all our unguarded strengths There are some desires which have a period and Gods visitations expire in mercy at the revolution of a certain number of dayes and our prayer must dwell so long as Gods anger abides and in all the storm we must out cry the noyse of the tempest and the voices of that thunder But if we become hardned and by custome and cohabitation with the danger lose our fears and abate of our desires and devotions many times we shall finde that God by a sudden breach upon us will chastise us for letting our hands go down Israel prevailed no longer then Moses held up his hands in prayer and he was forced to continue his prayer till the going down of the Sun that is till the danger was over till the battell was done But when our desires and prayers are in the matter of spirituall danger they must never be remitted because our danger continues for ever and therefore so must our watchfulnesse and our guards Vult n. Deus rogari vult cogi vult quâdam importunitate vinci sayes S. Gregory God loves to be invited intreated importun'd with an unquiet restlesse desire and a persevering prayer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said Proclus That 's a holy and a religious prayer that never gives over but renewes the prayer and dwels upon the desire for this only is effectuall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God hears the persevering man and the unwearied prayer For it is very considerable that we be very curious to observe that many times a lust is sopita non mortua it is asleep the enemy is at truce and at quiet for a while but not conquered not dead and if we put off our armour too soon we lose all the benefit of our former war and are surprised by indiligence and a carelesse guard For God sometimes binds the Devill in a short chain and gives his servants respite that they may feel the short pleasures of a peace and the rest of innocence and perceive what are the eternall felicities of heaven where it shall be so for ever But then we must return to our warfare again and every second assault is more troublesome because it finds our spirits at ease and without watchfulnesse and delighted with a spirituall rest and keeping holiday But let us take heed for whatsoever temptation we can be troubled withall by our naturall temper or by the condition of our life or the evill circumstances of our condition so long as we have capacity to feel it so long we are in danger and must watch thereunto with prayer and continuall diligence And when your temptations let you alone let not you God alone but lay up prayers and the blessings of a constant devotion against the day of tryall Well may your temptation sleep but if your prayers do so you may chance to be awakened with an assault that may ruine you However the rule is easie Whatsoever you need aske it of God so long as you want it even till you have it For God therefore many times defers to grant that thou mayst persevere to aske and because every holy prayer is a glorification of God by the confessing many of his attributes a lasting and a persevering prayer is a little image of the Allellujahs and services of eternity it is a continuation to do that according to our measures which we shall be doing to eternall ages therefore think not that five or six hearty prayers can secure to thee a great blessing and a supply of a mighty necessity He that prays so and then leaves off hath said some prayers and done the ordinary offices of his Religion but hath not secured the blessing nor used means reasonably proportionable to a mighty interest 4. The prayers of a good man are oftentimes hindered and destiture of their effect for want of praying in good company for sometimes an evill or an obnoxious person hath so secured and ascertained a mischief to himself that he that stayes in his company or his cratfick must also share in his punishment and the Tyrian sailers with all their vows and prayers could not obtain a prosperous voyage so long as Jonas was within the Bark for in this case the interest is divided and the publick sin prevails above the private piety When the Philosopher asked a penny of Antigonus he told him it was too little for a King to give when he asked a talent he told him it was too much for a Philosopher to receive for he did purpose to cousen his own charity and elude the others necessity upon pretence of a double inequality So it is in the case of a good man mingled in evill company if a curse be too severe for a good man a mercy is not to be expected by evill company and his prayer when it is made in common must partake of that event of things which is appropriate to that society The purpose of this caution is that every good man be carefull that he do not mingle his devotion in the communions of hereticall persons and in schismaticall conventicles for although he be like them that follow Absalom in the simplicity of their heart yet his intermediall fortune and the event of his present affairs may be the same with Absaloms and it is not a light thing that we curiously choose the parties of our Communion I do not say it is necessary to avoid all the society of evill persons for then we must go out of the world and when we have thrown out a drunkard possibly we have entertain'd an hypocrite or when a swearer is gone an oppressor may stay still or if that be remedied yet pride is soon discernible but not easily judicable but that which is of caution in this question is that we never mingle with those whose very combination is a sin such