alacrity, and contentedness; that this affection and this passion is not consistent with sobriety and justice, and that the satisfying them with the utmost licence brings neither ease nor quiet to the mind, which is not capable of any happiness but in, at least not without, its own innocence; that ambition always carries an insatiableness with it, which is a torment to the mind, and no less a disease than that is to the stomach: in a word, if we would consider, there is scarce a disease, an indisposition, a distemper, by which the body is disturbed, to which, or some influence like it, the mind is not liable likewise; and that the remedies for the latter are much more natural, more in our power, than for the former; if we would use but half the diligence and industry to apply them which we do to the other, we should find ourselves another kind of people, our understandings more vigorous, and our lives more innocent, useful, and beneficial, to God, to ourselves, and to our country; and we should think we had learned nothing, till we had learned "so to number our days that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom;" that wisdom, of which the fear of the Lord is the beginning, and of which the eternal blessing of God is the end and the reward.

III. REFLECTIONS ON THE HAPPINESS WHICH WE MAY ENJOY, IN AND FROM OURSELVES.

Montpellier, 1669.

It was a very just reproach that Seneca charged the world with so many hundred years ago, and

yet was not more the disease of that than of this age, that we wonder and complain of the pride and superciliousness of those who are in place and authority above us; that we cannot get an admittance to them; that they are never at leisure that we may speak to them; when (says he) we are never vacant, never at leisure to speak to ourselves; "Audet quispiam de alterius superbiâ queri, qui sibi ipse nunquam vacat?" and after all complaints and murmurs, the greatest and the proudest of them will be sometimes at leisure, may be sometimes spoken with;" aliquando respexit, tu non inspicere te unquam, non audire dignatus es;" we can never get an audience of ourselves, never vouchsafe to confer together. We are diligent and curious enough to know other men; and it may be charitable enough to assist them, to inform their weakness by our instruction, and to reform their errors by our experience: and all this without giving one moment to look into our own, never make an inspection into ourselves, nor ask one of those questions of ourselves which we are ready to administer to others, and thereby imagine that we have a perfect knowledge of them. We live with other men, and to,othe ̈ men; neither with nor to ourselves. We may sometimes be at home left to ourselves, when others are weary of us, and we are weary of being with them; but we do not dwell at home, have no commerce, no conversation with ourselves, nay, we keep spies about us that we may not have; and if we feel a suggestion, hear an importunate call from within, we divert it by company or quiet it with sleep; and when we wake, no man runs faster from an enemy than we do from our.

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selves, get to our friends that we may not be with ourselves. This is not only an epidemical disease that spreads every where, but effected and purchased at as great a price as most other of our diseases, with the expense of all our precious time. one moment of which we are not willing to bestow upon ourselves, though it would make the remainder of it more useful to us, and to others upon whom we prodigally consume it, without doing good to them or ourselves: whereas, if we would be conversant with ourselves, and as ingenuous and impartial in that conversation as we pretend to be with other men, we should find that we have very much of that at home by us, which we take wonderful unnecessary pains to get abroad; and that we have much of that in our own disposal, which we endeavour to obtain from others; and possess ourselves of that happiness from ourselves, whether it concerns our ambition or any other of our most exorbitant passions or affections, which more provoke and less satisfy by resorting to other men, who are either not willing to gratify us, or not able to comply with our desires; and the trouble and agony, which for the most part accompanies those disappointments, proceeds merely from our not beginning with ourselves before we repair to others.

It is not the purpose and end of this discourse, to raise such seraphical notions of the vanity and pleasures of this world, as if they were not worthy to be considered, or could have no relish with virtuous and pious men. They take very unprofitable pains, who endeavour to persuade men that they are obliged wholly to despise this world and all

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that is in it, even whilst they themselves live here: God hath not taken all that pains in forming and framing and furnishing and adorning this world, that they who were made by him to live in it should despise it; it will be enough if they do not love it so immoderately, to prefer it before Him who made it nor shall we endeavour to extend the notions of the Stoic philosophers, and to stretch them farther by the help of Christian precepts, to the extinguishing all those affections and passions, which are and will always be inseparable from human nature; and which it' were to be wished that many Christians could govern and suppress and regulate, as well as many of those heathen philosophers used to do. As long as the world lasts, and honour and virtue and industry have reputation in the world, there will be ambition and emulation and appetite in the best and most accomplished men who live in it; if there should not be, more barbarity and vice and wickedness would cover every nation of the world, than it yet suffers under. If wise and honest and virtuously-disposed men quit the field, and leave the world to the pillage, and the manners of it to the deformation of persons dedicated to rapine, luxury, and injustice, how savage must it grow in half an age! nor will the best princes be able to govern and preserve their subjects, if the best men be without ambition and desire to be employed and trusted by them. The end therefore of this speculation into ourselves, and conversation with ourselves, is, that we may make our journey towards that which we do propose with the more success; that we may be discreet in proposing reasonable designs, and then

pursue them by reasonable ways; foresee all the difficulties which are probable to fall out, that so we may prevent or avoid them; since we may be sure to master and avoid them to a great degree by foreseeing them, and as sure to be confounded by them, if they fall upon us without foresight. In a word, it is not so to consult with ourselves, as to consult with nobody else; or to dispose us to prefer our own judgment before any other man's: but first, by an impartial conference with ourselves, we may understand first our own mind, what it is we would have, and why we would have it, before we consult with others which way to compass it, that we may set both the matter we desire and the manner of obtaining it before our own eyes, and spend our passions upon ourselves in the disquisition.

It is no wonder that when we are prodigal of nothing else, when we are over-thrifty of many things which we may well spare, we are very prodigal of our time, which is the only precious jewel of which we cannot be too thrifty, because we look upon it as nothing worth, and that makes us not care how we spend it. The labouring man and the artificer knows what every hour of his time is worth, what it will yield him, and parts not with it but for the full value: they are only noblemen and gentlemen, who should know best how to use it, that think it only fit to be cast away; and their not knowing how to set a true value upon this, is the true cause of the wrong estimate they make of all other things; and their ignorance of that proceeds only from their holding no correspondence with themselves, or thinking at all before they be