his Dominions on some other more zealous Votary of that See And any that will read the Decretals Bulls and Breves of many of the aspiring Popes will find that these were not only ambitious and disclaimed practises the guilt of which being personal died with themselves but they founded them on the Rights of the See of Rome and in the stile of an Universal Pastor imposed the belief of that on the World Now I would presume to ask any of that Communion if they believe these Popes were Infallible in those Decisions and Instructions they imposed on the World or not If any say they were Infallible in them they are without more ceremony of words Traitors who subject our Sovereign's Rights which he derives from God only to a foreign Superior Power If they were not Infallible in these Decisions then what is become of the Pope's Infallibility For the present Pope can have no more than his Predecessors had and if they erred he may likewise erre But I must advance this a little farther to shew that those of that Communion though they reject the Popes Infallibility yet if they submit to the Infallibility of their General Councils are still in the same hazards of being Rebels For the Council of Lateran which in the Roman Church is held General and Oecumenical that first decreed Transubstantiation did also by the Third of its Canons decree That all temporal Princes should exterminate I shall not critically examine that word which must amount to banishment at least all Hereticks adding That if any Temporal Lord being admonished by the Church did neglect to purge his Lands he should be first excommunicated and if he continued in his contempt and contumacy a years notice was to be given of it to the Pope who thenceforth should declare his Vassals absolved from the Fidelity they owed him and expose his Lands to be Invaded by Catholicks who might possess it without any contradiction having exterminated the Hereticks out of it and preserve it in the Purity of the Faith This is so plain that I suppose without any hesitation it may be called a down-right Conspiracy against all Sovereign Princes and this being decreed by a General Council must either be Infallibly true or the Foundation on which they have raised all their Superstructure of the Infallibility of their General Councils is overturned But the same Equality of Justice and Freedom that obliged me to lay open this ties me to tax also those who pretend a great heat against Rome and value themselves on their abhorring all the Doctrines and Practises of that Church and yet have carried along with them one of their most pestiferous Opinions pretending Reformation when they would bring all under Confusion and vouching the Cause and Work of God when they were destroying that Authority he had set up and opposing those impowred by him And the more Piety and Devotion such daring pretenders put on it still brings the greater stain and imputation on Religion as if it gave a Patrociny to those Practises it so plainly condemns This is Iudas-like to kiss our Master when we betray him and to own a Zeal for Religion when we engage in courses that disgrace and destroy it But blessed be God our Church hates and condemns this Doctrine from what hand soever it come and hath established the Rights and Authority of Princes on sure and unalterable Foundations enjoyning an entire Obedience to all the lawful Commands of Authority and an absolute Submission to that Supreme Power God hath put in our Sovereign's hands This Doctrine we justly glory in and if any that had their Baptism and Education in our Church have turned Renegades from this they proved no less enemies to the Church her self than to the Civil Authority So that their Apostasie leaves no blame on our Church which glories in nothing more than in a well-tempered Reformation from the later Corruptions which the dark Ages brought in to the pure and Primitive Doctrines which our Saviour and his Apostles taught and the first Christians retained and practised for many Ages To Resume all then Let us adorn our holy Profession with a Life suitable to it and let us shew to the World that we take not up nor maintain our Religion upon Interest but found it on sure and unmoveable Foundations which being the same always will ever oblige us to the same Duties and Practises Let us study to empty our selves of all big self-conceiting Thoughts of all hot and inflamed Passions and Appetites of all unruly and unbounded Desires of all Levity and unstayedness of mind that with humble Hearts calm Minds contented Spirits and steady Thoughts every one may follow the Duties of his Station and contain himself within it as becomes a Christian paying inwardly in our very thoughts that reverence we owe the Higher Powers and offering up to God the constant Tribute of our Prayers for them considering they are God's Vicegerents and by his own warrant are called Gods And if the Conduct of