as were Corah and his company that rebelled against Moses their Prince and Dathan and Abiram that made a schisme in Religion against Aaron the Priest for so said the Spirit of the Lord Come out from the congregation of these men lest ye perish in their company and all those that were abused in their communion did perish in the gain saying of Corah It is a sad thing to see a good man cousened by fair pretences and allured into an evill snare for besides that he dwels in danger and cohabits with a dragon and his vertue may change by evill perswasion into an evill disposition from sweetnesse to bitternesse from thence to evill speaking from thence to beleeve a lye and from beleeving to practise it besides this it is a very great sadnesse that such a man should lose all his prayers to very many purposes God will not respect the offering of those men who assemble by a peevish spirit and therefore although God in pity regards the desires of a good man if innocently abused yet as it unites in that assembly God will not hear it to any purposes of blessing and holinesse unlesse we
to us to invite us to come to God and be sav'd and therefore when this and infinitely more shall by the Judge be exhibited in sad remembrances there needs no other sentence we shall condemn our selves with a hasty shame and a fearfull confusion to see how good God hath been to us and how base we have been to our selves Thus Moses is said to accuse the Jewes and thus also he that does accuse is said to condemn as Verres was by Cicero and Claudia by Domitius her accuser and the world of impenitent persons by the men of Nineveh and all by Christ their Judge I represent the horror of this circumstance to consist in this besides the reasonablenesse of the Judgement and the certainty of the condemnation it cannot but be an argument of an intolerable despair to perishing souls when he that was our Advocate all our life shall in the day of that appearing be our Accuser and our Judge a party against us an injur'd person in the day of his power and of his wrath doing execution upon all his own foolish and malicious enemies * 2. Our conscience shall be our accuser but this signifies but these two things 1. that we shall be condemned for the evils that we have done and shall then remember God by his power wiping away the dust from the tables of our memory and taking off the consideration and the voluntary neglect and rude shufflings of our cases of conscience For then we shall see things as they are the evill circumstances and the crooked intentions the adherent unhandsomenesse and the direct crimes for all things are laid up safely and though we draw a curtain of cobweb over them and few figleaves before our shame yet God shall draw away the curtain and forgetfulnesse shall be no more because with a taper in the hand of God all the corners of our nastinesse shall be discovered And secondly it signifies this also that not only the Justice of God shall be confessed by us in our own shame and condemnation but the evill of the sentence shall be received into us to melt our bowels and to break our heart in pieces within us because we are the authors of our own death and our own inhumane hands have torn our souls in pieces Thus farre the horrors are great and when evill men consider it it is certain they must be afraid to dye Even they that have liv'd well have some sad considerations and the tremblings of humility and suspicion of themselves I remember S. Cyprian tels of a good man who in his agony of death saw a phantasme of a noble and angelicall shape who frowning and angry said to him Pati timetis exire non vultis Quid faciam vobis Ye cannot endure sicknesse ye are troubled at the evils of the world and yet you are loth to dye and to be quit of them what shall I do to you Although this is apt to represent every mans condition more of lesse yet concerning persons of wicked lives it hath in it too many sad degrees of truth they are impatient of sorrow and justly fearfull of death because they know not how to comfort themselves in the evill accidents of their lives and their conscience is too polluted to take death for sanctuary and to hope to have amends made to their condition by the sentence of the day of Judgement Evill and sad is their condition who cannot be contented here nor blessed hereafter whose life is their misery and their conscience is their enemy whose grave is their prison and death their undoing and the sentence of Dooms-day the beginning of an intolerable condition 3. The third sort of accusers are the Devils and they will do it with malicious and evill purposes The Prince of the Devils hath 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for one of his chiefest appellatives The accuser of the Brethren he is by his professed malice and imployment and therefore God who delights that his mercy should triumph and his goodnesse prevail over all the malice of men and Devils hath appointed one whose office is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to reprove the accuser and to resist the enemy and to be a defender of their cause who belong to God The holy Spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a defender the evill spirit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the accuser and they that in this life belong to one or the other shall in the same proportion be treated at the day of Judgement The Devill shall accuse the Brethren that is the Saints and servants of God and shall tell concerning their follies and