seven pence Some Infidelity a Venial Sin ANd what else shall we think of it when men will not believe their own eyes What are you there Are not you gone yet Are you come already Are you alive still These are the usuall complements of Rusticks with their intimate friends and old Acquaintance These vulgar errors might suit well with the â—â—mutable dispositions of 〈◊〉 late times wherein through the epidemicall metamorphosis and protean changes of men our eys ears and judgements so farre failed us that we scarce knew friends from foes or honest men from others When beggers rode on horses and Princes went on foot when Tradesmen took the Pulpit and Churchmen took to Trades such Legerdemain of policy and Landskips of fortune might well deceive the eye and make men say to their neer neighbours What are you there Are you alive still such questions then might well be freed from absurdity when we knew not where to find men or what to make of them when wee came unto them or how to trust them so farre as we could see them No more manners than a Dog MOre than once have I seen a pleasant conceited fellow pull off his hat and make a leg to a fierce Dog assaulting him and that with good success the bawling cur being struck dumb and strangely charm'd to turn tail at the sight of a civil ceremony It might be a subtile philosophicall probleme to find out the mystery of this dog-trick A Pythagorean would imagin the beast some transmigrated old Cynick concurring with morose schismaticks in facing about and fleering at the first charge of good manners And what shall wee think Hath the Dog so much good nature as to be overcome with kindness Or is opposition a pair of bellows to choller and a gentle submission of the nature of water Or is even a Dog ashamed of his own baseness when he hath opened his mouth and shewen his teeth against him who neither did nor intended him harm Or is he convinced that he ought not to bawle against virtue or snap at good manners Or lastly hath he it by instinct that such civil respect and moral obeysance are propper for Men and not for Dogs and so he dares not usurp that which appertains unto his Master Whether all 〈◊〉 any of these be the cause let them consider who have a time and a mind to it In the mean time when brutes appear thus inclin'd to humanity leâ—â— Men learn to decline from brutishness and seeing Dogs sometimes do so much as seem to be moral let not men so much as once seem to be dogged No Courtship to an honest heart ABout thirty years since as I remember the complement among Equals was altogether love and little speech of service Now it is aboundance of services and no love at all The substance of good will is evaporated into aiery expressions and men are screwed into antick postures Then they had settled countenances sober garbs and solid salutations to which they usually added a strong shake by the hand and a lusty clap on the shoulder to try as I conceive whether men were sound or rotten whether honest or hallow-hearted Thus Aeneas distinguished his ghosts from men The old way is the best It was never good world since men made it their business verbaâ—dare by feigned words to make merchandize of their brethren It is true there is a service of love and that is better than Knight's service for it is God's service who hath commanded us by love to serve one another Gal. 5.13 But twenty years service in warres hath banish'd love from amongst us and left us nothing but meer service Oh that our hearts and bands were once more full of our old and first love that could endure the touch Experto credite when a man hath need of help he shall find one downright faithfull friend more worth than a thousand humble servants Better late than never IT is not unusuall to hear men in their ordinary discourse to bolt out an Oath or a Curse upon some person And then immediately to say God forgive me for swearing Thus bad servitors after meat bring mustard Thus backward neighbours after the child be dead offer themselves for Gossips Thus careless Grooms when the Steed is stollen lock fast the stable door I must confess this is not altogether so bad at to swear out of vain glory and never ask God mercy But it is too bad to be defended and it is sadly to be lamented and seriously to be repented Foxes have holes in men's hearts and the birds of the air have nests which make them so deceitfull above measure that Christ hath scarce room allowed him there to lay his head And what shall we say to these things Do the good motions ferret out the bad and then follow them Or doth repentance strive to overtake sin and to arrest it at God's suit Or do good men though frail think to deal with their unruly passions as with wilde colts set a brand upon them and hang aclog upon their heels and so let them go Or do pious and impious conceptions struggle in the womb of the mind as Esau and Jacob did in the body of Rebecca and then at last the younger supplant the elder God defend us Rom. 3.8 It is hard doing evil that good may come Let none sin upon design to ask pardon lest a judgment intercept him Iam. 3.10 Out of the same mouth 〈◊〉 not proceed blessing and cursing Wherefore together with his diligence let this be every man's prayer Set a watch O Lord before my mouth Ps 141.3 and keep the door of my lips Many words to little purpose SOme man in his journey loves to trouble every