XXXIV. A sister of the family of Penn, in Buckinghamshire, a young woman delighting in the finery and pleasures of the world, was seized with a violent illnessthat proved mortal to her. In the time of her sickness she fell into great distress of soul, bitterly bewailing the want of that inward peace which makes a death-bed easy to the righteous. After several days' languishing, a little consolation appeared after this manner. She was some hours in a kind of trance; she apprehended she was brought into a place where Christ was; to whom, could she but deliver her petition, she hoped to be relieved. But her endeavours increased her pain: for as she pressed to deliver it, he turned his back upon her, and would not so much as look towards her. But that which added to her sorrow, was, that she beheld others admitted: however, she gave not over importuning him. And when almost ready to faint, and her hope to sink, he turned one side of his face towards her, and reached forth his hand, and received her request: at which her troubled soul found immediate consolation. Turning to those about her, she repeats what had befallen her, adding, "Bring me my new clothes, take off the lace and finery;" and charged her relations, not to deck and adorn themselves after the manner of the world: for that the Lord Jesus, whom she had seen, appeared unto her in the likeness of a plain countryman, without any trimming or ornament whatever; and that his servants ought to be like Him.
XXXV. My own father, after thirty years employment, with good success, in divers places of eminent trust and honour in his own country, upon a serious reflection, not long before his death, spoke to me in this manner: "Son William, I am weary of the world: I would not live over my days again, if I could command them with a wish: for the snares of life are greater than the fears of death. This troubles me, that I have offended a gracious God, that has followed me to this day. Oh, have a care of sin: that is the sting both of life and death. Three things I commend to you. First, Let nothing in this world tempt you towrong your conscience; I charge you, do nothing against your conscience, so will you keep peace at home, which will be a feast to you in the day of trouble. Secondly, Whatever you design to do, lay it justly, and time it seasonably; for that gives security and dispatch. Lastly, Be not troubled at disappointments; for if they may be recovered, do it; if they cannot, trouble is vain. If you could not have helped it, be content; there is often peace and profit in submitting to Providence, for afflictions make wise. If you could have helped it, let not your trouble exceed instruction for another time: these rules will carry you with firmness and comfort through this inconstant world." At another time he inveighed against the profaneness and impiety of the age; often crying out, with an earnestness of spirit, "Woe to thee, O England! God will judge thee, O England! Plagues are at thy door, O England!" He much bewailed that divers men in power, and many of the nobility and gentry of the kingdom, were grown so dissolute and profane; often saying, "God has forsaken us; we are infatuated; we will shut our eyes; we will not see our true interests and happiness: we shall be destroyed!" Apprehending the consequences of the growing looseness of the age to be our ruin; and that the methods most fit to serve the kingdom with true credit, at home and abroad, were too much neglected: the trouble of which did not a little help to feed his distemper, which drew him daily nearer to his end: and as he believed it, so less concerned or disordered, I never saw him at any time; of which I took good notice: wearied to live, as well as near to die, he took his leave of us, and of me, with this expression, and a most composed countenance: "Son William, if you and your friends keep to your plain way of preaching, and keep to your plain way of living, you will make an end of the priests to the end of the world. Bury me by my mother: live all inlove: shun all manner of evil: and I pray God to bless you all: and He will bless you."
XXXVI. Anthony Lowther, of Mask, a person of good sense, of a sweet temper, a just mind, and of a sober education; when of age to be under his own government, was drawn by the men of pleasure of the town, into the usual freedoms of it, and was as much a judge as anybody of the satisfaction that way of living could yield; but some time before his sickness, with a free and strong judgment, he would frequently upbraid himself, and contemn the world for those unreasonable as well as unchristian liberties that so much abound in it; which apprehension increased by the instruction of a long and sharp sickness, he would often despise their folly, and abhor their guilt; breathing, with some impatience, after the knowledge of the best things, and the best company; losing as little time as he could, that he might redeem the time he had lost; testifying often, with a lively relish, to the truth of religion, from the sense he had of it in his own breast: frequently professing, he knew no joy comparable to that of being assured of the love and mercy of God; which, as he often implored with strong convictions, and a deep humility and reverence, so he had frequently tastes thereof before his last period; pressing his relations and friends, in a most serious and affectionate manner, to love God, and one another more, and this vile world less. And of this he was so full, it was almost ever the conclusion of his most inward discourses with his family; though he sometimes said, he could have been willing to have lived, if God had pleased, to see his younger children nearer a settlement in the world; yet he felt no desire to live longer in the world, but on the terms of living better in it. For that he did not only think virtue the safest, but the happiest way of living: commending and commanding it to his children upon his last blessing.
