have a commonwealth of their own, yet those fathers call their labour, but private labour; because no other commonwealths have benefit by their labour, but their own. Direct thy labours in thy calling to the good of the public, and then thou art a civil, a moral ant; but consider also, that all that are of the household of the faithful, and profess the same truth of religion, are part of this public, and direct thy labours for the glory of Christ Jesus, amongst them too, and then thou art a religious and a Christian bee, and the fruit of thy labour shall be honey. The labour of the ant is sub dio, open, evident, manifest; the labour of the bee is sub tecto, in a house, in a hive; they will do good, and yet they will not be seen to do it; they affect not glory, nay, they avoid it. For in experience, when some men curious of natural knowledge, have made their hives of glass, that by that transparency, they might see the bees' manner of working, the bees have made it their first work to line that glass-hive, with a crust of wax, that they might work and not be discerned. It is a blessed sincerity, to work as the ant, professedly, openly; but because there may be cases, when to do so, would destroy the whole work, though there be a cloud and a curtain between thee, and the eyes of men, yet if thou do them clearly in the sight of God, that he see his glory advanced by thee, the fruit of thy labour shall be honey.

Pliny names one Aristomachus Solensis, that spent threescore years in the contemplation of bees; our whole time for this exercise is but threescore minutes; and therefore we say no more of this, but rade ad apem, practise the sedulity of the bee, labour in thy calling; and the community of the bee, believe that thou art called to assist others; and the secresy of the bee, that the greatest, and most authorised spy see it not, to supplant it; and the purity of the bee, that never settles upon any foul thing, that thou never take a foul way to a fair end, and the fruit of thy labour shall be honey; God shall give thee the sweetness of this world, honour, and ease, and plenty, and he shall give thee thy honey-comb, with thy honey, that which preserves thy honey to thee, that is, a religious knowledge, that all this is but honey; and honey in the dew of the flowers, whence it is drawn, is but cœli sudor, a sweaty excrement of the heavens, and siderum

24 Plin.

saliva, the spittle, the phlegm of the stars, and apum vomitus, the casting, the vomit of the bee. And though honey be the sweetest thing that we do take into the body, yet there it degenerates into gall, and proves the bitterest; and all this is honey in the antitype, in that which it signifies, in the temporal things of this world; in the temporal things of this world there is a bitterness, in our use of them; but in his hand, and his purpose that gives them, they have impressions of sweetness; and so comede, eat thy honey, which is also a step farther.

Here is liberty for any man to eat honey, if he have found it, and Jonathan the king's son found honey upon the ground, and did but dip his staff in it 25, and put it to his mouth, and he must die for it. Of forbidden honey the least dram is poison, how sweet soever any collateral respect make it. But Jonathan knew not that it was forbidden by the king: ignorance is no plea in any subject against the king's laws; and there is a King, in breach of whose laws, no king, no king's son can excuse themselves by ignorance, if they do but dip their sceptre in forbidden honey, in any unlawful delight in this world; for they do, or they may know the unlawfulness of it. But for the honey which God allows us, whether God give it in that plenty, Terram fluentem", that the land flow with milk and honey, nay torrentes mellis, rivers and streams of honey", that great fortunes flow into men, in this world; or whether God put us to suck honey out of the rock **, that that which we have, we dig, and plough, and thresh for, yet when thou hast found that, comede, use it, enjoy it, eat it; He that will not work, shall not eat"; he that shuts himself up in a cloister, till the honey find him, till meat be brought to him, should not eat.

Christ himself ate honey, but after his resurrection"; when his body needed not refection; when our principal end in worldly things, is not for the body, nor for the world, but that we have had a spiritual resurrection, that we can see God's love in them, and show God's glory by them, then invenisti, thou hast found; (for invenire, est in rem venire, id est in usum3) to find a thing is to make the right use of it, and invenisti mel, thou hast found

25 1 Sam. xiv. 24

28 Deut. xxxii. 13.

30 Luke xxiv. 41.

26 Exod. iii. 8.

27 Job xx. 17 29 2 Thess. iii 10.

81 Festus.

honey, that which God intends for sweetness, for necessities, conveniences, abundances, recreations, and delights; and therefore comede, eat it, enjoy it; but to thee also belongs that caveat, Comede ad sufficientiam, Eat but enough.

