couraged with success, he hath preyed first on the weaker sex. It seems he hath all the vices, not the virtues, of that king of beasts; a wolf-lion, having his cruelty without his generosity. XV. EDIFICATION. READ in a learned physician how our provident mother, Nature, foreseeing men (her wanton children) would be tampering with the edgetools of minerals, hid them far from them, in the bowels of the earth; whereas she exposed plants and herbs more obvious to their eye, as fitter for their use. But some bold empirics, neglecting the latter as too common, have adventured on those hidden minerals, ofttimes (through want of skill) to the hurt of many, and hazard of more. God, in the New Testament, hath placed all historical and practical matter (needful for Christians to know and believe) in the beginning of the gospel. All such truths lie above ground, plainly visible in the literal sense. The prophetical and difficult part comes in the close. But though the Testament was written in Greek, too many read it like Hebrew, beginning at the end thereof. How many trouble themselves about the Revelation, who might be better busied in plain divinity! Safer prescribing to others, and practising in themselves, positive piety; leaving such mystical minerals to men of more judgment to prepare them. I XVI. MAD, NOT MAD. FIND St. Paul in the same chapter confess and deny madness in himself: Acts, xxvi. 11. And being exceeding mad against them, I persecuted them even unto strange cities, ver. 25. When Festus challenged him to be beside himself, I am not mad, most noble Festus. Whilst he was mad indeed, then none did suspect or accuse him to be distracted; but when converted, and in his right mind, then Festus taxeth him of mad ness. There is a country in Africa,* wherein all the natives have pendulous lips, hanging down like dogs' ears, always raw and sore. Here only such as are handsome are pointed at for monsters in this age, wherein polluted and unclean lips are grown epidemical; if any refrain their tongues from common sins, they alone are gazed at as strange spectacles. I XVII. THE DEEPEST CUT. BEHELD a lapidary cutting a diamond with a diamond hammer and anvil, both of the same kind. God in scripture styled his servants his jewels.† His diamonds they are; but alas! rude, rough, unpolished, without shape or fashion, as they arise naked out of the bed of the earth, before art hath *Munst. Cosmog. † Mal. iii. 17. dressed them. See how God, by rubbing one rough diamond against another, maketh both smooth. Barnabas afflicts Paul,* and Paul afflicts Barnabas, by their hot falling out: Jerome occasioneth trouble to Rufinus, and Rufinus to Jerome. In our unnatural war none I hope so weak and wilful as to deny many good men (though misled) engaged on both sides. O how have they scratched, and rased, and pierced, and bruised, and broken one another! Behold heaven's hand grating one diamond with another; as for all those who uncharitably deny any good on that party which. they dislike, such show themselves diamonds indeed in their hardness (cruel censuring), but none in any commendable quality in their conditions. *Acts, xv. 39. |