infirmities the sins of their youth and the weaknesse of their age the imperfect grace and the long schedule of omissions of duty their scruples and their fears their diffidences and pusillanimity and all those things which themselves by strict examination finde themselves guilty of and have confessed all their shame and the matter of their sorrowes their evill intentions and their little plots their carnall confidences and too fond adherences to the things of this world their indulgence and easinesse of government their wilder joyes and freer meals their losse of time and their too forward and apt compliances their trifling arrests and little peevishnesses the mixtures of the world with the things of the Spirit and all the incidences of humanity he will bring forth and aggravate them by the circumstance of ingratitude and the breach of promise and the evacuating all their holy purposes and breaking their resolutions and rifling their vowes and all these things being drawn into an intire representment and the bils clog'd by numbers will make the best man in the world â—â—em foul and unhandsome and stained with the characters of death and evill dishonour But for these there is appointed a defender The holy Spirit that maketh intercession for us shall then also interpose and against all these things shall oppose the passion of our blessed Lord and upon all their defects shall cast the robe of his righteousnesse and the sins of their youth shall not prevail so much as the repentance of their age and their omissions be excused by probable intervening causes and their little escapes shall appear single and in disunion because they were alwaies kept asunder by penitentiall prayers and sighings and their seldome returns of sin by their daily watchfulnesse and their often infirmities by the sincerity of their souls and their scruples by their zeal and their possions by their love and all by the mercies of God and the sacrifice which their Judge offer'd and the holy Spirit made effective by daily graces and assistances These therefore infallibly go to the portion of the right hand because the Lord our God shall answer for them But as for the wicked it is not so with them for although the plain story of their life be to them a sad condemnation yet what will be answered when it shall be told concerning them that they despised Gods mercies and feared
gaieties and dissolutions it is the girdle to the soul and the handmaid to repentance the arrest of sin and the cure or antidote to the spirit of reprobation it preserves our apprehensions of the divine Majesty and hinders our single actions from combining to sinfull habits it is the mother of consideration and the nurse of sober counsels and it puts the soul to fermentation and activity making it to passe from trembling to caution from caution to carefulnesse from carefulnesse to watchfulnesse from thence to prudence and by the gates and progresses of repentance it leads the soul on to love and to felicity and to joyes in God that shall never cease again Fear is the guard of a man in the dayes of prosperity and it stands upon the watch-towers and spies the approaching danger and gives warning to them that laugh loud and feast in the chambers of rejoycing where a man cannot consider by reason of the noises of wine and jest and musick and if prudence takes it by the hand and leads it on to duty it is a state of grace and an universall instrument to infant Religion and the only security of the lesse perfect persons and in all senses is that homage we owe to God who sends often to demand it even then when he speaks in thunder or smites by a plague or awakens us by threatning or discomposes our easinesse by sad thoughts and tender eyes and fearfull hearts and trembling considerations But this so excellent grace is soon abused in the best and most tender spirits in those who are softned by Nature and by Religion by infelicities or caâ—es by sudden accidents or a sad soul and the Devill observing that fear like spare diet starves the feavers of lust and quenches the flames of hell endevours to highten this abstinence so much as to starve the man and break the spirit into timorousnesse and scruple sadnesse and unreasonable tremblings credulity and trifling observation suspicion and false accusations of God and then vice being turned out at the gate returns in at the postern and does the work of hell and death by running too inconsiderately in the paths which seem to lead to heaven But so have I seen a harmlesse dove made dark with an artificiall night and her eyes ceel'd and lock'd up with a little quill soaring upward and flying with amazement fear and an undiscerning wing she made toward heaven but knew not that she was made a train and an instrument to teach her enemy to prevail upon her and all her defencelesse kindred so is a superstitious man zealous and blinde forward and mistaken he runs towards heaven as he thinks but he chooses foolish paths and out of fear takes any thing that he is told or fancies and guesses concerning God by measures taken from his own diseases and imperfections But fear when it is inordinate is never a good counsellor nor makes a good friend and he that fears God as his enemy is the most compleatly miserable person in the world For if he with reason beleeves God to be his enemy then the man needs no other argument to prove that he is undone then this that the fountain of blessing in this state in which the man is will never issue any thing upon him but cursings But