That great moral man Seneca, could see, that nihil agere, to pass this life, and intend no vocation, was very ill; and that aliud agere, to profess a vocation, and be busier in other men's callings, than his own, was worse; but the super-agere, to overdo, to do more than was required at his hands, he never brought into comparison, he never suspected; and yet that is our most ordinary fault. That which hath been ordinarily given by our physicians, by way of counsel, that we should rise with an appetite, hath been enough followed by worldly men; they always lie down, and always rise up with an appetite to more, and more in this world. An office is but an ante-past, it gets them an appetite to another office; and a title of honour, but an ante-past, a new stomach to a new title. The danger is, that we cannot go upward directly; if we have a stair, to go any height, it must be a winding stair: it is a compassing, a circumventing, to rise: a ladder is a straight engine of itself, yet if we will rise by that, it must be set aslope; though our means be direct in their own nature, yet we put them upon crooked ways; it is but a poor rising, that any man can make in a direct line, and yet it is ad sufficientiam, high enough, for it is to heaven. Have ye seen a glass blown to a handsome competency, and with one breath more, broke? I will not ask you, whether you have seen a competent beauty made worse, by an artificial addition, because they have not thought it well enough before; you see it every day, and every where. If Paul himself were here, whom for his eloquence the Lystrians called Mercury, he could not persuade them to leave their Mercury; it will not easily be left; for how many of them that take it outwardly at first, come at last to take it inwardly? Since the saying of Solomon, Be not over righteous33, admits many good senses, even in moral virtues, and in religious duties too, which are naturally good, it is much more appliable in temporal things, which are naturally indifferent; be not over

31 Acts xiv. 12.

33 Eccles. vii. 17.

fair, over witty, over sociable, over rich, over glorious; but let the measure be sufficientia tua, So much as is sufficient for thee.

But where shall a man take measure of himself? At what age, or in what calling shall he say, This is sufficient for me? Jeremy says, Puer sum, I am a child, and cannot speak at all; St. Paul says, Quando puer, When I was a child, no bigger, I spake like a child; this was not sufficientia sua, sufficient for him; for since he was to be a man, he was to speak like a man: the same clothes do not serve us throughout our lives, nay not the same bodies, nay not the same virtues, so there is no certain gomer, no fixed measure for worldly things, for every one to have. As Clemens Alexandrinus saith, Eadem drachma data nauclero, est naulum, The same piece of money given to a waterman, is his fare; publicano vectigal, given to a farmer of custom, it is impost; mercatori pretium, to a merchant it is the price of his ware; operario merces, mendico eleemosyna, to a labourer it is wages, to a beggar it is alms; so on the other side, this which we call sufficiency, as it hath relation to divers states, hath a different measure. I think the rule will not be inconveniently given, if we say, that whatsoever the world doth justly look for at our hands, we may justly look for at God's hands: those outward means, which are requisite for the performance of the duties of your calling to the world, arising from your birth, or arising from your place, you are to pray for, you are to labour for; for that is sufficientia tua, so much is sufficient for you, and so much honey you may eat; but eat no more, says the text, Ne satieris, Lest you be filled.

He doth not say yet, lest thou be satisfied; there is no great fear, nay there is no hope of that, that he will be satisfied. We know the receipt, the capacity of the ventricle, the stomach of man, how much it can hold; and we know the receipt of all the receptacles of blood, how much blood the body can have; so we do of all the other conduits and cisterns of the body; but this infinite hive of honey, this insatiable whirlpool of the covetous mind, no anatomy, no dissection hath discovered to us. When I look into the larders, and cellars, and vaults, into the vessels of our body for drink, for blood, for urine, they are pottles and gallons; when I look into the furnaces of our spirits, the ventricles

of the heart and of the brain, they are but thimbles"; for spiritual things, the things of the next world, we have no room; for temporal things, the things of this world, we have no bounds. How then shall this over-eater be filled with his honey? So filled, as that he can receive nothing else. More of the same honey he can; another manor, and another church, is but another bit of meat, with another sauce to him; another office, and another way of extortion, is but another garment, and another lace to him. But he is too full to receive anything else; Christ comes to this Bethlem, (Bethlem which is Domus panis) this house of abundance, and there is no room for Christ in this inn; there are no crumbs for Christ under this table; there comes Boanerges, (Boanerges, that is, filius tonitrui, the son of thunder) and he thunders out the ræs, the comminations, the judgments of God upon such as he; but if the thunder spoil not his drink, he sees no harm in thunder; as long as a sermon is not a sentence in the Starchamber, that a sermon cannot fine and imprison him, he hath no room for any good effect of a sermon. The Holy Ghost, the spirit of comfort, comes to him, and offers him the consolation of the Gospel; but he will die in his old religion, which is to sacrifice to his own nets, by which his portion is plenteous; he had rather have the God of the Old Testament, that pays in this world with milk and honey, than the God of the New Testament, that calls him into his vineyard in this world, and pays him no wages till the next: one Jupiter is worth all the three Elohims, or the three Jehovahs (if we may speak so) to him. Jupiter that can come in a shower of gold, outweighs Jehovah, that comes but in a shower of water, but in a sprinkling of water in baptism, and sells that water so dear, as that he will have showers of tears for it, nay showers of blood for it, when any persecutor hath a mind to call for it. The voice of God whom he hath contemned, and wounded, the voice of the preacher whom he hath derided, and impoverished, the voice of the poor, of the widow, of the orphans, of the prisoner, whom he hath oppressed, knock at his door, and would enter, but there is no room for them, he is so full. This is the great danger indeed that accompanies this fullness, but the danger that affects him more is that which is more 34 In the folio edition it stands, "They are not thimbles."

VOL. III.

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