I shall conclude this chapter of retired, aged, and dying persons, with some collections I have made out of the life of a person of great piety and quality of the French nation.
XXXVII. Du Renti, a young nobleman of France, of admirable parts, as well as great birth, touched with a sense of the vanity of the world, and the sweetness of a retired and religious life, notwithstanding the honours and employments that waited for him, abandons the pride and pomp of the world, to enjoy a life of more communion with God: do but hear him: "I avow," saith he, "that I have no gust in anything where I find not Jesus Christ; and for a soul that speaks not of Him, or in which we cannot taste any effect of grace flowing from his Spirit, (which is the principle of operations, both inward and outward, that are solidly Christian,) speak not to me at all of such an one: could I, as I may say, behold both miracles and wonders there, and yet not Jesus Christ, nor hear any talk of Him, I count all but amusement of spirit, loss of time, and a very dangerous precipice. Let us encourage ourselves to lead this life unknown, and wholly hid from men, but most known to and intimate with God; divesting ourselves, and chasing out of our minds all those many superfluities, and those many amusements, which bring with them so great a damage, that they take up our mind, instead of God. So that when I consider that which thwarts and cuts into so many pieces this holy, this sweet, and amiable union, which we should have continually with God, it appears, that it is only a monsieur, a madame, a compliment, and chatting, indeed a mere foolery; which notwithstanding doth ravish and wrest from us the time that is so precious, and the fellowship that is so holy, and so desirable. Let us quit this, I pray you, and learn to court it with our own Master; let us well understand our part, our own world, as we here phrase it, not that worldI mean, which we do renounce, but that wherein the children of God do their duties to their Father. There is nothing in this world so separate from the world, as God; and the greater the saints are, the greater is their retirement into Him. This our Saviour taught us whilst He lived on earth, being in all his visible employments united to God, and retired into the bosom of his Father. Since the time that I gave up my liberty to God, as I told you, I was given to understand to what a state of annihilation the soul must be brought, to render it capable of union with Him: I saw my soul reduced into a small point, contracted and shrunk up to nothing: and at the same time I beheld myself, as if encompassed with whatsoever the world loves and possesseth; and, as it were, a hand removing all this far from me, throwing it into the ocean of annihilation.
"In the first place, I saw removed all exterior things, kingdoms, great offices, stately buildings, rich household-stuff, gold and silver, recreations, pleasures; all which are great encumbrances to the soul's passing on to God, of which therefore his pleasure is, that she be stripped, that she may arrive at the point of nakedness and death, which will bring her into possession of solid riches and real life. Assure yourself, there is no security in any state, but this of dying and annihilation; which is to be baptized into Christ's death, that we live the life of mortification. Our best way is therefore to divest ourselves of all, that the holy child Jesus may govern all. All that can be imagined in this lower world is of small concernment, though it were the losing of all our goods, and the death of all the men in it; this poor ant-hill is not worthy of a serious thought. Had we but a little faith, and a little love, how happy should we esteem ourselves in giving away all, to attend no more, save on God alone; and to say,Deus meus et omnia; my God, and my all! 'Being,' saith he,'in a chapel richly wainscotted, and adorned with very excellent sculpture, and with imagery, I beheld it with some attention, having had some skill in these things, and saw the bundles of fleurs-de-luce, and of flowers in the form of borders, and of very curious workmanship; it was on a sudden put into my mind, The original of what thou seest would not detain thee at all in seeing it. And I perceived, that indeed all these, and those flowers themselves, not in pictures, would not have taken me up; and all the ornaments which architecture and art invent are but things most mean and low, running in a manner only upon flowers, fruits, branches, harpies, and chimeras, part whereof are in their very being but things common and low, and part of them merely imaginary; and yet man, who croucheth to everything, renders himself amorous and a slave of them; no otherwise than as if a good workman should stand to copy out, and counterfeit some trifles and fopperies. I considered by this sight how poor man was to be cheated, amused, and diverted from his sovereign good. And since that time, I could make no more stand to consider any of these things; and if I did it, I should reproach myself for it, as no sooner seeing them in churches or elsewhere, but this presently put upon my spirit. The original is nothing; the copy and the image is yet less; each thing is vain, except the employment of ourselves about God alone. An absolute abnegation will be necessary to all things, to follow in simplicity, without reserve or reflection, what our Saviour shall work in us, or appoint for us, let it be this or that. This way was showed me, in which I ought to walk towards Him: and hence it is, that all things to me ordinarily are without any gust or delight. I assure you, it is a great shame to a Christian to pass his days in this world more at ease than Jesus Christ here passed his: ah! had we but a little faith, what repose could we take out of the cross!'"
