most in that attribute wherein he is impassible, his immortality. LII. I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid of hell, nor never grew pale at the description of that place; I have so fixed my contemplations on heaven that I have almost forgot the idea of hell, and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one than endure the misery of the other; to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, and needs methinks no addition to complete our afflictions; that terrible term hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof: I fear God, yet am not afraid of him; his mercies make me ashamed of my sins, before his judgments afraid thereof; these are the forced and secondary method of his wisdom, which he useth but as the last remedy, and upon provocation; a course rather to deter the wicked than incite the virtuous to his worship. I can hardly think there was ever any scared into heaven; they go the fairest way to heaven that would serve God without a hell; other mercenaries that crouch unto him in fear of hell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves of the Almighty. LIII. And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to mankind, or in particular to myself; and whether out of the prejudice of my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit of his mercies, I know not, but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me who inquire farther into them than their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have ever proved the secret and dissembled favours of his affection. It is a singular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly and without passion, the works of God; and so well to distinguish his justice from his mercy as not to miscal those noble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest piece of logick, so to dispute and argue the proceedings of God, as to distinguish even his judgments into mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because better to the worst than the best deserve; and to say he punisheth none in this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence rather than admire the clemency of the judge. Thus our offences being mortal, and deserving not only death, but damnation, if the goodness of God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease, what frenzy were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of his judgments, rather than admire the sceptre of his mercies! Therefore to adore, honour, and admire him, is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation of our nature, states, and conditions; and with these thoughts, he that knows them best will not deny that I adore him that I obtain heaven, and the bliss thereof, is accidental, and not the intended work of my devotion; it being a felicity I can neither think to deserve, nor scarce in modesty to expect. For these two ends of us all, either as rewards or punishments, are mercifully ordained and disproportionably disposed unto our actions; the one being so far beyond our deserts, the other so infinitely below our demerits. : LIV. There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ, that is, say some, since his nativity, and as divinity affirmeth, before also; which makes me much apprehend the ends of those honest worthies and philosophers which died before his incar nation. It is hard to place those souls in hell whose worthy lives do teach us virtue on earth ; methinks amongst those many subdivisions of hell, there might have been one limbo left for these : what a strange vision will it be to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real devils! how strange to them will sound the history of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never heard of; when they who derive their genealogy from the gods, shall know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man! It is an insolent part of reason to controvert the works of God, or question the justice of his proceedings: could humility teach others, as it hath instructed me, to contemplate the infinite and incomprehensible distance betwixt the Creator and the creature; or did we seriously perpend that one simile of St. Paul, shall the vessel say to the potter, why hast thou made me thus? it would prevent these arrogant disputes of reason, nor would we argue the definitive sentence of God, either to heaven or hell. Men that live according to the right rule and law of reason, live but in their own kind, as beasts do in theirs; who justly obey the prescript of their natures, and therefore cannot reasonably demand a reward of their actions, as only obeying the natural dictates of their reason. It will therefore, and must at last appear, that all salvation is through Christ; which verity I fear these great examples of virtue must confirm, and make it good how the perfectest actions of earth have no title or claim unto heaven. LV. Nor truly do I think the lives of these or of any other were ever correspondent, or in all points conformable unto their doctrines. It is evident that Aristotle transgressed the rule of his own ethicks; the stoicks that condemn passion, and command a man to laugh in Phalaris his bull, could not endure without a groan a fit of the stone or colick; the scepticks that affirmed they knew nothing, even in that opinion confute themselves, and thought they knew more than all the world beside. Diogenes I hold to be the most vain-glorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all honours, than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice and the devil put a fallacy upon our reasons, and provoking us too hastily to run from it, entangle and profound us deeper in it. The duke of Venice, that weds himself unto the sea by a ring of gold, I will not argue of prodigality, because it is a |