arguments be fair and specious, I shall think them fallacies, while they have not faith with him; and what necessity for me to be temperate, when he that tells me so sees no such need, but hopes to go to heaven without it? or if the duty be necessary, I shall learn the definition of temperance, and the latitudes of my permission, and the bounds of lawful and unlawful, by the exposition of his practice; if he binds a burden upon my shoulders, it is but reason I should look for him to bear his portion too. "Good works convince more than miracles;" and the power of ejecting devils is not so great probation that Christian religion came from God, as is the holiness of the doctrine, and its efficacy and productions upon the hearty professors of the institution. St. Pachomius, when he wore the military girdle under Constantine the emperor, came to a city of Christians, who having heard that the army in which he then marched was almost starved for want of necessary provisions, of their own charity relieved them speedily and freely. He wondering at their so free and cheerful dispensation, enquired what kind of people these were whom he saw so bountiful. It was answered they were Christians, whose profession it is to hurt no man, and to do good to every man. The pleased soldier was convinced of the excellency of that religion which brought forth men so good and so pious, and loved the mother for the children's sake, threw away his girdle, and became Christian, and religious, and a saint. And it was Tertullian's great argument in behalf of Christians, "see how they love one another, how every man is ready to die for his brother:" it was a living argument and a sensible demonstration of the purity of the fountain, from whence such limpid waters did derive. But so John the baptist made himself a fit instrument of preparation, and so must all the Christian clergy be fitted for the dissemination of the gospel of Jesus. 3. The Baptist had till this time, that is, about thirty years, lived in the wilderness under the discipline of the holy Ghost, under the tuition of angels, in conversation with God, in great mortification and disaffections to the world, his garments rugged and uneasy, his meat plain, necessary, and without variety, his employment prayers and devotion, his company wild beasts in ordinary, in extraordinary messengers from heaven; and all this not undertaken of necessity to subdue a bold lust, or to punish a loud crime, but to become more holy and pure from the lesser stains and insinuations of too free infirmities, and to prepare himself for the great ministry of serving the holy Jesus in His publication. Thirty years he lived in great austerity; and it was a rare patience and exemplar mortification: we use not to be so pertinacious in any pious resolutions, but our purposes disband upon the sense of the first violence; we are free and confident of resolving to fast when our bellies are full", but when we are rere quam frui.-Cic. De senect. [§ 14. tom. iii. p. 309.] S. Chrys. Orat. de S. Babyla. [tom. iii. p. 531. E. et pass.] Satiatis et expletis jucundius est ca called upon by the first necessities of nature, our zeal is cool, and dissoluble into air upon the first temptation; and we are not upheld. in the violences of a short austerity without faintings and repentances to be repented of, and "enquirings after the vow is past," and searching for excuses and desires to reconcile our nature and our conscience; unless our necessity be great, and our sin clamorous, and our conscience loaden, and no peace to be had without it: and it is well if upon any reasonable grounds we can be brought to suffer contradictions of nature for the advantages of grace. But it would be remembered, that the Baptist did more upon a less necessity; and possibly the greatness of the example may entice us on a little farther than the customs of the world or our own indevotions would engage us. 4. But after the expiration of a definite time John came forth from his solitude, and served God in societies. He served God and the content of his own spirit by his conversing with angels and dialogues with God, so long as he was in the wilderness, and it might be some trouble to him to mingle with the impurities of men, amongst whom he was sure to observe such recesses from perfection, such violation of all things sacred, so great despite done to all ministries of religion, that to him who had no experience or neighbourhood of actions criminal, it must needs be to his sublimed and clarified spirit more punitive and afflictive than his hairen shirt and his ascetic diet was to his body; but now himself, that tried both, was best able to judge which state of life was of greatest advantage and perfection. 