bour; if it stays long, it grows tedious; so that it cannot be pleasant, if it stays; and if it does stay, it is not to be valued : "Hæc mala mentis gaudia." It abides too little a while to be felt, or called pleasure; and if it should abide longer, it would be troublesome as pain, and loathed like the tedious speech of an orator pleading against the life of the innocent. 9. Sin hath in its best advantages but a trifling, inconsiderable pleasure; because not only God and reason, conscience and honour, interest and laws, do sour it in the sense and gust of pleasure, but even the devil himself either being overruled by God, or by a strange insignificant malice, makes it troublesome and intricate, entangled and involved; and one sin contradicts another, and vexes the man with so great variety of evils, that if in the course of God's service he should meet with half the difficulty, he would certainly give over the whole employment. Those that St. James speaks of, who" prayed that they might spend it upon their lusts," were covetous and prodigal, and therefore must endure the torments of one to have the pleasure of another; and which is greater, the pleasure of spending, or the displeasure that it is spent and does not still remain after its consumption, is easy to tell certain it is, that this lasts much longer. Does not the devil often tempt men to despair, and by that torment put bars and locks upon them, that they may never return to God? Which what else is it but a plain indication that it is intended, the man should feel the images and dreams of pleasure, no longer but till he be without remedy? Pleasure is but like sentries or wooden frames, set under arches, till they be strong by their own weight and consolidation to stand alone; and when by any means the devil hath a man sure, he takes no longer care to cozen him with pleasures, but is pleased that men should begin an early hell, and be tormented before the time. Does not envy punish or destroy flattery; and self-love sometimes torment the drunkard; and intemperance abate the powers of lust, and make the man impotent; and laziness become a hinderance to ambition; and the desires of man wax impatient upon contradicting interests, and by crossing each other's design on all hands lessen the pleasure, and leave the man tormented? ན་ 10. Sin is of so little relish and gust, so trifling a pleasure, that it is always greater in expectation than it is in the possession. But if men did beforehand see, what the utmost is, which sin ministers to please the beastly part of man, it were impossible it should be pursued with so much earnestness and disadvantages. It is necessary it should promise more than it can give; men could not otherwise be cozened. And if it be inquired, why men should sin again, after they had experience of the little and great deception? it is to be confessed, it is a wonder they should: but then we may remember, that men sin again, though their sin did afflict them; they will be drunk again, though they were sick; they will again commit folly, though they be surprised in their shame, though they have needed an hospital; and therefore, there is something else that moves them, and not the pleasure; for they do it without and against its interest; but either they still proceed, hoping to supply by numbers what they find not in proper measures; or God permits them to proceed as an instrument of punishment; or their understandings and reasonings grow cheaper; or they grow in love with it, and take it upon any terms; or contract new appetites, and are pleased with the baser and the lower reward of sin; but whatsoever can be the cause of it, it is certain, by the experience of all the world, that the fancy is higher, the desires more sharp, and the reflection more brisk, at the door and entrance of the entertainment, than in all the little and shorter periods of its possession: for then it is but limited by the natural measures, and abated by distemper, and loathed by enjoying, and disturbed by partners, and dishonoured by shame and evil accidents; so that as men coming to the river Lucius, ἔχει μὲν λευκότατον ὑδάτων καὶ ger dieidéorara, and seeing waters pure' as the tears of the spring, or the pearls of the morning, expect that in such a fair promising bosom, the inmates should be fair and pleasant; τίκτει δὲ ἰχθὺς μελάνας ἰσχυρῶς, but find • the fishes black, filthy, and unwholesome; so it is in sin; its face is fair and beauteous, Ἡ τακεραῖς λεύσσουσα κόραις μαλακώτερον ὕπνου, Softer than sleep, or the dreams of wine, tenderer than the curds of milk; Et Euganea quantumvis mollior agna;' but when you come to handle it, it is filthy, rough as the porcupine, black as the shadows of the night, and having promised a fish it gives a scorpion, and a stone instead of bread. 11. The fruits of its present possession, the pleasures of its taste, are less pleasant, because no sober person, no man that can discourse, does like it long. Breve sit quod turpiter audes. Juv. 8. 