it. A world more of particulars there are, which naturalists have observed of this kind: from which natural antipathy it cometh, that things which never before saw that which is contrary to them, do, at the very first sight, fly from it, as from an enemy to their nature, nor will they ever be brought by discipline to trust one another. Οὐκ ἔστι λέουσι καὶ ἀνδράσιν ὅρκια πιστὰ, Lions with men will ne'er make faithful truce, To love the lamb; they study with fixt hate, And the like kind of strange hatred, we may sometimes find amongst men; one man's disposition so much disagreeing from another's, that though there never passed any injuries or occasions of difference between them, yet they cannot but have minds averse from one another;-which the epigrammatist hath wittily expressed"; "Non amo te, Sabidi; nec possum dicere quare; I love thee not, yet cannot say for what; Another cause working hatred of a thing in the minds of men, is the difficulty and conceited impossibility of obtaining it, if it be a good thing which we either do or ought to desire which the casuists call' acedia,' being a grief of the appetite looking on a difficult good, as if it were evil, because difficult; from whence ariseth a torpor and supine neglect of the means, which might help us to it. Thus wicked and resolved sinners, conceiving happiness as unacquirable by them, do grow to the hating of it; to entertain rancorous affections against those which persuade them to seek it; to envy and malign all such as they find careful to obtain it; to proceed unto licentious resolutions of rejecting all hopes or thoughts of it, and to divert their minds towards such more obvious and easy delights, as will be gotten with less labour. This difficulty rendereth good things hatefuld; as Israel in the wilderness despised the pleasant land, because there were sons of Anak in it. And this is one great cause of the different affections of men toward several courses of life. One man, being of dull and sluggish apprehensions, hateth learning; another, by nature quick, and of noble intellectuals, wholly applieth himself unto it: the difficulty persuading the one to despise the goodness, and the goodness inducing the other to conquer the difficulties, of it. So one man, looking unto the pain of a virtuous life, contemns the reward; and another, looking unto the reward, endures the pain. And we shall usually find it true, that either laziness, fearing disappointment, or love being disappointed and meeting with difficulties which it cannot conquer, do both beget a kind of hatred and dislike of that which did either deter them from seeking it, or deceive them when they sought it. As She, who, while there was any hope, did solicit Æneas with her tears and importunities, when he was quite gone, did follow him with her imprecations. There is no malice which grows ranker than that which ariseth out of the corruption of love; as no darkness is more formidable than that of an eclipse, which assaults the very vessels of light; nor any taste more unsavoury, than of sweet things when they are corrupted. The more natural the union, the more impossible the re-union. Things joined by art, being broken asunder, may possibly be glued again; but if a man's arm be broken off, it can never be joined on again so those hatreds are most incurable, which arise out of the greatest and most natural love. f Δεινή τις ὀργὴ καὶ δυσίατος πέλει, g Ὅταν φίλοι φίλοισι συμβάλωσ ̓ ἔριν. 5 When love of friends is turn'd to wrath, be sure Another very usual, but most evil cause of hatred is injury; when a man, because he hath done another wrong, doth from thence resolve to hate him. Too many examples d Vid. Arist. Eth. 1. 9. c. 4. • Eneid. 4. f Arist. polit. 1. 7. c. 7. Fraterno primi maduerunt sanguine muri: Lucan. 1. 1.—Plut. de Amore frat. 5 Eurip. Medea. 520. whereof there are in writings, both sacred and profane. Joseph's mistress first wronged him in assaulting his chastity; and then hated him, and caused him to be cast into prison. Amnon first abused his sister Tamar; and then hated her worse than before he loved her. Phædra, having solicited Hippolytus her husband's son unto incest, being denied, did after accuse him to his father, and procure his ruin. And Aristotle proposeth it as a problem", Why they who corrupt and violate the chastity of any, do after hate them? and gives this reason of it, Because they ever after look on them, as guilty of that shame and sadness, which in the sin they contracted. This cause of hatred, Seneca and Tacitus have both observed as a thing usual with proud and insolent men, first, to hurt, then, to hate.i And the reason is, first, because injury is the way to make a man, who is wronged, an enemy; and the proper affection which respecteth an enemy, is hatred. Again, he who is wronged, if equal or above him that hath done the wrong, is then feared; and oderunt quos metuunt,' it is usual to hate those whom we fear: if inferior, yet the memory and sight of him doth upbraid with guilt, and affect with an unwilling and unwelcome review of the sin, whereby he was wronged; and pride scorns reproof, and loves not to be