his arguments are not always very sound; and his learning is sometimes out of place; but when weighed against his merits, these minor defects sink out of view, and are scarce felt to possess any importance.

1. CONSIDERATIONS OF THE VANITY AND SHORTNESS OF MAN'S LIFE. —(TAYLOR'S “ HOLY DYING,” CHAP. I., SECT. I.)

All the succession of time, all the changes in nature, all the varieties of light and darkness, the thousand thousands of accidents in the world, and every contingency to every man, and to every creature, doth preach our funeral sermon, and calls us to look and see how the old sexton. Time, throws up the earth, and digs a grave, where we must lay our sins or our sorrows, and sow our bodies, till they rise again in a fair or an intolerable eternity. Every revolution which the sun makes about the world divides between life and death, and death possesses both those portions by the next morrow; and we are dead to all those months which we have already lived, and we shall never live them over again, and still God makes little periods of our age. First we change our world, when we come from the womb to feel the warmth of the sun; then we sleep and enter into the image of death, in which state we are unconcerned in all the changes of the world; and if our mothers or our nurses die, or a wild boar destroy our vineyards, or our king be sick, we regard it not, but, during that state, are as disinterested as if our eyes were closed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth. At the end of seven years our teeth fall and die before us, representing a formal prologue to the tragedy, and still every seven years1 it is odds but we shall finish the last scene; and when nature, or chance, or vice, takes our body in pieces, weakening some parts and loosing others, we taste the grave and the solemnities of our own funeral, first, in those parts that ministered to vice, and, next, in them that served for ornament; and in a short time, even they that served for necessity become useless and entangled, like the wheels of a broken clock. Baldness is but a dressing to our funerals, the proper ornament of mourning, and of a person entered very far into the regions and possession of death; and we have many more of the same signification-gray hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, short breath, stiff limbs, wrinkled skin, short memory, decayed appetite. Every day's necessity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night when we lay in his lap, and slept in his outer chambers. The very spirits of a man prey upon his daily portion of bread and flesh, and every meal is a rescue from one death, and lays up for another; and while we think a thought we die, and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of eternity: we form our words with the breath of our nostrils-we have the less to live upon for every word we speak.

1 According to an opinion prevalent in Taylor's time, every seventh or ninth year of a man's life was considered as one of peculiar importance and danger. These periods were called climacterics, and a man's sixty-third year, which, as the product of seven and nine, was styled the grand climacteric, was held pre-eminently fatal.

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Thus nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the instruments of acting it; and God, by all the variety of His providence, makes us see death everywhere, in all variety of circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies and the expectation of every single person. Nature hath given us one harvest every year, but death hath two: and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men and women to charnel-houses; and all the summer long men are recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and then the Sirian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of autumn are laid up for all the year's provision, and the man that gathers them eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for eternity; and he that escapes till winter only stays for another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time. The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to death; and you can go no whither but you tread upon a dead man's bones.

2. OF CONTENTEDNESS IN POVERTY.-("HOLY LIVING," CHAP. II.,

SECT. VI.)

Poverty is better than riches, and a mean fortune to be chosen before a great and splendid one. It is indeed despised, and makes man contemptible; it exposes a man to the insolence of evil persons, and leaves a man defenceless; it is always suspected; its stories are accounted lies, and all its counsels follies; it puts a man from all employment; it makes a man's discourse tedious, and his society troublesome. This is the worst of it; and yet all this, and far worse than this, the apostles suffered for being Christians; and Christianity itself may be esteemed an affliction as well as poverty, if this be all that can be said against it; for the apostles and the most eminent Christians were really poor, and were used contemptuously; and yet, that poverty is despised may be an argument to commend it, if it be despised by none but persons vicious and ignorant. However, certain it is that a great fortune is a great vanity, and riches is nothing but danger, trouble, and temptation; like a garment that is too long, and bears a train; not so useful to one, but it is troublesome to two—to him that bears the one part upon his shoulders, and to him that bears the other part in his hand. But poverty is the sister of a good mind, the parent of sober counsels, and the nurse of all virtue.

For what is that you admire in the fortune of a great king? Is it that he always goes in a great company? You may thrust yourself into the same crowd, or go often to church, and then you have as great company as he hath; and that may upon as good grounds

please you as him, that is, justly neither; for so impertinent and useless pomp, and the other circumstances of his distance, are not made for him, but for his subjects, that they may learn to separate him from common usages, and be taught to be governed. But if you look upon them as fine things in themselves, you may quickly alter your opinion when you shall consider that they cannot cure the toothache, nor make one wise, or fill the belly, or give one night's sleep (though they help to break many)-not satisfying any appetite of nature, or reason, or religion; but they are states of greatness which only make it possible for a man to be made extremely miserable; and it was long ago observed by the Greek tragedians, and from them by Arrianus, saying, that "all our tragedies are of kings and princes, and rich or ambitious personages, but you never see a poor man have a part, unless it be as a chorus, or to fill up' the scenes, to dance or to be derided; but the kings and the great generals. First," says he, "they begin with joy, 'crown the houses;' but about the third or fourth act they cry out, 'O Citheron! why didst thou spare my life to reserve me for this more sad calamity?' And this is really true in the great accidents of the world; for a great estate hath great crosses, and a mean fortune hath but small ones. It may be the poor man loses a cow, or if his child dies he is quit of his biggest care; but such an accident in a rich and splendid family doubles upon the spirits of the parents. Or, it may be, the poor man is troubled to pay his rent, and that is his biggest trouble; but it is a bigger care to secure a great fortune in a troubled estate, or with equal greatness, or with the circumstances of honour and the niceness of reputation, to defend a law-suit; and that which will secure a common man's whole estate is not enough to defend a great man's honour.