5. "In his solitude he did breathe more pure inspiration, heaven was more open, God was more familiar" and frequent in His visitations. In the wilderness his company was angels, his employment meditations and prayer, his temptations simple and from within, from the impotent and lesser rebellions of a mortified body, his occasions of sin as few as his examples, his condition such, that if his soul were at all busy, his life could not easily be other than the life of angels; for his work and recreation, and his visits, and his retirements, could be nothing but the variety and differing circumstances of his piety: his inclinations to society made it necessary for him to repeat his addresses to God; for his being a sociable creature, and yet in solitude, made that his conversing with God, and being partaker of divine communications, should be the satisfaction of his natural desires, and the supply of his singularity and retirement; the discomforts of which made it natural for him to seek out for some refreshment, and therefore to go to heaven for it, he having rejected the solaces of the world already. And all this besides the innocencies of his silence", which is very great, and to be judged of in proportion to the infinite extravagancies of our language, [vid. Prov. xx. 25.] In solitudine aer purior, cœlum apertius, familiarior Deus.-Orig. [In S. Luc. hom. xi. tom. iii. p. 944.] * Πολλοῖς γὰρ ἀνθρώποισι φάρμακον κακῶν [oqueiov.]-Carcinus. [In Stob. Floril. T. xxxiii. tom. ii. p. 38.] there being no greater perfection here to be expected', than "not to offend in our tongue." "It was solitude and retirement, in which Jesus kept His vigils; the desert places heard Him pray; in a privacy He was born; in the wilderness He fed His thousands; upon a mountain apart He was transfigured; upon a mountain He died; and from a mountain He ascended to His Fathera" in which retirements His devotion certainly did receive the advantage of convenient circumstances, and Himself in such dispositions twice had the opportunities of glory. b 6. And yet after all these excellencies the Spirit of God called the Baptist forth to a more excellent ministry; for in solitude pious persons might go to heaven by the way of prayers and devotion, but in society they might go to heaven by the way of mercy, and charity, and dispensations to others. In solitude there are fewer occasions of vices, but there is also the exercise of fewer virtues; and the temptations, though they be not from many objects, yet are in some circumstances more dangerous, not only because the worst of evils, spiritual pride, does seldom miss to creep upon those goodly oaks, like ivy, and suck their heart out, and a great mortifier without some complacencies in himself, or affectations or opinions, or something of singularity, is almost as unusual as virgin purity and unstained thoughts in the Bordelli, (St. Hierom had tried it, and found it so by experience, and he it was that said so ;) but also because whatsoever temptation does invade such retired persons, they have privacies enough to act it in, and no eyes upon them but the eye of Heaven, no shame to encounter withal, no fears of being discovered; and we know by experience that a witness of our conversation is a great restraint to the inordination of our actions. Men seek out darknesses and secrecies to commit a sin; and "the evil, that no man sees, no man reproves; and that makes the temptation bold and confident, and the iniquity easy and ready:" so that as they have not so many tempters as they have abroad, so neither have they so many restraints; their vices are not so many, but they are more dangerous in themselves, and to the world safe and opportune. And as they communicate less with the world, so they do less charity, and fewer offices of mercy: no sermons there but when solitude is made popular, and the city removes into the wilderness; no comforts of a public religion, or visible remonstrances of the communion of saints; and of all the kinds of spiritual mercy only one can there properly be exercised, and of the corporal none at z James iii. Petrus Cellensis, lib. iv. ep. 12. [p. 88.] In solitudine cito obrepit superbia. Ep. 4. [95 ed. Ben. tom. iv. par. 2. col. 773.] Non minorem flagitiis occasionem secreta præbuerint.-Quinctil. [Inst. or., lib. i. cap. 2. tom. i. p. 25.] d Maxima pars peccatorum tollitur, si peccaturis testis assistat.-Sen. [Ep. xi. tom. i. p. 36.] e Malum quod nemo videt, nemo arguit; ubi non timetur reprehensor, securius accedit tentator, et liberius perpetratur iniquitas.-S. Bern. [Ep. cxv. col. 1502.] all. And this is true in lives and institutions of less retirement, in proportion to the degree of the solitude: and therefore church-story reports of divers very holy persons, who left their wildernesses and sweetnesses of devotion in their retirement, to serve God in public by the ways of charity and exterior offices. Thus St. Antony and Acepsamas came forth to encourage the fainting people to contend to death for the crown of martyrdom; and Aphraates, in the time of Valens the Arian emperor, came abroad to assist the church in the suppressing the flames kindled by the Arian faction. And upon this ground they that are the greatest admirers of eremitical life call the episcopal function "the state of perfection," and a degree of ministerial and honorary excellency beyond the pieties and contemplations of solitude, because of the advantages of gaining souls, and religious conversation, and going to God by doing good to others. 