if he fears this without reason he makes his fears true by the very suspicion of God doing him dishonour and then doing those fond and trifling acts of jealousie which will make God to be what the man feared he already was We do not know God if we can think any hard thing concerning him If God be mercifull let us only fear to offend him but then let us never be fearfull that he will destroy us when we are carefull not to displease him There are some persons so miserable and scrupulous such perpetuall tormentors of themselves with unnecessary fears that their meat and drink is a snare to their consciences if they eat they fear they are gluttons if they fast they fear they are hypocrites and if they would watch they complain of sleep as of a deadly sin and every temptation though resisted makes them cry for pardon and every return of such an accident makes them think God is angry and every anger of God will break them in pieces These persons do not beleeve noble things concerning God they do not think that he is as ready to pardon them as they are to pardon a sinning servant they do not beleeve how much God delights in mercy nor how wise he is to consider and to make abatement for our unavoidable infirmities they make judgement of themselves by the measures of an Angell and take the accounts of God by the proportions of a Tyrant The best that can be said concerning such persons is that they are hugely tempted or hugely ignorant For although ignorance is by some persons named the mother of devotion yet if it fals in a hard ground it is the mother of Atheisme if in a soft ground it is the parent of superstition but if it proceeds from evill or mean opinions of God as such scruples and unreasonable fears do many times it is an evill of a great impiety and in some sense and if it were in equall degrees is as bad as Atheisme for he that sayes there was no such man as Julius Caesar does him lesse displeasure then he that sayes there was but that he was a Tyrant and a bloudy parricide And the Cimmerians were not esteemed impious for saying that there was no sun in the heavens But Anaxagoras was esteemed irreligious for saying the sun was a very stone And though to deny there is a God is a high impiety and intolerable yet he sayes worse who beleeving there is a God sayes he delights in humane sacrifices in miseries and death in tormenting his servants and punishing their very infelicities and unavoidable mischances To be God and to be essentially and infinitely good is the same thing and therefore to deny either is to be reckoned among the greatest crimes in the world Adde to this that he that is afraid of God cannot in that disposition love him at all for what delight is there in that religion which drawes me to the Altar as if I were going to be sacrificed or to the Temples as to the Dens of Bears Oderunt quos metuunt sed colunt tamen whom men fear they hate certainly and flatter readily and worship timorously and he that saw Hermolaus converse with Alexander and Pausanias follow Philip the Macedonian or Chaereas kissing the feet of Cajus Caligula would have observed how sordid men are made with fear and how unhappy and how hated Tyrants are in the midst of those acclamations which are loud and forc'd and unnaturall and without love or fair opinion And therefore although the Atheist sayes there is no God the scrupulous fearfull and superstitious man does heartily wish what the other does beleeve But that the evill may be proportionable to
that would confine them to reason and sober counsels that would make them labour that they may become pale and lean that they may become wise but because Riches is attended by pride and lust tyranny and oppression and hath in its hand all that it hath in its heart and Sin waits upon Wealth ready dress'd and fit for action therefore in some temptations they confesse how little their souls are they cannot stand that assault but because this passion is the daughter of Voluptuousnesse and very often is but a servant sin ministring to sensuall pleasures the great weaknesse of the flesh is more seen in the matter of carnall crimes Lust and Drunkennesse Nemo enim se adsuefacit ad vitandum ex animo evellendum ea quae molesta ei non sunt Men are so in love with pleasure that they cannot think of mortifying or crucifying their lust we doe violence to what we hate not to what we love But the weaknesse of the flesh and the empire of lust is visible in nothing so much as in the captivity and folly of wise men For you shall see some men fit to governe a Province sober in their counsells wise in the conduct of their affaires men of discourse and reason fit to sit with Princes or to treat concerning peace and warre the fate of Empires and the changes of the world yet these men shall fall at the beauty of a woman as a man dies at the blow of an Angell or gives up his breath at the sentence and decree of God Was not Solomon glorious in all things but when he bowed to Pharaoh's daughter and then to Devils and is it not published by the sentence and observation of all the world that the bravest men have been softned into effeminacy by the lisping charms and childish noyses of Women and imperfect persons A faire slave bowed the neck of stout Polydamas which was stiffe and inflexible to the contentions of an enemy and suppose a man set like the brave boy of the King of Nicomedia in the midst of temptation by a witty beauty tyed upon a bed with silk and pretty violences courted with musick and perfumes with promises