and that the assertion is as silly as it is wicked; and moreover, that the force of what I have de. livered may not be evaded by wicked men, who are resolved to harden their hearts, maugre all convictions, by saying, this was done in a corner; I appeal, for the truth thereof, to all sorts of persons who in considerable numbers visited and attended him, and more particularly to those eminent physicians who were near him, and conversant with him in the whole course of his tedious sickness; and who, if any, are competent judges of a frenzy or delirium.

For God giveth to a Man that is good in his
sight, Wisdom, Knowledge, and Joy.

W

HEN the author of this book, the wisest of men, applied his heart to know and to search, to seek out wisdom, and the reason (or nature) of things; and summed up the account of all, article by article, one by one, to find out the thread of nature, and the plan of its great Author; though his soul sought after it, yet the riddle was too dark; he, even he, could not discover it: But one man among a thousand. he did find, and happy was he in that discovery, if among all the thousands that he knew, he found one counting figure for so many cyphers, which, though they increased the number, yet did

not swell up the account, but were so many things, or less and worse than nothing, according to his estimate of men and things.

We have reason rather to think, that by a thousand is to be meant a vast and indefinite number; otherwise it must be confessed that Solomon's age was indeed a golden one, if it produced one man to a thousand that carry only the name and figure, but that do not answer the end and excellency of their being. The different degrees and ranks of men, witlr relation to the inward powers and excellencies, is a surprising but melancholy observation: many seem only to have a mechanical life, as if there were a moving and speaking spring within them, equally void both of reason and goodness. The whole race of men is for so many years of life little better than increasing puppets; many are children to their life's end: the soul does for a large portion of life sink wholly into the body; the blood and the spirits do so far subdue and master the mind, as to make it think, act, and speak according to the different ferments that are in the humours of the body; and when they cease to play, the soul is able to hold its tenure no longer: All these are strange and amazing speculations! and force one to cry out, Why did such a perfect Being make such feeble and imperfect creatures? Wherefore hast thou made all men in vain? The se cret is yet more astonishing, when the frowardness, the pride and ill-nature, the ignorance, folly and fury that hang upon their poor flattered creature, are likewise brought into the account. He that by all his observations, and increase of knowledge, only increaseth sorrow, while he sees that what is wanting cannot be numbered, and that which is crooked cannot be made straight, is tempted to go about, and with Solo

mon, to make his heart to despair of all the labour wherein he has travelled.

But as there is a dark side of human nature, so there is likewise a bright one. The flights and compass of awakened souls is no less amazing. The vast crowd of figures that lie in a very nar row corner of the brain, which a good memory, and a lively imagination can fetch out in good order, and with such beauty; the strange reaches of the mind in abstracted speculations, and the amazing progress that is made from some simple truths into theories, that are the admiration as well as the entertainment of the thinking part of mankind; the sagacity of apprehending and, judging, even at the greatest distance; the ele vation that is given to sense, and the sensible powers, by the invention of instruments; and, which is above all, the strength that a few thoughts do spread into the mind, by which it is made capable of doing or suffering the hardest things; the life which they give, and the calm which they bring, are all so unaccountable, that, take all together, a man is a strange huddle of light and darkness, of good and evil, and of wisdom and folly. The same man, not to mention the difference that the several ages of life make upon him, feels himself in some minutes so different from what he is in the other parts of his life, that, as the one flies away with him into the transports of joy, so the other does no less sink him into the depressions of sorrow; he scarce knows himself in the one, by what he was in the other: upon all which, when one considers a man both within and without, he concludes that he is both wonderfully, and also fearfully made: That in one side of him he is but a little lower than angels, and in another, a little, a very little higher than beasts.

But how astonishing soever this speculation of the remedy and contrariety in our composition may be, it contributes to arise our esteem the higher of such persons as seem to have arisen above (if not all, yet) all their eminent frailties of human nature; that have used their bodies only as engines and instruments to their minds, without any other care about them, but to keep them in good case, fit for the uses they put them to; that have brought their souls to a purity which can scarce appear credible to those who do not imagine that to be possible to another, which is far out of their own reach; and whose lives have shined in a course of many years, with no more alloy nor mixture, than what just served to shew that they were of the same human nature with others who have lived in a constant contempt of wealth, pleasure, or the greatness of this world; whose minds have been in as constant a pursuit of knowledge, in all the several ways in which they could trace it; who have added new regions of their own discoveries, and that in a vast variety to all that they had found made before them; who have directed all their inquiries into nature to the honour of its great Maker; and have joined two things, that how much soever they may seem related, yet have been found so seldom together, that the world has been tempted to think them inconsistent; a constant looking into nature, and yet a more constant study of religion, and a directing and improving of the one by the other: and who, to a depth of knowledge which often makes men morose, and to a height of piety which too often makes them severe, have added all the softness of humanity, and all the tenderness of charity, and obliging civility, as well as a melting kindness when all these do meet in the same person,