one he seen about the time of the day and often makes the plough stand still untill the lazy swain and he do dialogue about the clock and good husbandry so both lose time whilest both talk about it And this he will do though he hath the Sun in his eyes a Watch going in his pocket and knows the hour as well as any man can tell him The sport is by this means sometimes he goes forward and the day goes backward or at least it seems so For here he shall have it nine of the clock and after five miles riding it shall be but half an houre after eight So wise shall he be made who hearkens to every report and asketh every man's advice And so shall he be confirmed who shuts his eyes against the light of his own knowledge and follows after every opinion Some will ask what the clock striketh when they hear the first stroke as though it were less labour for them to use their tongue than their ears or that they durst not trust their own ears for the matter or that they never had learned to count to the number of twelve Others will enquire the name of a Town which they know as well as their own and will ask the way where
and the Church which oppositions at the first were but the results of spleenfull animosities taken up against the miscarriages of some particular persons in place and office Sìc nimiùm altercando veritas amittitur Thus by too much strife truth is lost And now whereas Forreigners were wont to accuse English men of being too phlegmatick it must henceforth be acknowledged that they are too cholerick And which is worse their anger is like a torch kindling soon and burning long And very deplorable it is that neither the reflection upon the water of our own Baptisme nor the dews and showers of God's refreshing mercy after the parching heat of our late affliction nor yet the prayers and tears of the Church can quench this civil fire And although most of them who first did blow the coales and many who brought fuell to the pile are long since turned to dust and ashes yet too many there are who thrust their fingers to rake in the embers Suscitare hesternos ignes to renew our late mischiefes and to revive our common miseries Surely the wrath of man can never work the righteousness of God He that saith He maketh his ministers a flaming fire Psal 104.4 intended thereby the spiritual edification of men and not their bodily destruction And he who sirnamed two of his Apostles the sons of thunder did not approve their sudden flash and hasty bolt Luk. 9.54 when they moved for fire to come down from heaven to consume the Samaritans The Tyrants of Sicily invented no greater torment for others than their own corroding envy was to themselves And as ambition is both the delight and the rack of the ambitious so a person overcome with choler is punishment and misery enough to himself here although he should meet with none hereafter His flesh only wanting a good cause is broyled like St Lawrence on a gridiron his bones are stewed in his wasting marrow and his heart is boyled in his own blood And now as the Lord said to the Prophet Jonah doth any man think that he doth well to be angry that he doth well to be angry against others unto death then let him think upon him who is ready to judge both the quick and dead who for our sins is justly displeased and in whose sight without his mercy no man living shall be justified And who may stand in his sight when he is angry Let the thought of that great day which shall be revealed by fire cool and quench the rage of every man's choler lest he be consumed in the flames wherein he hath delighted Melancholly ANd hast thou found me O mine enemy this needs must I say of thee as Aristippus did of a wife thou art parvum pulchrum magnum malum thou art to my doting fancy in thy Visits the fairest and the blackest the sweetest and the bitterest of my friends of my foes and of my intimate acquaintance I cannot but admire thee as St. Bernard did Ambition and say Lib. 3. de Consid Quemodò omnes torquens omnibus places How doest thou please all those whom thou tormentest And oh that I might ever have such a stock of charity for all my visible Enemies among the children of men as I have for thee I know thou hurrest mee and yet I freely forgive thee I hugg I embrace I cherish thee and the world can never cause me to forsake thee And yet to give this humour it 's due it is never so great an enemy but it may be as great a friend What some have affirmed of Geniusses how every man from his birth hath two waiting upon him one for his good the other for his harm may be expounded of Melancholly doing both offices which is a weapon both for offence and defence as it is used On the one side it is a check to pride and self-love a barre against presumption a threshold to humility a door to patience wings to divine meditation and an handmaid unto devotion And whereas the jolly world count such a mans life to be madness the truth is as Cotys King of Thrace said of his severity this madness keep 's men in their right wits On the other side when it is exorbitant and indisposed Melancholly is a traytor to the Master a foe to humanity an Antagonist to reason the Cut-throat to hope and joy a black cataract upon the eyes of the mind preventing divine illumination and finally a desperate sollicitour unto perdition Sìc fit Melancholicus aùt Deus aùt Daemon Thus a Melancholly