I will conclude his sayings with his dying blessing to his surviving children.
"I pray God bless you, and may it please Him to bless you, and to preserve you by his grace from the evil of the world, that you may have no part therein: and, above all, my children, that you may live in the fear and love of God, and yield due obedience to your mother."
Expressions of that weight and moment to the immortal good of man, that they abundantly prove to all sensible readers, that the author was a man of an enlightened mind, and of a soul mortified to the world, and quickened to some tastes of a supernatural life: let his youth, let his quality, adorned with so much zeal and piety, so much self-denial and constancy, become exemplary to those of worldly quality, who may be the readers of this book. Some perhaps will hear that truth from the several authors I have reported, whose names, death, and time have recovered from the envy of mess that would hardly endure it from me, if at all from the living. Be it as it will, I shall abundantly rejoice, if God shall please to make any part of this discourse effectual to persuade any into the love of holiness, without which, certain it is, no man shall see the Lord: but the pure in heart shall behold Him for ever.
To conclude, I cannot pass this reflection upon what is observed of the sayings of dying men, and which to me seems to have great instruction in it, viz.: All men agree, when they come to die, it is best to be religious; to live a holy, humble, strict, and self-denying life; retired, solitary, temperate, and disencumbered of the world. Then loving God above all, and our neighbours as ourselves, forgiving our enemies, and praying for them, are solid things, and the essential part of religion, as the true ground of man's happiness. Then all sin is exceeding sinful, and yields no more pleasure: but every inordinate desire is burthensome,and severely reproved. Then the world, with all the lawful comforts in it, weighs light against that sense and judgment, which such men have between the temporal and the eternal. And since it is thus with dying men, what instruction is it to the living, whose pretence for the most part is a perpetual contradiction? O that men would learn to number their days, that they might apply their hearts to wisdom! of which, the fear of the Lord is the true and only beginning. And blessed are they that fear always, for their feet shall be preserved from the snares of death.
1. Of the way of living among the first Christians.—2. An exhortation to all professing Christianity, to embrace the foregoing reasons and examples.—3. Plain dealing with such as reject them.—4. Their recompenses.—5. The author is better persuaded and assured of some: an exhortation to them.—6. Encouragement to the children of light to persevere, from a consideration of the excellency of their reward; the end and triumph of the Christian conqueror. The whole concluded with a brief supplication to Almighty God.
1. Of the way of living among the first Christians.—2. An exhortation to all professing Christianity, to embrace the foregoing reasons and examples.—3. Plain dealing with such as reject them.—4. Their recompenses.—5. The author is better persuaded and assured of some: an exhortation to them.—6. Encouragement to the children of light to persevere, from a consideration of the excellency of their reward; the end and triumph of the Christian conqueror. The whole concluded with a brief supplication to Almighty God.