Affairs do not suit our wishes or desires yet for all that we are to trust to and depend on God's Providence not daring once to think of attempting against the Lord's anointed nor to engage in courses that may bring on so much mischief and confusion but let us ever set before our eyes our blessed Saviour Who endured the Cross and despised the shame who when he was reviled reviled not again and when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously And let us also consider that Cloud of Witnesses that followed him That so we may run with patience the race that is set before us and not look to or imitate the later practises of some distempered and degenerated Christians And then we shall be an honour to our Profession and give a credit to that Church wherein we were Born Baptised and Instructed when we shew that we are subject not only for Wrath but for Conscience-sake And to end as I begun Let us with astonishment and wonder contemplate the shining glories of our most holy Faith which tends to raise Mankind to the highest pitch of true Greatness that his limited Nature can ascend to and as far excels all the attempts of Philosophy or any other Religion whatsoever as the bright Splendor of the Day doth the fainter Shinings of the Night For nothing can be more the Interest of all men than the receiving this Faith which both secures a man in all his Rights and obliges all others to pay him what ever is due from the Relations they stand in Does a Father desire dutiful Children or Children an affectionate Father Make them good Christians and they are sure of what they desire Do Husband and Wife expect the Fidelity and Sacred performance of the Ties of Wedlock This must certainly follow on their being good Christians Do Masters desire honest and careful Servants and Servants a just and gentle Master Make them good Christians and they will prove such Do all men desire to live by honest well-natured and affectionate Neighbours Their being good Christians will certainly make them such Do Subjects desire a good King Let them pray that he be a good Christian and then he shall certainly govern well And do Kings desire good and obedient Subjects Let them take care that they be good Christians and then they will be Subject Not only for Wrath but for Conscience-sake Now to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords be all Honour Praise and Glory for ever and ever Amen THE END Matth. 7. 12. S. Jam. 4. 2. The Case of the Duke of Guise in Henry the Thirds time S. Matth 11. 29. Phil. 2. 3. 1 S. Pet. 5. 5. Col. 3. 8. Col. 3 13. S. Jam. 3. 17. S Matth. 5. 25 34. Prov. 24. 26. Eccles. 7. 10. 1 Thess. 4. 11. 1 S. Pet. 4. 15. Col. 3. 9. Eccles. 11. 20. 1. Tim. 2. 1 2 Ver. 1 2 3. Psal. 82. 6. 1 Sam. 24. 4 5 6. 1. S. Pet 2. 13. Rom. 8. 28 2 Sam. 6 7 S. Jam. 1. 20. Heb. 2. 10. S. Matth. 22. 21. S. Matth. 26. 5. S. John 18. 36. 1 S. Pet. 2. 13. ver to the end and 3. 14 15 16 17. verses Lib. 10. Ep. 97. Cap. 37. Ad Scap. c. 2.
THE Royal Martyr AND THE DUTIFUL SUBJECT IN TWO SERMONS By G. BVRNET LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to his most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1675. THE Royal Martyr Lamented in a SERMON Preached at the SAVOY ON King CHARLES the MARTYR'S Day 1674 5. By Gilbert Burnet LONDON Printed for R. Royston Bookseller to his most Sacred Majesty at the Angel in Amen-Corner 1675. THE Royal Martyr Lamented in a SERMON Preached at the SAVOY on King CHARLES the MARTYR'S Day 1674 5 2 SAM 2. 12. And they mourned and wept and fasted until even for Saul and for Ionathan his Son and for the people of the Lord and for the house of Israel because they were fallen by the sword THere is no Maxim so general or so constant but that it may allow of some exception and therefore though the Wiseman after all his experience his most searching Observations and the great prospect he had of the order of second Causes and the temper of mens minds does pronounce there was nothing new under the Sun Yet this day and that never-enough-lamented Villany we now remember must put in for an exception from that rule which did indeed exceed all the common measures of wickedness so far that as there is nothing in any History like it so when the World is some Ages older if such an action be not an Omen that its end is near this will scarce gain credit but be looked on as the Tragical contrivance of some deeply-Melancholy wit Some Princes have been by their prevailing Conquerors put to death others have been assassinated by their own Subjects But to see a Soveraign Prince brought to the Pageantry of a Mock-trial and by a Court made up of his own Subjects on a pretence of Justice sentenced to lose his life not in the corner of some private Prison but in the chief City of his Dominions and in the most eminent place of it is an evidence of the degeneracy of the age we live in that would dare to act what in former ages none would