165. But he approves it in the height of passion, and in the disguises of a temptation; but at all other times he finds it ugly and unreasonable; and the very remembrances must at all times abate its pleasures, and sour its delicacies. In the most parts of a man's life he wonders at his own folly, and prodigious madness, that it should be ever possible for him to be deluded by such trifles; and he sighs next morning, and knows it over-night; and is it not therefore certain, that he leans upon a thorn, which he knows will smart, and he dreads the event of to-morrow? But so have I known a bold trooper fight in the confusion of a battle, and being warm with heat and rage, received, from the swords of his enemy, wounds open like a grave; but he felt them not, and when, by the streams of blood, he found himself marked for pain, he refused to consider then what he was to feel to-morrow : but when his rage had cooled into the temper of a man, and clammy moisture had checked the fiery emission of spirits, he wonders at his own boldness, and blames his fate, and needs a mighty patience to bear his great calamity. So is the bold and merry sinner, when he is warm with wine and lust, wounded and bleeding with the strokes of hell, he twists with the fatal arm that strikes him, and cares not; but yet it must abate his gayety, because he remembers that when his wounds are cold and considered, he must roar or perish, repent or do worse, that is, be miserable or undone. The Greeks call this τῶν σάκκων εὐδαιμονίαν, ' the felicity of condemned slaves feasted high in sport." Dion Prusias reports, that when the Persians had got the victory, they would pick out the noblest slave, και καθίζουσιν εἰς τὸν θρόνον τοῦ βασι λέως, καὶ τὴν ἐσθῆτα δίδωσιν τὴν αὐτὴν καὶ τρυφῶν, καὶ παλλακαῖς Xeñar, they make him a king for three days, and clothe him with royal robes, and minister to him all the pleasure he can choose, and all the while he knows he is to die a sacrifice to mirth and folly.' But then, let it be remembered, what checks and allays of mirth the poor man starts at, when he remembers the axe and the altar where he must shortly bleed; and by this we may understand what that pleasure is, in the midst of which the man sighs deeply, when he considers what opinion he had of this sin, in the days of counsel and sober thoughts; and what reason against it, he shall feel to-morrow when he must weep or die. Thus it happens to sinners according to the saying of the prophet, "Qui sacrificant hominem, osculabuntur Vitulum," "He that gives a man in sacrifice shall kiss the calf ;"* that is, shall be admitted to the seventh chapel of Moloch to kiss the idol: a goodly reward for so great a price, for so great an iniquity. After all this I do not doubt but these considerations will meet with some persons that think them to be 'protestatio contra factum,' and fine pretences against all experience; and that, for all these severe sayings, sin is still so pleasant as to tempt the wisest resolution. Such men are in a very evil condition and in their case only I come to understand the meaning of those words of Seneca; "Malorum ultimum est mala sua amare, ubi turpia non solum delectant, sed etiam placent:" "It is the worst of evils when men are so in love with sin that they are not only delighted with them, but pleased also;" not only feel the relish with too quick a sense, but also feel none of the objections, nothing of the pungency, the sting, or the lessening circumstances. However, to these men I say this only, that if by experience they feel sin pleasant, it is as certain also by experience, that most sins are in their own nature sharpnesses and diseases; and that very few do pretend to pleasure: that a man cannot feel any deliciousness in them, but when he is helped by folly and inconsideration; that is, a wise man cannot, though a boy or a fool can, be pleased with them that they are but relics and images of pleasure left upon nature's stock, and therefore, much less than the pleasures of natural virtues: that a man must run through much trouble before he brings them to act and enjoyment: that he must take them in despite of himself, against reason and his conscience, the tenderest parts of man and the most sensible of affliction: they are at the best so little, that they are limited to one sense, not spread upon all the faculties * Hosea xiii. 2. like the pleasures of virtue, which make the bones fat by an intellectual rectitude, and the eyes sprightly by a wise proposition, and pain itself to become easy by hope and a present rest within: it is certain (I say) by a great experience, that the pleasures of sin enter by cursings and a contradictory interest, and become pleasant not by their own relish, but by the viciousness of the palate, by spite and peevishness, by being forbidden and unlawful: and that which is its sting is, at some times, the cause of all its sweetness it can have they are gone sooner than a dream: they are crossed by one another, and their parent is their tormentor; and when sins are tied in a chain, with that chain they dash one another's brains out, or make their lodging restless: it is never liked long; and promises much and performs little; it is great at distance, and little at hand, against the nature of all substantial things; and, after all this, how little pleasure is left, themselves have reason with scorn and indignation to resent. So that, if experience can be pretended' against experience, there is nothing to be said to it but the words which Phryne desired to be written on the gates of Thebes, ̓Αλέξανδρος κατέσκαψεν, ἀνέστησε δὲ Φρύνη ἡ ἑταίρα, Phryne the harlot built it up, but Alexander dug it down :" the pleasure is supported by little things, by the experience of fools and them that observed nothing, and the relishes tasted by artificial appetites, by art and cost, by violence and preternatural desires, by the advantage of deception and evil habits, by expectation and delays, by dreams and inconsiderations: these are the harlot's hands that build the fairy castle, but the hands of reason and religion, sober counsels and the voice of God, experience of wise men and the sighings and intolerable accents of perishing or returning sinners, dig it down, and sow salt in the foundations, that they may never spring up in the accounts of men that delight not in the portion of fools and forgetfulness. "Neque enim Deus ita viventibus quicquam promisit boni, neque ipsa per se mens humana, talium sibi conscia, quicquam boni sperare audet:" "To men that live in sin, God hath proand the conscience itself dares not ex 66 mised no good, pect it."* * Plat. de Rep. |