I. Having finished so many testimonies as my time would give me leave, in favour of this subject, No Cross, No Crown; no temperance, no happiness; no virtue, no reward: no mortification, no glorification: I shall conclude with a short description of the life and worship of the Christians, within the first century or hundred years after Christ: what simplicity, what spirituality, what holy love and communion, did in that blessed age abound among them! It is delivered originally by Philo Judæus, and cited by Eusebius Pamphilius, in his Ecclesiastical history;[78]that those Christians renounced their substance, and severed themselves from all the cares of this life; and forsaking the cities, they lived solitarily in fields and gardens.They accounted their company who followed the contrary life of cares and bustles, as unprofitable and hurtful unto them, to the end that with earnest and fervent desires, they might imitate them which led this prophetical and heavenly life—"In many places," says he, "this people liveth, for it behoveth as well the Grecians as the Barbarians, to be partakers of this absolute goodness; but in Egypt, in every province, they abound: and especially about Alexandria. From all parts the better sort withdrew themselves into the soil and place of these worshippers, as they were called, as a most commodious place, adjoining to the lake of Mary, in a valley very fit, both for its security and the temperance of the air. They are further reported to have had meeting-houses, where the most part of the day was employed in worshipping God: that they were great allegorizers of the Scriptures, making them all figurative; that the external show of words, or the letter, resembleth the superficies of the body; and the hidden sense or understanding of the words seem in the place of the soul; which they contemplate by their beholding names, as it were, in a glass." That is, their religion consisted not chiefly in reading the letter, disputing about it, accepting things in literal constructions, but in the things declared of the substance itself, bringing things nearer to the mind, soul, and spirit, and pressing into a more hidden and heavenly sense; making religion to consist in the temperance and sanctity of the mind, and not in the formal bodily worship, so much now-a-days in repute, fitter to please comedians than Christians. Such was the practice of those times: but now the case is altered; people will be Christians, and have their worldly-mindedness too; but though God's kingdom suffer violence by such, yet shall they never enter: the life of Christ and his followers hath in all ages been another thing; andthere is but one way, one guide, one rest; all of which are pure and holy.
II. But if any, notwithstanding our many sober reasons, and numerous testimonies from Scripture, or the example or experience of religious, worldly, and profane living and dying men at home and abroad, of the greatest note, fame, and learning in the whole world, shall yet remain lovers and imitators of the folly and the vanity condemned: if the cries and groans, sighs and tears, and complaints, and mournful wishes of so many reputed great, nay, some sober men; "O that I had more time! O that I might live a year longer, I would live a stricter life! O that I were a poor Jean Urick! All is vanity in this world! O my poor soul! whither wilt thou go? O that I had the time spent in vain recreations! A serious life is above all:" and such like. If, I say, this by no means can prevail, but if yet they shall proceed to folly, and follow the vain world, what greater evidence can they give of their heady resolution, to go on impiously to despise God, to disobey his precepts, to deny Christ, to scorn, not to bear his cross, to forsake the examples of his servants, to give the lie to the dying serious sayings and consent of all ages; to harden themselves against the checks of conscience, to befool and sport away their precious time, and poor immortal souls to woe and misery? (Exod. xxxii. 6; Amos, vi. 3-6; Ephes. iv. 17, 24.) In short, it is plain to discover, you have neither reason to justify yourselves, nor yet enough of modesty to blush at your own folly; but as those that have lost the sense of one and the other, go on to eat and drink, and rise up to play. (Matt. xix. 16-22.) In vain, therefore, is it for you to pretend to fear the God of heaven, whose minds serve the god of the pleasure of this world: in vain is it to say, you believe in Christ, who receive not his self-denying doctrine: and to no better purpose will all you do avail.If he that had loved God and his neighbour, and kept the commandments from his youth, was excluded from being a disciple, because he sold not all, and followed Jesus; with what confidence can you call yourselves Christians, who have neither kept the commandments, nor yet forsaken anything to be so? And if it was a bar betwixt him and the eternal life he sought, that, notwithstanding all his other virtues, love to money and his external possessions could not be parted with, what shall be your end, who cannot deny yourselves many less things, but are daily multiplying your inventions to please your fleshly appetites? Certainly, much more impossible is it to forsake the greater. Christ tried his love, in bidding him forsake all, because he knew, for all his brags, that his mind was rivetted therein: not that if he had enjoyed his possessions with Christian indifferency, they might not have been continued; but what then is their doom, whose hearts are so fixed in the vanities of the world, that they will rather make them Christian, than not to be Christians in the use of them? But such a Christian this young man might have been, who had more to say for himself than the strictest Pharisee living dare pretend to; yet he went away sorrowful from Jesus. Should I ask you, if Nicodemus did well to come by night, (John, iii. 1-5,) and be ashamed of the great Messiah of the world? and if he was not ignorant when Christ spake to him of the new birth? I know you will answer me, he did very ill, and was very ignorant; but stay a while; the beam is in your own eyes: you are ready doubtless to condemn him, and the young man, for not doing what you not only refuse to do yourselves, but laugh at others for doing. Nay, had such passages not been writ, and were it not for the reverence some pretend for the Scriptures, they would both be as stupid as Nicodemus in their answers to such heavenly matters, and ready to call it canting to speak so, as it is frequent for you, when wespeak to the same effect, though not the same words: just as the Jews, at what time they called God their Father, they despised his Son; and when He spake of sublime and heavenly mysteries, some cried, He has a devil; others, He is mad; and most of them, These are hard sayings, who can hear them?