have thought on What Phocas did to the Emperour Mauritius is the nearest parallel to it which History offers but comes far short of matching it for neither were the Rights of the Roman Emperours derived by so clear a Title nor so long a Descent as our Royal Martyr's were and so no wonder if those who rose by the sword did also fall by it Nor did Phocas so far affront Justice as to pretend to put his Master to a Trial and Mauritius had by so base an avarice exposed so many of his Soldiers to be cut off and used the rest so ill that no wonder they in their fury against him were guilty of so foul a Conspiracy But how much more exquisitly wicked was the crime we now remember when a Prince whose Rights were devolved on him by so many Titles the British the Saxon the Norman and the Scotish Races having all united in him who had also in his whole Government shewed that deep sense of Religion with a most tender regard to the good and quiet of his Subjects was against all the rules of Justice and yet upon some colours of it brought to so publick a death But as Phocas as basely treacherous and wicked as he was was most ignominiously and shamefully courted by Pope Gregory the Great who writes to him in a stile of so mean and servile flattery that it justly stains all the other good Qualities of that Prelate And his Successor Boniface did yet more meanly comply and got himself declared by him the Universal Bishop of the Church From which we may judg of that See by vvhat arts they are resolved to rise and to make use of the worst of men if they can but serve their turn So in this Regicide Religion was vouched and God appealed to And indeed it was no wonder that these treated his Vicegerents so coarsely that made so bold with God himself as to pretend he was their Patron and warrant in what they did And perhaps if these actors had as fully complied with him that pretend to be Christs Vicegerent as Phocas did he had as plainly justified their actions as Gregory and Boniface did which might have been far rather looked for now after all the opinions some of their Emissaries have broached of murdering Princes then at that time when their corruptions were but a-forming and their ambition was beginning to fly at Supremacy and Universal Jurisdiction But is all our work only to reflect with some horrour on this infamous action have we no other concern in this Day The Collect tells us That the sins of this Nation have been the cause which hath brought this heavy judgment upon us We also pray That this our land be freed from the vengeance of his blood And indeed had not our sins been great so that the cup of our iniquities was quite full it could not have run over in a tract of a long Civil War which brought along with it so much bloodshed rapine and contempt of all things sacred and humane and all was compleated in this crime beyond which wickedness could go no higher Those who were so nobly and generously loyal as to serve his late Majesty of most blessed memory do with a just glorying rejoyce in the reflection on their past Services yet let me crave leave to offer even to them how far they ought to be concerned in mourning and fasting on this Occasion It was our contempt of God and Religion our being purely formal in our Religious Worship our forgetting to acknowledg God the author of our Peace and Plenty our abusing these by excess and riot that brought on those sad and unheard-of Judgments Among the much-abused words of the late time were Incendiary and Incendiarism but those were the great Incendiaries that kindled Gods wrath and it is from such that we may justly fear the like or rather severer Judgments if our sins now be greater than they were then Therefore the lamenting and repenting of these sins by which what is past may be forgiven and what may be feared be prevented being the proper work of this day I come now to consider my Text and what reflections may be drawn from it though in a case so much without a precedent as this is it is not to be imagined that a Text wholly pertinent can be pickt up But we shall make the most of this we can and consider three things in it First This King whose Death was so much lamented and in what particulars he was a Parallel and in what not of our Royal Martyr Secondly What reason David with the rest of the people of Israel had to mourn for his Death and how far that agrees with our case Thirdly How they expressed their sorrow and how far their example calls on us to imitate it For the first it was Saul the Son of Kish whom God had by the hands of Samuel designed to be King of
