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with silver and gold from our vain conversation," saith the apostle; and therefore these things are of too base a nature to be put into the balance with the souls of men: and that man infinitely undervalues the work of God, the image of God, the blood of God,-who, for so base a purchase as money, or preferment, or any earthly and vain-glorious respect, doth either hazard his own, or betray the souls of others commended to him.

Sect. 7.-And therefore this should teach all those, upon whom the Lord hath bestowed a greater portion of this opiniative felicity; I mean, of money, honour, reputation, or the like; first, not to trust in uncertain riches, not to rely upon a foundation of their own laying, for matter of satis faction to their soul; nor "to boast in the multitude of their riches," as the prophet speaks, Psal. xlix. 6. (for that is, certainly, one great effect of the deceitfulness of riches, spoken of, Matth. xiii. 22, to persuade the soul that there is more in them than indeed there is): and the Psalmist gives an excellent reason in the same place, "No man can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him; for the redemption of their soul is precious.'

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Sect. 8. And secondly, it may teach them as not to trust, so not to swell with these things neither. It is an argument of their windiness and emptiness, that they are apt to make men swell; whereas, if they cannot change a hair of a man's head, nor add an inch to his stature, they can much less make an accession of the least dram of merit, or real value, to the owners of them. And surely, if men could seriously consider, that they are still members of the same common body, and that of a twofold body, a civil and a mystical body; and that though they haply may be the more honourable parts in one body, yet in the other they may be the less honourable; that the poor, whom they despise, may in Christ's body have a higher room than they (as the apostle saith", "Hath not God chosen the poor in this world, rich in faith?"); I say, if men could compare things rightly together, and consider that they are but the greater letters in the same volume, and the poor the smaller; though they take up more room, yet they put no more matter nor worth

1 Pet. i. 18. h Jam. ii. 5.

into the word which they compound, they would never suffer the tympany and inflation of pride, or superciliousness of self-attributions, or contempt of their meaner brethren, to prevail within them. We see in We see in the natural body, though the head have a hat on of so many shillings' price, and the foot a shoe of not half so many pence, yet the head doth not therefore despise the foot, but is tender of it, and doth derive influence as well unto that as to any nobler part and surely so should it be among men; though God hath given thee an eminent station in the body, clothed thee with purple and scarlet, and hath set thy poor neighbour in the lowest part of the body, and made him conversant 'in the dirt, and content to cover himself with leather; yet you are still members of the same common body, animated with the same Spirit of Christ, moulded out of the same dirt, appointed for the same inheritance, born out of the same womb of natural blindness, partakers of the same great and precious promises. There was not one price for the soul of the poor man, and another for the rich; there is not one table for Christ's meaner guests, and another for his greater; but the faith is a common faith, the salvation a 'common salvation, the rule a common rule, the "hope a common hope; one Lord, and one Spirit, and one baptism; and one God and Father of all; and one foundation, and Pone house; and therefore we ought to have the same care and compassion one of another.

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Sect. 9.-Secondly, consider that goodness and value which is fixed to the being of the creature, implanted in it by God and the institution of nature; and even thus we shall find them absolutely unable to satisfy the desires of the reasonable and spiritual soul. God is the Lord of all the creatures; they are but as his several moneys, he coined them all: so much then of his image as any creature hath in it, so much value and worth it carries. Now God hath more communicated himself unto man, than unto any other creature: in his creation, we find man made after the similitude of God; and in his restoration, we find God made after the similitude of man, 1 Jude. ver. 3. m Gal.

i Ex eodem utero ignorantiæ. Tert. k Tit. i. 4. vi. 16. Phil. iii. 16. n Ephes. iv. 4. o 1 Cor. Eph. iii. 15. 1 Tim. iii. 15. 91 Cor. xii. 25. iii. 16. Rom. viii. 3.

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iii. 11. P Eph. ii. 19. r Gen. i. 27. $ 1 Tim.

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and man once again after the similitude of God. And now it is needless to search out the worth of the creature; our Saviour will decide the point: "What shall a man gaiu, though he win the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"" To which of the creatures said God at any time, "Let us create it after our image?" Of which of the angels said he at any time, Let us restore them to our image again? There is no creature in heaven or earth, which is recompense enough for the loss of a soul. Can a man carry the world into Hell with him, to bribe the flames, or corrupt his tormentors? No, saith the Psalmist, "His glory shall not descend after him." But can he buy out his pardon, before he comes thither? No neither; "The redemption of a soul is more precious."" We know the apostle counts all things dung2; and will God take dung in exchange for a soul? Certainly, beloved, when a man can sow grace in the furrows of the field, when he can fill his barns with glory, when he can get bags full of salvation; when he can plough up Heaven out of the earth, and extract God out of the creatures; then he may be able to find that in them which shall satisfy his desires. But till then, let a man have all the exquisitest curiosities of nature heaped into one vessel; let him be moulded out of the most delicate ingredients and noblest principles that the world can contribute; let there be in his body a concurrency of all beauty and feature; in his nature, an eminence of all sweetness and ingenuity; in his mind, a conspiration of the politest and most choice varieties of all kind of learning; yet still the spirit of that man is no whit more valuable and precious, no whit more proportionable to eternal happiness, than the soul of a poor and illiterate beggar. Difference indeed there is, and that justly, to be made between them in the eyes of men; which difference is to expire within a few years and then, after the dust of the beautiful and deformed, of the learned and ignorant, of the honourable and base, are promiscuously intermingled, and death hath equalled all; then at last there will come a day when all mankind shall be summoned, naked, without difference of degrees, before the same tribunal: when the crowns of kings and the x Peal. xlix. 17. y Ib. ver. 8. z Phil. iii. 8.