person is either a God or a Devil And what shall I say of this humour It is a kind of ubiquitary When I take the wings of the morning and mount upon my prime meditations towards heaven then melancholly is there And when in heavyness of spirit I go down towards hell it is there also The light of the day cannot expell it and the night feed's it I cannot flee from this haunting ghost nor can I go from it's presence Though I change places places change not me I am like the young man who admiring why he was never the better for travell was told by Socrates that the reason was Laert. because in all his travels he still carried himself about him So carry I my mortality my misery my imperfections and therewithall my melancholly It is true I bless God for it I look towards heaven but it is at a great distance and through many clouds both of affliction and of ignorance I am no more satisfied nor can be with all that I have heard or with all that the world can tell me in this land of my pilgrimage concerning the joyes above and the glory of that eternall kingdome 1 King 10. than the Queen of Sheba was with the report which she heard in her own country concerning Solomon's Court. Untill her eyes saw she was rather afflicted than affected rather tormented than contented She did not hear the one half nor do I one thing of a thousand Eye hath not seen ear hath not heard 1 Cor. 2.9 nor hath it entred into the heart of man When I awake up at the last day I trust in God I shall be satisfied But how long Lord most holy and true How long O when shall I come to appear before the presence of God Alas when I think to come nearest heaven in my soliloquies and private solaces then this my bosome-companion crosseth my purpose and bring 's me down to the pits brink My own heart condemnes my heart of foolish presumption for my hasty desire to be made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like to the Angels of God in heaven who am become through sin even as a beast before God and may be compared unto the brute creatures that perish When I hear the holy man David putting the question Psal 24. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord and who shall rise up in his holy place and then finde him answering himself Even he
no new thing under the Sun no not the Moon it self a pure picture of this mutable world of whose increase though we have every year new ones a full dozen yet all is but the old one over and over Things here below seem new to many and are so miscalled which in themselves are old and known so to sounder judgments Nothing pleases fools and children but the name and thought of Novelties The Devill and the world cry up their deluding trash for new as people do their Herrings whenas they stink for age and want of goodness Custome is a great matter Newmarket-heath untill the worlds end is like to be so called Thus cunning Brokers and crafty Botchers put an old trick upon an old Cloak they give it a sudden turn and a new facing and then it serves to cheat the Country Thus old cry'd down haeresies are become new cry'd up lights and the Common-Councel men of the Devil whatsoever they plot in Conventicles pretend to have all by speciall revelation Thus the issue of Traitours conspiracies are holden for Miracles and Providence is blasphemed by successfull wickedness the Generality not discerning how Gold passeth through an armed Guard and takes the City without opposition These Angels of men have slain more Christians than the Angell of God slew Infidels when he killed an hundred fourscore and five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians 2 Kin. 19.35 It is no new thing for men to violate their faith to betray their trust to sell their Countrey into the hands of their Enemies to preferre private ill gotten goods before publick good and true glory and yet to pretend piety All this is no new thing Divers hundreds of years since the Christian Governour of the Castle of Abydus was himself and Castle betrayed into the hands of the Turks by his own Daughter And an hundred and forty years before that Turk Histo long before the first Ottoman King Aleppo the strongest City of the Christians in those parts was betrayed to the Turk by the Governour And oh miserable the Patriarch of Antioch for gold sold into those Barbarian's hands that Castle and by consequence that City To hear of Kings deserted betrayed and murder'd a thing most horrible execrable and damnable is no new thing Ask Scotland and let that Nation repeat their own Chronicles And not to be partiall our English second Edward and Richard Henry the sixth and two Sons of Edward the fourth and long before these Prince Arthur will tell us a sad story The unlucky products of the severall Battels of the Barons with the cross swearings of successive Parliaments may sufficiently tell us that to swear and forswear and to play at fast and loose with the Crown is no new thing under the Sun I am â—â—th to look lower upon that which is and will be the lasting shame of the Nation although I can hardly overlook it or look upon it with dry eyes I shall onely say this of it at present that though it differs from former Regicides in the open perpetration yet it bears reference to one precedent even to that of the King of Kings who was forsaken betrayed and delivered up to death by his own people Rev. 13.8 And he is said