was very unjustly and perfidiously used by Saul he had kept himself on a pure defensive and Saul's being frenetick and possessed with an evil spirit are great justifications of David's little Army or rather Guard and his being a Man according to Gods heart ought to possess all with that esteem for him as not easily to find fault with him or with any of his actions yet his Army being made up of men distressed in debt and discontented is a shrewd Indication that the Cause was not over-good when he had such a following Besides his going to live at Gath with the Uncircumcised his cutting off the Amalekites and pretending to Achish that he had destroyed his own People by an unjustifiable deceit and finally his going out with the Armies of the Philistines and professing a great desire to fight against the Enemies of Achish who were no other but Saul his natural liege-Lord and the Armies of Israel wherein he either acted a very unsincere part or did really resolve to have engaged against them are things so manifestly contrary to the Laws of God that they give a strong presumption that the whole business of his taking Armes was contrary to Law and Religion But I shall not enter further into the Dispute and so leave it inclining rather to believe that David's Conscience did accuse him of having failed in his Duty to Saul But after all this our Case is much more justly deplorable who did not lose our King by the prevailing power of a hostile Invasion but by the unnatural hands of his own Subjects who were both by the tye of Subjection by their Oaths of Allegiance which many of them had sworn and by their constant professions of fighting for the King and in defence of his Authority as they gave it out for training in the multitude by so deceitful a bait tyed to the preservation of his person and yet did wash their hands in his blood and by their pretending Religion and Justice in a Fact so contrary to both did as much as in them lay bring the foulest imputations on both that could be How did this open the mouths of the Adversaries of our Religion whom we had justly charged for their seditious and treasonable Doctrines to insult over us but without all cause for as all the Reasons pretended were but upon the matter the same with those their Doctors have published allowing but a small change so those of our true and soundly reformed Church did abominate so foul a Crime with all possible horrour and as was most just did both in publick and private declare against it and with a generous and truly Christian constancy endured Sequestrations Imprisonments and every thing which that insulting Power put them to rather than comply with so vile an Action and its vile Actors But to all this it may be said Let these mourn who were of accession to it that concerns not us To which I must answer That such publick Crimes leave a guilt upon the whole Nation which therefore must be expiated with a publick universal Repentance And if in the Law of Moses God declared that Blood was a crying sin which called to Heaven for vengeance and therefore when a Murder was discovered and the Murderer was not known there was to be a Sacrifice for the whole People to expiate the guilt how much more in a Crime attended with so many foul and black Circumstances ought we by earnest Prayers to study to avert these Judgments which we may but too justly apprehend And to this let me add that there are not so many innocent as those perhaps imagine for as David here did it is probable charge himself for arming against the Lords Anointed so what reason have these who engaged in Opposition and Arms to our Royal Martyr to charge and judg themselves that they be not judged of the Lord who not being satisfied with those great and large Concessions he freely and willingly offered did pursue his Person and Life in the Field after which it was no wonder others learned to pursue him to the Scaffold May not the one be said to have killed the King that robbed him of his Revenue Power and Authority and every thing was necessary for the maintenance of the Royal Dignity whereas the other did but murther Charles after he was spoiled of his Royal Power and the Government taken out of his hands Though in a formal Pageantry Writs were issued in his Name And thus we find the grounds of our mourning grow larger and take or rather call in more mourners But in fine by another advance a great many more will be comprized within this Duty even all those who did not with the most vigorous opposition was possible prevent this barbarous Regicide which made a foreign Historian giving account of it say it was a wonder how Englishmen could look on and behold so barbarous and unexampled a Crime Where were the hearts and hands of the brave English whose loyal and noble valour appearing on this occasion had been a Subject to be celebrated by all the highest and most grateful Remembrances Posterity could dedicate to so glorious an action Did a pusillanimous fear freez their courage when their Head was thus struck at Did the care of their Fortunes prevail when they could expect no longer to live secure in the Possession of any of their Rights when all was in this one Act unhinged Did the atrocity of the Fact astonish them so that they were not recovered