III. And to you all that sport yourselves after the manners of the world, let me say, that you are of those who profess you know God, but in works deny Him; living in those pleasures which slay the just in yourselves. (Tit. i. 16.) For though you talk of believing, it is no more than taking it for granted that there is a God, a Christ, Scriptures, &c. without further concerning yourselves to prove the verity thereof to yourselves or others, by a strict and holy conversation: which slight way of believing is but a light and careless way of ridding yourselves of further examination; and rather throwing them off with an inconsiderate granting of them to be so, than giving yourselves the trouble of making better inquiry, leaving that to your priests, ofttimes more ignorant, and not less vain and idle than yourselves, which is so far from a gospel faith, that it is the least respect you can show to God, Scriptures, &c. and next to which kind of believing, is nothing, under a denial of all.
But if you have hitherto laid aside all temperance, reason, and shame, at least be entreated to resume them now on a matter of this importance, and whereon no less concernment rests, than your temporal and eternal happiness. Oh, retire, retire; observe the reproofs of instruction in your own minds: that which begets sadness in the midst of mirth, which cannot solace itself, nor be contented below immortality, which calls often to an account at nights, mornings, and other seasons: which lets you see the vanity, the folly, the end and misery of these things; this is the just principle and holy Spirit of the Almighty within you: hear Him, obey Him: converse with them who are led byHim, and let the glories of another world be eyed, and the heavenly recompense of reward kept in sight. Admit not the thoughts of former follies to revive; but be steady, and continually exercised by his grace, to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world: (Tit. ii. 12:) for this is the true and heavenly nature of Christianity, to be so awakened and guided by the Spirit and grace of God, as to leave the sins and vanities of the world, and to have the affections regenerated, the mind reformed, and the whole man so baptised into purity and faithfulness towards God and man; as to act with reverence, justice, and mercy: to care for very few things; to be content with what you have: to use all as if you used them not; and to be so disentangled from the lusts, pleasures, profits, and honours of the world, as to have the mind raised to things above, the heart and affections fixed there: that in all things you may glorify God, and be as lights set on a hill, whose shining examples may be conducing to the happiness of others, who, beholding such good works, may be converted, and glorify God the Father of lights, in whom you all would be eternally blessed.
IV. But if the impenitence of any is so great, their pursuit of folly so earnest, and notwithstanding what has been thus seriously offered to reclaim them, they are resolved to take their course, and not to be at leisure for more divine things, I have this further to leave with them from the Almighty, who first called me to this work: that tribulation, anguish, and sorrow, (Rom. ii. 4, 5, 6, 9,) shall make their dying beds; indignation and wrath shall wind up their days, and trouble and vexation of mind and spirit shall be the miserable fruits which they shall reap, as the reward of all their wretched folly and rebellion! Be not deceived, God will not be mocked: (Gal. vi. 4-8,) it is so irreversibly decreed, Whatever is sown here, shall be reaped hereafter.And just is the Almighty, to make good his determinations upon such, who, instead of employing the time given them to work out their salvation with fear and trembling, have spent it in the pleasures of the flesh, which perish; as if their heaven were here. Nor can it seem unreasonable, since He hath thus long waited with remission of sins, and eternal life in his hand, to distribute to them that repent: that if such will not, to recompense so great obstinacy and love of this perishing world, with everlasting tribulation. (Rev. iii. 20, xxi. 27, xxii. 13-15.)