7. John the baptist united both these lives; and our blessed Saviour, who is the great precedent of sanctity and prudence, hath determined this question in His own instance; for He lived a life common, sociable, humane, charitable, and public: and yet, for the opportunities of especial devotion, retired to p ayer and contemplation, but came forth speedily; for the devil never set upon Him but in the wilderness, and by the advantage of retirement. For as God hath many, so the devil hath some, opportunities of doing his work in our solitariness. But Jesus reconciled both; and so did John the baptist, in several degrees and mannersh: and from both we are taught, that solitude is a good school, and the world is the best theatre; the institution is best there, but the practice here; the wilderness hath the advantage of discipline, and society opportunities of perfection; privacy is the best for devotion, and the public for charity. In both, God hath many saints and servants; and from both the devil hath had some. 8. His sermon was an exhortation to repentance and a holy life: he gave particular schedules of duty to several states of persons; sharply reproved the pharisees for their hypocrisy and impiety, it being worse in them, because contrary to their rule, their profession, and institution; gently guided others into the ways of righteousness, calling them "the straight ways of the Lord," that is, the direct and shortest way to the kingdom, for of all lines the straight is the shortest, and as every angle is a turning out of the way, so every sin is an obliquity, and interrupts the journey. By such discourses, and a baptism, he disposed the spirits of men for the entertaining the Messias, and the homilies of the gospel. For John's doctrine was to the sermons of Euseb. Hist., lib. vi. cap. 3. [De Origene.] Theodoret. [lib. iv. cap. 23, 24. tom. iii. p. 1004.)-Nihil est illi principi Deo, qui omnem hunc mundum regit, quod quidem in terris fiat, acceptius, quam concilia cœtusque hominum jure sociati, quæ civitates appellantur.-Cic. Somn. Scip [cap. 3. tom. iii. p. 408.] h Ο Ιωάννης φιλέρημος, ὁ Ἰησοῦς ἡμερος καὶ τιθασσὸς καὶ ἀγελαῖος. [vid. Grot. in Matt. iii. 16, et Philon. in libro Quis rer. div. hæres,' tom. i. p. 491, ed. Mangey.] Jesus as a preface to a discourse; and his baptism was to the new institution and discipline of the kingdom, as the vigils to a holy day; of the same kind, in a less degree. But the whole economy of it represents to us that repentance is the first intromission into the sanctities of Christian religion; the Lord treads upon no paths that are not hallowed and made smooth by the sorrows and cares of contrition, and the impediments of sin cleared by dereliction and the succeeding fruits of emendation. But as it related to the Jews, his baptism did signify, by a cognation to their usual rites and ceremonies of ablution, and washing gentile proselytes, that the Jews had so far receded from their duty and that holiness which God required of them by the law, that they were in the state of strangers, no better than heathens; and therefore were to be treated, as themselves received gentile proselytes, by a baptism and a new state of life, before they could be fit for the reception of the Messias, or be admitted to His kingdom. 9. It was an excellent sweetness of religion that had entirely possessed the soul of the Baptist, that in so great reputation of sanctity, so mighty concourse of people, such great multitudes of disciples and confidents, and such throngs of admirers, he was humble without mixtures of vanity, and confirmed in his temper and piety against the strength of the most impetuous temptation. And he was tried to some purpose for when he was tempted to confess himself to be the Christ, he refused it; or to be Elias, or to be accounted "that prophet," he refused all such great appellatives, and confessed himself only to be "a voice," the lowest of entities, whose being depends upon the speaker, just as himself did upon the pleasure of God, receiving form, and publication, and employment, wholly by the will of his Lord, in order to the manifestation of "the Word eternal." It were well that the spirits of men would not arrogate more than their own, though they did not lessen their own just dues. It may concern some end of piety or prudence that our reputation be preserved by all just means, but never that we assume the dues of others, or grow vain by the spoils of an undeserved dignity. Honours are the rewards of virtue, or engagement upon offices of trouble and public use: but then they must suppose a preceding worth, or a fair employment. But he that is a plagiary of others' titles or offices, and dresses himself with their beauties, hath no more solid worth or reputation, than he should have nutriment, if he ate only with their mouth, and slept their slumbers, himself being open and unbound in all the regions of his senses. THE PRAYER. O holy and most glorious God, who before the publication of Thy eternal Son, the Prince of peace, didst send Thy servant, John baptist, by the examples of mortification, and the rude austerities of a penitential life, and by the sermons of penance, to remove all |