out of this amazing surprize till it was too late Or did the suddenness of the Crime prevent their diligence Or were they so charitable to their Country-men as not to think any could be capable of committing this Crime till they were convinced of it by an unanswerable Argument yet all these palliations or excuses will not serve turn they should have put all to hazard when they saw the Case so desperate and all like to be lost And thus it appears many are concerned to mourn on this Occasion who perhaps think themselves far from any guilt Finally there be yet others concerned who may be do not so much as imagin how it may come to their door and these be the present Generation who either were not born then or at least of that age that nothing could be expected from them but even they must consider that God visits the sins of the Fathers upon the Children and though no Child is guilty of his Fathers fact unless he concurred in it or did afterwards approve it yet many times the Judgments of God in Temporal things do overtake them for their Fathers faults which is no more unjust than for the Law to deny the Child any of the Privileges of Subjects for the Fathers faults From all this then it will appear how much more reason we have to mourn than the People of Israel had on this occasion who have to the scorn and insultings of our Enemies been one way or other so
great and just Glory of our most holy Faith that it is no less the Interest than the Duty of all men to embrace it and live according to its Precepts For if we examine either the Complex of the whole Christian Religion in gross or the several parcels of it and the Duties it enjoyns we must confess all the Laws of Solon and Lycurgus of Greece and Rome come infinitely short of the excellent provisions it gives for the Peace of Mankind and the Order of Societies So that it plainly appears the Author of it was a Lover of Men. What Rule of Justice can match that of doing to others what we would have others do to us which is so home so easily remembred and readily applied that no wonder the very Heathens admired it But not content with the strictest rigors of Justice our Saviour hath also obliged us to the supererogatings if I may so speak of Charity and hath commanded us to love one another as Brethren nor must our brotherly Love be confined within the narrow bounds of a Party but extend it self to all Men whom it takes within its Verge forgiving Injuries and loving Enemies And for the security of Order and Government what means are like those our Religion offers This is even confessed by its declared Enemies who charge it as the contrivance of designing men for securing their Power and Authority and indeed all the Arts of Statesmen the Cunnings of Policy the Closeness of Councils the Exactness of Intelligence the strength of Armies or Navies the strictness of Guards regular Fortifications great Treasures and vast Magazines are but Ineffectual Means compared to this which Religion offers for the security of a State by setting up Conscience as a Sentinel to watch in every man's Breast that shall not let pass through it one thought contrary to the Peace of the Society Wise Statesmen hold it for a Maxim That the chief security of a Sovereign is in his being Master of the Hearts and Affections of his Subjects which will draw with them their Hands and Purses as need shall require But Mankind being so subject to a variety of Passions which by an unruly vicissitude possess the Minds especially of the giddy multitude there can be no assurance in this unless somewhat that is more fixed and better grounded tye subjects to the Duty they owe the Sovereign Power And therefore those who have attempted God and designed to discharge Men of the sense of a Deity or the apprehensions of another Life are the greatest Enemies to Authority Their Bloud and Extraction may perhaps entitle them to Honour and a high Quality but their Maxims destroy all Honour and would quickly bring on a levelling of all Qualities He were by the confession of all highly criminal who would question the King's Title to the Crown or offer to void his Right and yet this is the Crime of those Insulting Hectors For if there be no God then that Sacred and Royal Reputation of Sovereign Power which Princes derive from him who is the Original of it by whom Kings Reign is out of doors This levels the Prince with the Subject and gives the Usurper as good a Title as the lawful Sovereign can claim I shall not now engage in a long discourse of Policy nor examine the Original of Power nor the Measures and Limits of it nor the Nature and Extent of the Subjection we owe Authority much less run out in a long Digression of the Obligation of Conscience but shall limit my Discourse to one single point That Conscience is the great security of a State the Spring of Obedience and the sure basis of Submission And in opening up this I shall 1. Shew