And, therefore, it was not without mystery observed among the ancients, that they who make gods of gold and silver, of hope and fear, peace and fortune, garlic and onions, beasts and serpents, and a quartan ague, yet never deified money; meaning, that however wealth was admired by common or abused understandings, yet from riches, that is, from that proportion of good things which is beyond the necessities of nature, no moment could be added to a man's real content or happiness. Corn from Sardinia, herds of Calabrian cattle, meadows through which pleasant Siris glides, silks from Tyrus, and golden chalices to drown my health in, are nothing but instruments of vanity or sin; and suppose a disease in the soul of him that longs for them or admires them. And this I have otherwise represented more largely; to which I here add, that riches have very great dangers to their souls, not only who covet them, but to all that have them. For if a great personage undertakes an action passionately, and upon great interest, let him manage it indiscreetly, let the whole design be unjust, let it be acted with all the malice and impotency in the world, he shall have enough to flatter him, but not enough to reprove him. He had need be a bold man that shall tell his patron he is going to hell; and that

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prince had need be a good man that shall suffer such a monitor; and though it be a strange kind of civility, and an evil dutifulness, in friends and relatives, to suffer him to perish without reproof or medicine, rather than to seem unmannerly to a great sinner, yet it is none of their least infelicities that their wealth and greatness shall put them into sin, and yet put them past reproof. I need not instance in the habitual intemperance of rich tables, nor the evil accidents and effects of fulness, pride and lust, wantonness and softness of disposition, huge talking and an imperious spirit, despite of religion, and contempt of poor persons: at the best, "it is a great temptation for a man to have in his power whatsoever he can have in his sensual desires;" and, therefore, riches is a blessing like to a present made of a whole vintage to a man in a hectic fever,-he will be much tempted to drink of it, and if he does, he is inflamed, and may chance to die with the kindness.

3. PRAYER HINDERED BY ANGER.-(" GOLDEN GROVE SERMONS."

SERMON V.)

One thing that hinders the prayer of a good man from obtaining its effects, is a violent anger, and a violent storm in the spirit of him that prays. For anger sets the house on fire, and all the spirits are busy upon trouble, and intend1 propulsion, defence, displeasure, or revenge; it is a short madness, and an eternal enemy to discourse, and sober counsels, and fair conversation; it intends its own object with all the earnestness of perception, or activity of design, and a quicker motion of a too warm and distempered blood; it is a fever in the heart, and a calenture in the head, and a fire in the face, and a sword in the hand, and a fury all over; and therefore can never suffer a man to be in a disposition to pray. For prayer is an action, and a state of intercourse and desire, exactly contrary to this character of anger. Prayer is an action of likeness to the Holy Ghost, the spirit of gentleness and dove-like simplicity; an imitation of the holy Jesus, whose spirit is meek, up to the greatness of the biggest example, and a conformity to God, whose anger is always just, and marches slowly, and is without transportation, and often hindered, and never hasty, and is full of mercy; prayer is the peace of our spirit, the stillness of our thoughts, the evenness of recollection, the seat of meditation, the rest of our cares, and the calm of our tempest; prayer is the issue of a quiet mind, of untroubled thoughts; it is the daughter of charity, and the sister of meekness; and he that prays to God with an angry, that is, with a troubled and discomposed spirit, is like him that retires into a battle to meditate, and sets up his closet in the out-quarters of an army, and chooses a frontier garrison to be wise in. Anger is a perfect alienation of the mind from prayer, and therefore is contrary to that attention which presents our prayers in a right line to God. For so have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards, singing as he 1 i. e., in modern phraseology, mind or attend to.

rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest than it could recover by the libration and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over, and then it made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing as if it had learned music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries here below. So is the prayer of a good man; when his affairs have required business, and his business was matter of discipline, and his discipline was to pass upon a sinning person, or had a design of charity, his duty met with infirmities of a man, and anger was its instrument, and the instrument became stronger than the prime agent, and raised a tempest, and overruled the man; and then his prayer was broken, and his thoughts were troubled, and his words went up towards a cloud, and his thoughts pulled them back again, and made them without intention; and the good man sighs for his infirmity, and must be content to lose the prayer, and he must recover it when his anger is removed, and his spirit is becalmed, made even as the brow of Jesus, and smooth like the heart of God; and then it ascends to heaven upon the wings of the holy dove, and dwells with God till it returns, like the useful bee, loaden with a blessing and the dew of heaven.

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4. PRAYER NEVER OUT OF SEASON.- CHRISTIAN CONSOLATIONS," CHAP. IV.)

"For everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven." But neither days, nor hours, nor seasons, did ever come amiss to faithful prayer. Short passes, quick ejections, concise forms and remembrances, holy breathings, prayer-like little posies,' may be sent forth without number on every occasion, and God will note them in his book. But all that have a care to walk with God, fill their vessels more largely as soon as they rise, before they begin the work of the day, and before they lie down again at night which is to observe what the Lord appointed in the Levitical ministry, a morning and an evening lamb to be laid upon the altar. So with them that are not stark irreligious, prayer is the key to open the day, and the bolt to shut in the night. But as the skies drop the early dew and the evening dew upon the grass, yet it would not spring and grow green by that constant and double falling of the dew, unless some great showers, at certain seasons, did supply the rest; so the customary devotion of prayer twice a-day is the falling of the early and the latter dew; but if you will increase and flourish in the works of grace, empty the great clouds sometimes, and let them fall into a full shower of prayer; choose out the seasons

1 i. e., mottoes or maxims.