under him in guilt, whom it overtops in power: for innocence doth always give a kind of superiority unto the person that is wronged. Besides, hatred is a kind of apology for wrong for if a man can persuade himself to hate him whom he hath injured, he will begin to believe that he deserved the injury which was offered unto him; every man being naturally willing to find the first inducement unto his sin, rather in another than in himself. The next cause (which I shall observe) is fear, I mean slavish fear: for as love excludeth fear, so fear begetteth hatred. And it is ever seen, Qui terribiles sunt, timent;' they that terrify others, do fear them; as well knowing that they are themselves hated. For, as Aristotle speaketh, "Nemo quem metuit, amat," no man loves him whom he fears-which is the same with that of Saint John, "Love h Prob. sect. 41. sect. 11. Proprium humani ingenii odisse quos læseris. Tacit. Vit. Agri. et Senec. de Ira, 1. 1, c. 33. casteth out fear:" not a reverend, submissive, awful fear; not a cautelous, vigilant, and obedient fear; not a fear of admiration; not a fear of subjection;-but a fear of slavery and of rebellion; all flashes of horror, all the tossings and shipwrecks of a torn mind, all the tremblings of a tormented spirit; briefly, all evil and hurtful fear. And this, I believe, is one principal reason of that malice and contempt of godliness, which shows itself in the lives of atheistical and desperately wicked men; which as it ariseth out of the corruption of nature, so it is marvellously enraged by the fearful expectation of that fiery vengeance, which their pale and guilty consciences do already pre-occupate: for as their conscience dictates, that they deserve to be hated by God, so their stubbornness and malice concludes that they will hate him again. "Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we shall die." There may be a double root of this fear, outward and inward. The outward is the cruelty and oppression which we suffer from the potent, and thereupon the less avoidable malice of the person hated:-as it was the speech of Caligula, "Oderint dum metuant." And herein our aversation (if it observe that general rule of goodness in passion's subordination to reason and piety) is not only allowable, but natural, while it extends itself no further than the evil which we wrongfully suffer. For I cannot but think, that the spittle and scourges, the thorns and buffets, the reed and knees, of those mocking and blasphemous Jews, were so many drops of that full cup, which He, who knew no sin, was so deeply desirous to have pass from him. But the next, the inward root of fear, is the guilt and burthen of an unclean and uncovered conscience; for pollution and weakness when it is naked, must needs be fearful. And therefore that inference of Adam had truth in it, "I was afraid, because I was naked:" for having disrobed himself of original righteousness, he was thereupon afraid of the curse and summons of an offended justice. Now from this fear may arise a double hatred; a hatred of a man's own conscience: for an evil man Οὐδὲ πρὸς ἑαυτὸν φιλικῶς ἔχει, as the philosopher speaks, is not a friend unto himself;' but * Ethic lib. 9. c. 4. δίκαίον ἐστι τοὺς κακοὺς μὴ μόνον ὑπὸ τῶν ἄλλων, ἀλλὰ kal up' éαUTŵV pociobai. Scholiast. in Sophocl. Oedip. Tyr. flies and labours to run away from himself; and is never in so bad company, as when he is alone, because then he keeps company with his own conscience. Which is the reason, why some men's hatred of themselves hath proceeded so far, as to make themselves the instruments of that small measure of annihilation, which they are capable of. Wherein notwithstanding they discover, how far their fury should extend against themselves, if they were as omnipotent to effect, as they are ready to desire it: for he that hates a thing would, if he were able, pursue it even unto not being. There is no man but hath a natural hatred of toads, serpents, vipers, and the like venomous creatures; and yet that man which hates them most, if his conscience be naked and let loose to fly upon him, if that worm that never dies, (unless killed with our Saviour's blood) begin thoroughly to sting and gnaw him, would think himself a wise merchant, if he could exchange beings with the worst of these. The worm and viper of conscience is, of all the creatures, the most ugly and hateful. A wicked man, when he doth distinctly know himself, doth love every thing, save God, better than himself. -"Diri conscia facti, Mens habet attonitos, et surdo verbere cædit, Nor can I esteem this a corrupt, though it be a miserable passion for as a bad man is to himself the worst, so is he, by consequence, the hatefullest of all creatures. The second hatred, which may arise from that fear which is caused by a secret guilt of mind, is of all other most corrupt and rancorous, namely, a hatred of the authors or executioners of justice, of the equity and justness of whose proceeding, we are from within convinced ;-such as is the malice and blasphemy of malefactors against the judge, and of devils and damned men against God and his righteous. I Juvenal. |