that Conscience doth choak and stifle the occasions and causes of Commotions in their first Conceptions 2. That it drives the sense of Duty and the obligation to Obedience deeper on our Minds than any other consideration whatsoever 3. That it gives the strongest Arguments for convincing our Reason and the most engaging Motives for prevailing on our Affections to pay the Duties of Subjection to those God hath set over us And 4. I shall encounter and put out of the way a formidable Objection which may offer it self in prejudice of what I am to deliver For the first it is certain that as the great Diseases of our Bodies are not so much the Effects of outward Accidents as of bad Humours to which a crisis may be given by some foreign Impression which may put them in a ferment and so endanger our Health Thus the distempers of the Body Politick owe their beginnings and growth to some ill Humours in it and the real Causes of Commotions are seldom the same with these that are pretended for training in and engaging a Multitude for from whence come wars and fightings among us but from our lusts that war in our members I shall therefore consider some of those Lusts and distempered Affections from which Commotions may arise that I may shew how Religion and it only can secure Government from their bad Effects Time will not allow me to make good all I am to say from History but those who know Mankind will easily see the dependence of these Effects from the Causes I go to name and such as have read History will find the Confirmation of it so clear that I may well be excused the labour of adducing particular proofs in so plain a case 1. But to stand no longer on Generals One great occasion of Commotions is an unbounded and aspiring Ambition which makes many swell big in their own conceit and they measuring themselves by what they appear in the glass of their own inchanted Imagination which both multiplies and magnifies all that is eminent in them expect that all the World should court them with the same admiration which they pay themselves Now it is a hard thing to satisfie the pretensions of all these lofty Aspirers nor can any State be able to gratifie them all since nothing falls to which many several Competitors do not put in a claim And though there be many Corrivals only one carries the prize the rest being all big with a good opinion of themselves and provoked at the unjust preference as they imagine it do upon that think how to make themselves considerable at their cost who they judge consider them too little and set up for some pretence to draw a Party and make a Faction But those mighty men in their own conceits are not at quiet when they have gained what they did at first pretend to as that which would terminate their ambition but make use of it as a step to mount them higher and thus creep up through all Degrees and perhaps when they are as high as can consist with the character of a Subject do not rest there but when they are become first Ministers will next design to justle their Master from his Throne For Ambition is as the Grave
unsatisfied but ever says Give give This being so great an evil let us see what curb can be found for stopping its career It will soon appear that all the Arts of Government cannot do it Religion is that alone which teaches us to discharge our selves of this Tympany whose swellings are so incurable Our Saviour hath commanded us to learn of him who was lowly in heart his Apostles charge us That in lowliness of mind we esteem others better than our selves That we humble our selves in the sight of God and be clothed with humility as with a garment And indeed this blessed Doctrine does no sooner prevail on us but it changes that blind value and fondness we have for our selves into a profound unaffected Humility that represents our Faults and Defects as clear to us as our former Vanity did our supposed Excellencies and instead of vast towerings brings us under great Contrition deep Self-denial and an humble mistrust of our selves and thus Conscience obliges us to be subject by setting out of the way this great provocation to disorder 2. Another Cause to which not a few of the Distempers of Societies owe their Rise and Growth is the heat and fury of mens Passions which being once kindled by their pride and blown on by many outward accidents at length become so fierce and violent that no Banks can resist their torrent but they sweep all before them Some are born under the disadvantage of ill Nature and a Cholerick Disposition and if these meet any provocation which must needs fall out often for as a tender Body doth soon feel pain so an ill disposed Mind is quickly disquieted their heated Spirits are all in a Fever and they either swell with Rage fret with Envy or boil with Revenge And thus are their thoughts set to work how to drudge happily under the severe bondage of their tyrannical Passions One perhaps to be