truly and virtually to be slain from the foundation of the world It is no new thing for ignorant and impudent persons to pretend revelations and Enthusiasmes to despise instruction and usurp to themselves all mysterious knowledge This is but the Gnostici and Carpocratists brought again upon the stage Epiph. Aug. with their phanatick dreams and inchanted love-drinks And those also were but a few lousie shreds taken from Menander and Simon Magus Oh but to hear and see men act their Roguery in manner and form publishing it weekly to the people for their satisfaction to prevent forsooth misinformation telling them how many honest men they murder'd in such a battell what Noble person they beheaded in such a place and day how they rob'd Churches how they spoiled the widows and Orphans how they killed and took possâ—ssion how they took God's Name in vain rejoyced and gave thanks and praised the Lord as the Authour of all this Mischief Are not all these new things No. There was a sect of damnable haereticks calling themselves Caynites from cursed Cain who slew his brother who fully paralell these practises They honoured Cain Aug. the Sodomites Corah Dathan and Abiram and also Judas They called Cain their Father and Judas their Cousin And so might these They said Judas did well in betraying Christ because he saw it was good for the people And we know who went upon the same principles crying out Populi Salus suprema lex The peoples safety is the Highest Law And what need we wade farre in this stream The height and rigour of Anabaptisme is but Confusion and Levelling and Levellers are but the old Haereticks of Pisidia calling themselves Apostolici Apostolicall men who hated to see men have proper possessions False Christs and false Apostles are no new thing Manes had his whole dozen of Disciples his profession being like his name a very madness His end 〈◊〉 was according to his worke For having first poyson'd men's minds next he turn'd Physician as many such since have done and poison'd their bodies Socr. l. 1. cap. 17. But killing the King's son of Persia he was apprehended and flayed alive And his skin which before had nothing good in it was stuff'd full with chaffe and hang'd at the Gates of the City Impostors are no new thing Theudas the sorcere 〈◊〉 made himself a second Moses he led the people into rebellion making them believe that Jordan should be dried up before him But he caused his followers to be slain and ruind Jos Ant. l. 20. c. 4. and himself to be executed by Fadus Lieutenant of Judea And the blazing Comet Barchochebas who said he was a Star from Heaven led the Jews into rebellion so that there perished fifty thousand Persons And this Rebellion was the finall overthrow of the Jews at Jerusalem Dion Cass in Adrian And as it is no new thing to have false Prophets and seducers by means of whom Kingdomes have been spoiled and the way of Truth evill spoken off So for these false Apostles to lead silly Women captive in and unto their lust this is no new thing neither Simon Magus the father of Haereticks had for his holy sister Helen a Witch and a Harlot whom he called Just Mar. in Apol the principall understanding There was Incubus and Succubus two Devils incarnate Montanus who called himself the holy Ghost had two such she Angels Priscilla and Maximilla Euseb l. 5. cap. 14. And so dearly did they love that He and Madam Maximilla both hanged themselves How sweetly did these Saints agree both in manner of life and in manner of Death And what think ye of Jack of Leyden Surely he had abundance of the Spirit of Errour who had as many Wives as a Turk These be the Fruits of affected madness and of Knipperdolling revelations which serve for nothing but to lead Men into destruction and perdition both of body and soule Lastly For Men to be plainly and honestly showen their orrours and dangers and yet to despise their Admonishers for Men to be hated for their good will for the virtuous and painfull to be lightly regarded and the vicious and lazy to be respected for merits and good service to be starved in the poor for grand offences and high Crimes to be pardoned and dignified in the rich for those who seek God's glory and the Churche's prosperity to be slighted for such as seek their own glory profit and pleasure to be cryed up and magnified for flattering parasites and dissembling wretches to be heard attentively and for honest hearted men neither to be patiently heard nor at all believed All this is no new thing under the Sun This is but the lot of the Prophets Job 1. The Oxen labour and the Asses feed and the Sabeans make no distinction unless it be this that the Asses shall live when the Oxen have their throats cut for their labours Zedekiah lies flatters and dissembles 1 King last ch and he pleaseth poor Micaiah speaks truth and is smitten on the face for it put into Prison and macerated with the bread and water of affliction This was Isaiah's and Jeremiah's Case this was the Apostles and this was their and our Master's Thus are we set as a marke Men will not believe our report So it is the more pitty that the seamless Coat of Christ once spared by Infidels is now torne by Christians Haeresies and Schisms abound and therewith hatred and malice Truth is almost lost with strife Piety vanished and Charity banished Whilest Cassander's Labours have Cassandra's doome FINIS