V. But I am otherwise persuaded of many: yes, I am assured the mercies of the everlasting God have been so extended to many, that this will prove an effectual call to bring them out of the ways and customs of this corrupted and corrupting world; and a means of establishing such, who hitherto have been unfaithful to what they have been already convinced of. And you, my friends, whose minds have received the alarm, whose hearts have truly heard the voice of one crying in the wilderness, where you have been straying from the Lord, Repent! repent! To you, in the name of the great and living God, I speak, I cry, Come away, come away: ah! what do you do there? Why are you yet behind? That is not your rest; it is polluted with the sins and vanities of a perishing world: gird up your loins: eye your light, one in all, Christ Jesus, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever: who hath enlightened every one: (John, i. 9:) follow Him, He will lead you to the city of God, that has foundations, into which the wicked cannot enter.
VI. Mind not the difficulties of your march; great and good things were never enterprised and accomplished without difficulty, which does but render their enjoyment more pleasant and glorious in the end. Let the holy men and women of old be your examples: remember good old Abraham, (Gen. xii. 1, 2,) the excellency of whose faithis set out by his obedience to the voice of God, in forsaking his father's house, kindred, country, &c. And Moses, that might in probability have been made a king, by faith in God leaves Egypt's glory and Pharaoh's favours, and chooses rather a sojourn and pilgrimage with the despised, afflicted, tormented Israelites in the wilderness, than to enjoy the pleasures of that great court for a season; esteeming Christ's reproaches greater riches than Egypt's treasures. (Heb. xi. 24-27; Isaiah, liv. 3.) But above all, how great was the reproach, how many the sufferings, how bitter the mockings, which Jesus suffered at the hands of his enemies! Yet with what patience, meekness, forgiveness, and constancy, did He in all his actions, demean himself towards his bloody persecutors, despising the shame, enduring the cross, for the joy that was set before him! (Heb. xii. 12.) And hath left us this glorious example, that we should follow his steps; (1 Peter, ii. 22, 23;) which hath in almost every age been imitated by some. The apostles sealed their testimonies with their blood, and multitudes after the example of their constancy, esteeming it the greatest honour, as it was always attended with the signal demonstration of the Divine presence. How memorable was that of Origen: "If my father were weeping upon his knees before me, and my mother hanging about my neck behind me, and all my brethren, sisters, and kinsfolk lamenting on every side, to retain me in the life and practice of the world, I would fling my mother to the ground, run over my father, despise all my kindred, and tread them under my feet, that I might run to Christ." Yet it is not unknown, how dutiful and tender he was in those relations. Not much unlike to this was that noble and known instance of latter times, in Galeacius Carraciolus, marquis of Vico, who abandoned his friends, estate, and country, resolutely saying with Moses, that he would rather suffer afflictions with the firstreformers and Protestants, than enjoy his former plenty, favours, and pleasures, with his old religion. (2 Tim. iii. 12; 1 Peter, iv. 1-5.) Nor is it possible for any now to quit the world, and live a serious, godly life in Christ, without the like suffering and persecution. There are among us also some who have suffered the displeasure of their most dear and intimate relations and friends; and all those troubles, disgraces, and reproaches, which are accustomed to attend such as decline the honours, pleasures, ambition, and preferments of the world, and that choose to live a humble, serious, and self-denying life before the Lord: but they are very unequal to the joy and recompense that follow. For though there be no affliction that is not grievous for the present, yet, what says the man of God? it works a far more exceeding weight of glory in the end. This has been both the faith and experience of those, that in all ages have trusted in God, who have not fainted by the way; but enduring, have obtained an eternal diadem.
Wherefore, since we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and burden, and the sin and vanities that do so easily beset us, and with a constant holy patience run our race, having our eye fixed upon Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith, not minding what is behind; (Heb. xii. 1; Rom. v. 1-4;) so shall we be delivered from every snare. No temptations shall gain us, no frowns shall scare us from Christ's cross, and our blessed self-denial. (Phil. iii. 13; Rom. ii. 7.) And honour, glory, immortality, and a crown of eternal life shall recompense all our sufferings in the end.