revenged on some triumphing Favorite whom he can overtake no easier way will be ready to drive all to confusion to comply with his disquieting Malice Another that is not so much in bondage himself to those ill-natured Passions yet being captivated with the Charms of a fair but imperious and spiteful Mistress must give himself up as the instrument of all her ill Nature and being distracted with the extravagant Notions of Knight-errantry thinks himself bravely gallant when he has sacrificed all things to her wicked Resentments Private Animosities are known to have had a larger share in publick distempers than any will willingly own and this must needs be so still if there be no assured means for qualifying the heat and tempering the Passions of Men For no Government can be so well ballanced but that many will find themselves aggrieved by it or by those who manage it and if upon these irritations we ask counsel at our blinded and misled Passions we may be well assured they will ever drive us into all the excesses of Fury and Confusion How excellent then must this Divine Discipline be which tames the wildness and smooths the roughness of our unpolished Natures teaching us to put off wrath anger malice blasphemy and evil communication out of our mouths and instead of those moulds us into a Divine temper like our meek Master obliging us to forbear one another and forgive one another as he has done us For that Divine Wisdom which he taught the World is first pure then peaceable gentle and easie to be entreated It no sooner gets into our breasts but it dulcifies our Choler qualifies the bitterness of our Gall and gives us the possession of our Minds out of which nothing can turn us and transforms us from that ravenous Temper into a Dove-like disposition and instead of these boiling thoughts which do ferment gives the quiet serenities of a good Conscience and fervent Charity so that we are no more Sons of Thunder but Children of Love and do no more bluster out in Passion but from the Calm of a cool Spirit do breathe out soft and gentle Affections And if of a sudden a storm arise within us our Consciences will at once both arraign condemn and kill these Passions that raise it and thus teacheth us to be subject by destroying these passions that do both marre our own Quiet and endanger the Publick Peace 3. Another Occasion that hath engaged many into seditious Courses hath been the narrowness of their Fortunes to which they not understanding the Philosophy of contracting their desires which is the safer and easier course studied by all means whatsoever to enlarge them so as to satisfie the Vanities and Prodigalities of an undiscreet Expence As the turbulent Youth of Athens advised his Uncle finding him busied to prepare his accounts rather to study how to make none at all Those people think they drive a sure Trade for they can lose little and may gain much therefore are ready to embark in the most desperate Designs hoping to fish some advantage from troubled waters Their Small Fortunes joyned with their gaping desires are ever setting a new edge on their ulcerated Spirits and none are so furious as these who pinched with want and cold and armed by despair must do or die If the ordinary Course of Law and Justice go on they are undone but the disordering these does both reprieve them from ruine and feed them with some hopes Now no treasure can answer the demands of all ravenous devourers who cannot dig and are ashamed to beg nor can the greatest exactness of care reach every Individual of a State or oblige them to an expence proportioned to their Fortune much less to limit their desires to it but still there be many Prodigals who out-run themselves and those are often men of brisk Tempers and ungoverned Appetites In what disorder then must Government be if this cannot be repressed Perhaps in an evener Tract of Peace and Plenty when Order and Authority maintain their Reputation such dissolute wasters of their Fortunes cannot prove so considerable as to disturb the Peace of a Nation But all States are subject to Accidents that weaken them and the Censures of an unruly multitude will often blast the Reputation of the best Government And at some such disadvantage these untoward Male-contents may catch an opportunity of doing much mischief how great a happiness then is it to any Nation to embrace and obey that Religion which teaches us Not to take thought what we shall eat drink or put on that disbands the solicitudes about to morrow and the anxious cares that oppress weaker minds our holy Faith teaching us that we are pilgrims on Earth as all our Fathers were calls up our thoughts above the depressions of sense to seed our selves with the assured hopes of approaching Glory and Happiness in another state which does so entirely swallow up the sense of any present Trouble that it leaves no other impression on us but to make us long to be gone beyond these