens in their hundred hands, and do nothing in a whole age together but set down in figures and characters as many millions or thousands as they could, so many millions or thousands could they never set down, as this word of three syllables, eternal, includeth; an ocean of ink would it draw dry to describe it. Hell is a circle which hath no breakings off or discontinuing. Hence blasphemous witches and conjurors, when they raise up the devil, draw a ringed circle all about him, that he should not rush out and oppress them: as also to humble and debase him, in putting him in mind by that circle, of the eternal circle of damnation, wherein God hath confined and shut him. What dullards and blockheads are we, that hearing these terms of hell and eternal, so often sounded in our ears, sound them so shallowly, or if we sound them as we should, are no more confounded with them? It should seem we are not too much ter

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