are hierarchies amongst the angels, so shall there be degrees of priority amongst the saints. Yet is it (I protest) beyond my ambition to aspire unto the first ranks; my desires only are, and I shall be happy therein, to be but the last man, and bring up the rear in heaven.

LIX. Again, I am confident, and fully persuaded, yet dare not take my oath of my salvation: I am as it were sure, and do believe without all doubt, that there is such a city as Constantinople; yet for me to take my oath thereon were a kind of perjury, because I hold no infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm me in the certainty thereof. And truly, though many pretend to absolute certainty of their salvation, yet when an humble soul shall contemplate her own unworthiness, she shall meet with many doubts, and suddenly find how little we stand in need of the precept of St. Paul, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. That which is the cause of my election, I hold to be the cause of my salvation, which was the mercy and beneplacit of God, before I was, or the foundation of the world. Before Abraham was, I am, is the saying of Christ; yet is it true in some sense if I say it of myself; for I was not only before

myself, but Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning; and thus was I dead before I was alive; though my grave be England, my dying place was paradise, and Eve miscarried of me, before she conceived of Cain.

LX. Insolent zeals that do decry good works and rely only upon faith, take not away merit; for depending upon the efficacy of their faith, they enforce the condition of God, and in a more sophistical way do seem to challenge heaven. It was decreed by God, that only those that lapt in the water like dogs should have the honour to destroy the Midianites; yet could none of those justly challenge, or imagine he deserved that honour thereupon. I do not deny but that true faith, and such as God requires, is not only a mark or token but also a means of our salvation; but where to find this, is as obscure to me as my last end. And if our Saviour could object unto his own disciples and favourites, a faith, that to the quantity of a grain of mustard-seed, is able to remove mountains;

P

surely that which we boast of is not any thing, or at the most but a remove from nothing.

This is the tenour of my belief; wherein, though there be many things singular, and to the humour of my irregular self, yet if they square not with maturer judgments I disclaim them, and do no further father them, than the learned and best judgments shall authorize them.

THE SECOND PART.

I. Now for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere notion, and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity; and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue. For I am of a constitution so general, that it comsorts and sympathizeth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, any thing; I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools, nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find they agree with my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a church-yard, as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander; at the

sight of a toad, or viper, I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in others; those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but where I find their actions in balance with my countrymen's, I honour, love, and embrace them in the same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but seem for to be framed and constellated unto all; I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden; all places, all airs make unto me one country; I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian. I have been shipwreckt, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play, or sleep, in a tempest. In brief, I am averse from nothing; my conscience would give me the lie if I should say I absolutely detest or hate any essence but the devil; or so at least abhor any thing but that we might come to composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which taken asunder seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but confused together,