and easie postures invited by opportunity and importunity by rewards and impunity by privacy and a guard what would his nature doe in this throng of evils and vile circumstances The grace of God secur'd the young Gentleman and the Spirit rode in triumph but what can flesh do in such a day of danger Is it not necessary that we take in auxiliaries from Reason and Religion from heaven and earth from observation and experience from hope and fear and cease to be what we are lest we become what we ought not It is certain that in the cases of temptations to voluptuousnesse a man is naturally as the Prophet said of Ephraim like a Pigeon that hath no heart no courage no conduct no resolution no discourse but falls as the water of Nilus when it comes to its cataracts it falls infinitely and without restraint And if we consider how many drunken meetings the Sunne sees every day how many Markets and Faires and Clubs that is so many solemnities of drunkennesse are at this instant under the eye of heaven that many Nations are marked for intemperance and that it is lesse noted because it is so popular and universall and that even in the midst of the glories of Christianity there are so many persons drunk or too full with meat or greedy of lust even now that the Spirit of God is given to us to make us sober and temperate and chaste we may well imagine since all men have flesh and all men have not the spirit the flesh is the parent of sin and death and it can be nothing else And it is no otherwise when we are tempted with pain We are so impatient of pain that nothing can reconcile us to it not the laws of God not the necessities of nature not the society of all our kindred and of all the world not the interest of vertue not the hopes of heaven we will submit to pain upon no terms but the basest and most dishonorable for if sin bring us to pain or affront or sicknesse we choose that so it be in the retinue of a lust and a base desire but we accuse Nature and blaspheme God we murmur and are impatient when pain is sent to us from him that ought to send it and intends it as a mercy when it comes But in the matter of afflictions and bodily sicknesse we are so weak and broken so uneasie and unapt to sufferance that this alone is beyond the cure of the old Philosophy Many can endure poverty and many can retire from shame and laugh at home and very many can endure to be slaves but when pain and sharpnesse are to be endured for the interests of vertue we finde but few Martyrs and they that are suffer more within themselves by their fears and their temptations by their uncertain purposes and violences to Nature then by the Hang-mans sword the Martyrdome is within and then he hath won his Crown not when he hath suffered the blow but when he hath overcome his fears and made his spirit conqueror It was a sad instance of our infirmity when of the 40 Martyrs of Cappadocia set in a freezing lake almost consummate and an Angell was reaching the Crowne and placing it upon their brows the flesh fail'd one of them and drew the spirit after it and the man was called off from his Scene of noble contention and dyed in warm water Odi artus fragilémque hunc corporis usum Desertorem animi We carry about us the body of death and we bring evils upon our selves by our follies and then know not how to bear them and the flesh forsakes the spirit And indeed in sicknesse the infirmity is so very great that God in a manner at that time hath reduced all Religion into one vertue Patience with its appendages is the summe totall of almost all our duty that is proper to the days of sorrow and we shall find it enough to entertain all our powers and to imploy all our aids the counsels of wise men and the comforts of our friends the advices of Scripture and the results of experience the graces of God and the strength of our own resolutions are all then full of imployments and find it work enough to secure that one grace For then it is that a cloud is wrapped about our heads and our reason stoops under sorrow the soul is sad and its instrument is out of tune the auxiliaries are disorder'd and every thought sits heavily then a comfort cannot make the body feel it and the soule is not so abstracted to rejoyce much without its partner so that the proper joyes of the soul such as are hope and wise discourses and satisfactions of reason and the offices of Religion are felt just as we now perceive the joyes of heaven
he confesses his sins and is not pardoned he is patient but hath no hope and he that is gone so far towards his countrey and stands in the middle way hath gone so far out of his way he had better have stay'd under a dry roof in the house of banishment then to have left his Gyarus the Island of his sorrow and to dwell upon the Adriatick So is he that begins a state of Religion and does not finish it he abides in the high-way and though he be neerer the place yet is as far from the rest of his countrey as ever and therefore all that beginning of labour was in the prejudice of his rest but nothing to the advantages of his hopes He that hath never begun hath lost no labour Jactura praeteritorum the losse of all that he hath done is the first evill of the negligent and luke-warm Christian according to the saying of Solomon He that is remisse or idle in his labour is the brother of him that scattereth his goods 2. The second appendant evill is that lukewarmnesse is the occasion of greater evill because the remisse easie Christian shuts the gate against the heavenly breathings of