t Eph.iv. 24. Col. iii. 10. u Matt. xvi. 26.

shackles of prisoners, when the robes of princes and the rags of beggars, when the gallant's bravery and the peasant's russet, and the statist's policy, and the courtier's luxury, and the scholar's curiosity, shall be all laid aside: when all men shall be reduced unto an equal plea, and, without respect of persons, shall be doomed according to their works: when Nero the persecuting emperor shall be thrown to Hell, and Paul the persecuted apostle shall shine in glory; when the learned scribes and pharisees shall gnash their teeth, and the ignorant, and, as they term them, cursed people, shall see their Saviour: when the proud antichristian prelates, that dyed their robes in the blood of the saints, shall be hurried to damnation, and the poor despised martyrs, whom they persecuted, shall wash their feet in the blood of their enemies when those punctoes and formalities, and cuts and fashions, and distances and compliments, which are now the darling sins of the upper end of the world, shall be proved to have been nothing else but well-acted vanities: when the pride, luxury, riot, swaggering, interlarded and complimental oaths, nice and quaint lasciviousness, newinvented courtings and adorations of beauty, (the so much studied and admired sins of the gallantry of the world,) shall be pronounced out of the mouth of God himself, to have been nothing else but glittering abominations: when the adulterating of wares, the counterfeiting of lights, the double weight and false measures, the courteous equivocations of men greedy of gain, which are now almost woven into the very arts of trading, shall be pronounced nothing else but mysteries of iniquity and self-deceivings: when the curious subtilties of more choice wits, the knotty questions and vain strife of words, the disputes of reason, the variety of reading, the very circle of general and secular learning, pnrsued with so much eagerness by the more ingenious spirits of the world, shall be all pronounced but the thin cobwebs and vanishing delicacies of a better-tempered profaneness; and lastly, when that poor despised profession of the power of Christianity, a trembling at the word of God, a scrupulous forbearance, not of oaths only, but of idle words a tenderness and aptness to bleed at the touch of any sin, a boldness to withstand the corruptions of the times, a conscience of but the appearance of evil, a walking mournfully and humbly before God, an

heroical resolution to be strict and circumspect, to walk in an exact and geometrical holiness, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, the so much conclamated and scorned peevishness of a few silly, unpolitic, unregarded hypocrites, as the world esteems them, shall, in good earnest, from the mouth of God himself, be declared to have been the true narrow way which leadeth unto salvation; and the enemies thereof shall, when it is too late, be driven to that desperate and shameful confession, "We fools counted their life madness, and their end to have been without honour; how are they now reckoned amongst the saints, and have their portion with the Almighty!"

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Sect.10.-A second branch of the disproportion between the soul of man and the creatures, arising from the vanity thereof, is their deadness, unprofitableness, inefficacy by any inward virtue of their own to convey or preserve life in the soul. Happiness in the Scripture phrase is called 'life,' consisting in a communion with God in his holiness and glory. Nothing then can truly be a prop to hold up the soul, which cannot either preserve that life which it hath, or convey unto it that which it hath not. "Charge those, (saith the apostle,) that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, neither trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God."b He opposeth the life of God to the vanity and uncertaintythe word is, to the inevidence, of riches; whereby a man can never demonstrate to himself or others the certainty or happiness of his life. The like opposition we shall find excellently expressed in the prophet Jeremiah; " ; "My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living water, and have hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water: " that is, my people are willing to attribute the blessings they enjoy, and to sue for more, rather unto any cause than unto me the Lord. "She did not know," saith the Lord elsewhere," that I gave her her corn and her wine, and multiplied her silver and her gold, &c. But said of them, These are my rewards which my lovers have given me." But, saith the Lord, so long as they trusted me, they rested upon a sure fountain that would never fail them. 66 With thee," saith the Psalmist, "is the.

a Jer. xvi. 19.

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b 1 Tim. vi. 17. c Jer. ii. 13. d Hos. ii. 8. 12. e Psal. xxxvi. 9.

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