can receive it, and by a solemn ceremony, and conveyed by a sacrament: and is now, not the daughter of a voice, but the mother of many voices, of divided tongues, and united hearts; of the tongues of prophets, and the duty of saints; of the sermons of apostles, and the wisdom of governours: it is the parent of boldness and fortitude to martyrs, the fountain of learning to doctors, an ocean of all things excellent to all who are within the ship and bounds of the catholick church: so that old men, and young men, maidens, and boys, the scribe and the unlearned, the judge and the advocate, the priest and the people, are full of the Spirit, if they belong to God. Moses's wish is fulfilled, and all the Lord's people are prophets in some sense or other.

In the wisdom of the ancients it was observed, that there are four great cords which tie the heart of man to inconvenience, and a prison, making it a servant of vanity, and an heir of corruption; 1. pleasure, and 2. pain; 3. fear, and 4. desire.

Προς το τετραχορδον δ' ὅλον,

την ήδονων, επιθυμίαν, λυπην, φοβον,
ασκησεως γε και πολλής μαχης διοι.

These are they that exercise all the wisdom and resolutions of man, and all the powers that God hath given him.

έντοι γαρ', ουτοι και δια σπλαγχνων από

χωρουσι και κυκωσιν ανθρωπων κιας, said Agathon.

* Four passions, tyrants of the human heart,
Pleasure, and Pain, Desire, and trembling Fear,
Rule it by turns, and for the mastery strive.

These penetrate the inmost heart of men,
Mix with their blood, and revel in their veins.

These are those evil spirits that possess the heart of man, and mingle with all his actions; so that either men are tempted to 1. lust by pleasure, or 2. to baser arts by covetousness, or 3. to impatience by sorrow, or 4. to dishonourable actions by fear and this is the state of man by nature, and under the law, and for ever, till the spirit of God came, and by four special operations cured these four inconveniences, and restrained or sweetened these unwholesome waters.

1. God gave us his spirit that we might be insensible of worldly pleasures, having our souls wholly filled with spiritual and heavenly relishes. For when God's spirit hath entered into us, and possessed us as his temple, or as his dwelling, instantly we begin to taste manna, and to loath the diet of Egypt; we begin to consider concerning heaven, and to prefer eternity before moments, and to love the pleasures of the soul above the sottish and beastly pleasures of the body. Then we can consider that the pleasures of a drunken meeting cannot make recompense for the pains of a surfeit, and that night's intemperance; much less for the torments of eternity; then we are quick to discern that the itch and scab of lustful appetites is not worth the charges of a chirurgeon; much less can it pay for the disgrace, the danger, the sickness, the death and the hell of lustful persons. Then we wonder that any man should venture his head to get a crown unjustly; or that for the hazard of a victory, he should throw away all his hopes of heaven certainly.

A man that hath tasted of God's spirit can instantly discern the madness that is in rage, the folly and the disease that is in envy, the anguish and tediousness that is in lust, the dishonour that is in breaking our faith and telling a lie; and understands things truly as they are; that is, that charity is the greatest

nobleness in the world; that religion hath in it the greatest pleasures; that temperance is the best se curity of health; that humility is the surest way to honour. And all these relishes are nothing but antepasts of heaven, where the quintessence of all these pleasures shall be swallowed for ever; where the chaste shall follow the Lamb, and the virgins sing there where the mother of God shall reign; and the zealous converters of souls, and labourers in God's vineyard, shall worship eternally; where St. Peter and St. Paul do wear their crowns of righteousness; and the patient persons shall be rewarded with Job, and the meek persons with Christ and Moses and all with God: the very expectation of which, proceeded from a hope begotten in us by the spirit of manifestation, and bred up and strengthened by the spirit of obsignation, is so delicious an entertainment of all our reasonable appetites, that a spiritual man can no more be removed or enticed from the love of God and of religion, than the moon from her orb, or a mother from loving the son of her joys, and of her

sorrows.

This was observed by St. Peter [As new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby if so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.*] When once we have tasted the grace of God, the sweetnesses of his spirit; then no food but the food of angels, no cup but the cup of salvation, the divining cup, in which we drink salvation to our God, and call upon the name of the Lord with ravishment and thanksgiving. And there is no greater external testimony that we are in the spirit, and that the spirit dwells in us, than if we find joy and delight and spiritual pleasures in the greatest mysteries of our religion; if we communicate often, and that with appetite, and a forward choice, and an unwearied devotion, and a

* 1 Pet. ii. 2,

heart truly fixed upon God, and upon the offices of a holy worship. He that loaths good meat is sick at heart, or near it; and he that despises, or hath not a holy appetite to the food of angels, the wine of elect souls, is fit to succeed the prodigal at his banquet of sin and husks, and to be partaker of the table of devils: but all they who have God's spirit love to feast at the supper of the Lamb, and have no appetites but what are of the spirit, or servants to the spirit. I have read of a spiritual person, who saw heaven but in a dream, but such as made great impression upon him, and was represented with vigorous and pertinacious phantasms, not easily disbanding; and when he awaked he knew not his cell, he remembered not him that slept in the same dorture, nor could tell how night and day were distinguished, nor could discern oil from wine; but called out for his vision again: Redde mihi campos meos floridos, columnam auream, comitem Hieronymum, assistentes angelos; Give me my fields again, my most delicious fields, my pillar of a glorious light, my companion St. Jerome, my assistant angels. And this lasted till he was told of his duty, and matter of obedience, and the fear of a sin had disencharmed him, and caused him to take care lest he lose the substance out of greediness to possess the shadow.

And if it were given to any of us to see paradise, or the third heaven, (as it was to St. Paul) could it be that ever we should love any thing but Christ, or follow any guide but the spirit, or desire any thing but heaven, or understand any thing to be pleasant but what shall lead thither? Now what a vision can do, that the spirit doth certainly to them that entertain him. They that have him really, and not in pretence only, are certainly great despisers of the things of the world. The spirit doth not create, or enlarge our appetites of things below: spiritual men

are not designed to reign upon earth, but to reign over their lusts and sottish appetites. The Spirit doth not inflame our thirst of wealth, but extinguishes it, and makes us to esteem all things as loss, and as dung, so that we may gain Christ. No gain then is pleasant but godliness, no ambition but longings after heaven, no revenge but against ourselves for sinning; nothing but God and Christ: Deus meus, et omnia and date nobis animas, caetera vobis tollite, (as the king of Sodom said to Abraham,) secure but the souls to us, and take our goods. Indeed this is a good sign that we have the spirit.

St. John spake a hard saying, but by the spirit of manifestation we are all taught to understand it: Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin, for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. The seed of God is the spirit, which hath a plastick power to efform us in similitudinem filiorum Dei, into the image of the sons of God, and as long as this remains in us, while the spirit dwells in us, we cannot sin; that is, it is against our natures, our reformed natures to sin. And as we say, we cannot endure such a potion, we cannot suffer such a pain; that is, we cannot without great trouble, we cannot without doing violence to our nature: so all spiritual men, all that are born of God and the seed of God remains in them, they cannot sin; cannot without trouble, and doing against their natures, and their most passionate inclinations. A man, if you speak naturally, can masticate gums, and he can break his own legs, and he can sip up by little draughts mixtures of aloes, and rhubard, of henbane, or the deadly nightshade; but he cannot do this naturally, or willingly, cheerfully, or with delight, every sin is against a good man's nature: he is ill at ease when he hath missed his usual prayers, he is

* 1 Ep. iii. 9.