Gods holy Spirit he thinks every breath that is fan'd by the wings of the holy Dove is not intended to encourage his fires which burn and smoke and peep through the cloud already it tempts him to security and if an evill life be a certain inlet to a second death despaire on one side and security on the other are the bars and locks to that dore he can never passe forth again while that state remains who ever slips in his spirituall walking does not presently fall but if that slip does not awaken his diligence and his caution then his ruine begins vel pravae institutionis deceptus exordio aut per longam mentis incuriam virtute animi decidente as St. Austin observes either upon the pursuit of his first error or by a carelesse spirit or a decaying slackned resolution all which are the direct effects of lukewarmnesse But so have I seen a fair structure begun with art and care and raised to halfe its stature and then it stood still by the misfortune or negligence of the owner and the rain descended and dwelt in its joynts and supplanted the contexture of its pillars and having stood a while like the antiquated Temple of a deceased Oracle it fell into a hasty age and sunk upon its owne knees and so descended into ruine So is the imperfect unfinished spirit of a man it layes the foundation of a holy resolution and strengthens it with vows and arts of prosecution it raises up the walls Sacraments and Prayers Reading and holy Ordinances and holy actions begin with a slow motion and the building stays and the spirit is weary and the soul is naked and exposed to temptation and in the days of storm take in every thing that can doe it mischief and it is faint and sick listlesse and tired and it stands till its owne weight wearies the foundation and then declines to death and sad disorder being so much the worse because it hath not onely returned to its first follies but hath superadded unthankfulnesse and carelesnesse a positive neglect and a despite of holy things a setting a low price to the things of God lazinesse and wretchlesnesse all which are evills superadded to the first state of coldnesse whither he is with all these loads and circumstances of death easily revolv'd 3. A state of lukewarmnesse is more incorrigible then a state of coldnesse while men flatter themselves that their state is good that they are rich and need nothing that their lamps are dressed and full of ornament There are many that think they are in their countrey as soon as ever they are weary and measure not the end of their hopes by the possession of them but by their precedent labour which they overvalue because they have easie and effeminate souls S. Bernard complains of some that say Sufficit nobis nolumus esse meliores quà m Patres nostri It is enough for us to be as our forefathers who were honest and usefull in their generations but be not over-righteous These men are such as think they have knowledge enough to need no teacher devotion enough to need no new fires perfection enough to need no new progresse justice enough to need no repentance and then because the spirit of a man and all the things of this world are in perpetuall variety and change these men decline when they have gone their period they stand still and then revert like a stone returning from the bosome of a cloud where it rested as long as the thought of a childe and fell to its naturall bed of earth and dwelt below for ever He that says he will take care he be no worse and that he desires to be no better stops his journey into heaven but cannot be secure against his descending into hell and Cassian spake a hard saying Frequentèr vidimus de frigidis carnalibus ad spiritualem venisse fervorem de tepidis animalibus omninò non vidimus Many persons from vicious and dead and cold have passed into life and an excellent grace and a spirituall warmth and holy fires but from lukewarm and indifferent never any body came to an excellent condition and state of holynesse rarissimè S. Bernard sayes very extremely seldome and our blessed Saviour said something of this The Publicans and the Harlots goe before you into the Kingdome of heaven they are moved by shame and punished by disgrace and remarked by punishments and frighted by the circumstances and notices of all the world and separated from sober persons by laws and an intolerable character and the sense of honour and the care of their persons and their love of civill societie and every thing in the world can invite them towards vertues But the man that is accounted honest and does justice and some things of Religion unlesse he finds himselfe but upon his way and feels his wants and groans under the sense of his infirmities and sighs under his imperfections and accounts himself not to have comprehended but still presses towards the mark of his calling unlesse I say he still increases in his appetites of Religion as he does in his progression he will think he needs no counsellor and the spirit of God whispers to an ear that is already fill'd with noyses and cannot atrend to the heavenly calling The stomach that is already full is next to loathing and that 's the prologue to sicknesse and a rejecting the first wholesome nutriment which was entertained to relieve the first naturall necessities Qui non proficit vult deficere said S. Bernard He that goes not forward in the love of God and of Religion does not stand still but goes for all that but whither such a motion will lead him himself without a timely care shall feel by an intolerable experiment In