O Lord God! thou lovest holiness, and purity is thy delight in the earth; wherefore I pray thee, make an end of sin, and finish transgression, and bring in thyeverlasting righteousness to the souls of men, that thy poor creation may be delivered from the bondage it groans under, and the earth enjoy her sabbath again: that thy great Name may be lifted up in all nations, and thy salvation renowned to the ends of the world. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
THE NAMES OF THOSE PERSONS THAT ARE CITED IN FAVOUR OF THE VIRTUE AND TEMPERANCE MAINTAINED IN THE FOREGOING DISCOURSE.
THE NAMES OF THOSE PERSONS THAT ARE CITED IN FAVOUR OF THE VIRTUE AND TEMPERANCE MAINTAINED IN THE FOREGOING DISCOURSE.
I.Heathen Kings, Emperors, and Rulers, among the Greeks and Romans.
Page.Adrian,250Agasicles,240Agesilaus, ibid.Agathocles,234Agis,241Alcamenes, ibid.Alexander Severus,256Alexandrides,242Anaxilas, ibid.Antigonus,235Archidamus,242Aristides,236Ariston,242Artaxerxes Mnemon,234Augustus,249Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,251Cato,248Cleomenes,243Clitomachus,238Cyrus,233Demosthenes,239Dersyllidas,243Dioclesian,257Epaminondas,238Hippodamus,243Leonidas, ibid.Lysander,244Lacedæmonian Customs,245Lycurgus,247Pausanias,244Pericles,237Philip of Macedon,234Phocion,237Ptolemy,235Themistocles,236Theodosius,257Theopompus,244Trajan,250Vespasian, ibid.Xenophanes,235
II.—Heathen Philosophers.
Anacharsis,267Anaxagoras, ibid.Antisthenes,275Aristotle,281Bias,264Bambycatii,266Bion,278Chilon,263Cleobulus,265Crates,281Democritus,270Demonax,278Diogenes,279Epictetus,288Gymnosophistæ,343Gynæcosmi & Gynæconomi,266Heraclitus,268Hippias,266Mandanis,282Periander,264Pertinax,256Pescennius, ibid.Pittacus,265Plato,274Pythagoras,258Scipio Africanus,249Seneca,285Socrates,271Solon,259Thales,258Xenocrates,277Zeno,282
III.—Virtuous Heathen Women.
Cornelia,292Hipparchia,291Penelope,290Plotina,292Pompei Plautina, ibid.
IV.—Christian Testimonies of
Acacius Bishop of Amida,322Ambrose,307Augustine,308Cardan, ibid.Clement Romanus,305Council of Carthage,308Gratian,309Gregory,306Jerome,119Luther,128Machiavel,306Malorat,118Ouzelius,305Paulinus, Bishop of Nola,322Tertullian Chrysostom,306Theoph. Greg. Nazianzene,306William Tindall,163Bartholomew Tertian,316Waldenses,309,318—— of Taverns,312—— Dancing, ibid.Bacon, Lord Chancellor,334Charles V.,328Chrysostom, ibid.Dr. Donne,338Princess Eliz. of the Rhine,344Hugo Grotius,339Count Gondamor,336Henry Prince of Wales,335One of the family of Howard,344Sir Christopher Hatton,333Ignatius,327Justin Martyr, ibid.Francis Junius,340James, Earl of Marlborough,341Anthony Lowther,350Sir John Mason,330Cardinal Mazarine,337The Great Duke de Montmorency,334Count Oxenstiern,337Philip III. King of Spain,336A Sister of the family of Penn,347Sir William Penn,348Sir Walter Raleigh,330Cardinal Richelieu,336Du Renti,351Earl of Rochester,343A. Rivetus,340Solomon,325Sir Philip Sidney,329Selden,338Salmasius,339Sir Henry Vane,342Secretary Walsingham,329Sir Henry Wotton,333Cardinal Wolsey,328Bulstrode Whitlock,346
THE END.
Joseph Rickerby, Printer, Sherbourn Lane.