because men bid them do so: but there is a devil in the company, and such as is his pleasure, such is theirs: he rejoices in the thriving sin, and the swelling fortune of his darling drunkenness, but his joys are the joys of him that knows and always remembers, that he shall infallibly have the biggest damnation; and then let it be considered how forced a joy that is, that is at the end of an intemperate feast.

Nec bene mendaci risus componitur ore,

Nec bene sollicitis ebria verba sonant.*

Certain it is, intemperance takes but nature's leavings; when the belly is full, and nature calls to take away, the pleasure that comes in afterward, is next to loathing: it is like the relish and taste of meats at the end of the third course, or sweetness of honey to him that hath eaten till he can endure to take no more; and in this there is no other difference of these men from them that die on another cause, than was observed among the Phalangia of old, τὰ μὲν ποιεῖ γελῶντας ἀποθνήσκειν, τὰ δὲ kλaίovτas, “some of these men make men die laughing, and some to die weeping :" so does the intemperate, and so does his brother that languishes of a consumption; this man dies weeping, and the other dies laughing; but they both die infallibly, and all his pleasure is nothing but the sting of a serpent, immixto liventia mella veneno, it wounds the heart, and he dies with a tarantula, dancing and singing till he bows his neck, and kisses his bosom with the fatal noddings and declensions of death.

4. In these pretenders to pleasure (which you see are but few, and they not very prosperous in their pretences), there is mingled so much trouble to bring them to act an enjoyment, that the appetite is above half tired before it comes; it is necessary a man should be hugely patient that is ambitious, ambulare per Britannos, Scythicas pati pruinas: no man buys death and damnation at so dear a rate, as he that fights for it, and endures cold and hunger,―patiens liminis et solis, “the heat of the sun, and the cold of the threshold;" the dangers of war, and the snares of a crafty enemy: he lies on the ground

* Tibullus, iii. 6. 35. Heyne, p. 219.

with a severity greater than the penances of a hermit, and fasts beyond the austerity of a rare penitent; with this only difference, that the one does it for heaven, and the other for an uncertain honor, and an eternity of flames. But, however, by this time that he hath won something, he hath spent some years, and he hath not much time left him to rest in his new purchase, and he hath worn out his body, and lessened his capacity of feeling it; and although it is ten to one he cannot escape all the dangers he must venture at, that he may come near his trifle, yet, when he is arrived thither, he can never long enjoy, nor well perceive or taste it; and, therefore, there are more sorrows at the gate, than there can dwell comforts in all the rooms of the houses of pride and great designs. And thus it is in revenge, which is pleasant only to a devil, or a man of the same cursed temper. He does a thing which ought to trouble him, and will move him to pity, what his own vile hands have acted; but if he does not pity, that is, be troubled with himself, and wish the things undone, he hath those affections by which the devil doth rejoice in destroying souls; which affections a man cannot have, unless he be perfectly miserable, by being contrary to God, to mercy, and to felicity; and, after all, the pleasure is false, fantastic, and violent, it can do him no good, it can do him hurt, it is odds but it will; and on him that takes revenge, revenge shall be taken, and by a real evil he shall dearly pay for the goods that are but airy and fantastical; it is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return on him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion. The pleasure of revenge is like the pleasure of eating chalk and coals; a foolish disease made the appetite, and it is entertained with an evil reward; it is like the feeding of a cancer or a wolf; the man is restless till it be done, and when it is, every man sees how infinitely he is removed from satisfaction or felicity.

5. These sins, when they are entertained with the greatest fondness from without, must have an extreme little pleasure, because there is a strong faction, and the better party against them something that is within contests against the entertainment, and they sit uneasily on the spirit when the man is vexed

that they are not lawful. The Persian king gave Themistocles a goodly pension, assigning Magnesia with the revenue of fifty talents for his bread, Lampsacum for his wine, and Myos for his meat; but all the while he fed high and drunk deep, he was infinitely afflicted that every thing went cross to his undertaking, and he could not bring his ends about to betray his country; and at last he mingled poison with his wine and drank it off, having first intreated his friends to steal for him a private grave in his own country. Such are the pleasures of the most pompous and flattering sins: their meat and drink are good and pleasant at first, and it is plenteous and criminal; but its employment is base, it is so against a man's interest, and against what is, and ought to be, dearest to him, that he cannot persuade his better parts to consent, but must fight against them and all their arguments. These things are against a man's conscience, that is, against his reason and his rest: and something within makes his pleasure sit uneasily. But so do violent perfumes make the head ache, and therefore wise persons reject them; and the eye refuses to stare on the beauties of the sun, because it makes it weep itself blind; and if a luscious dish please my palate, and turns to loathing in the stomach, I will lay aside that evil, and consider the danger and the bigger pain, not that little pleasure. So it is in sin; it pleases the senses, but diseases the spirit, and wounds that: and that it is apt to smart as the skin, and is as considerable in the provisions of pleasure and pain respectively; and the pleasure of sin to a contradicting reason, is like the joys of wine to a condemned man,

Difficile est imitari gaudia falsa;

Difficile est tristi fingere mente jocum. (Tibull.)

It will be very hard to delight freely in that which so vexes the more tender and most sensible part; so that, what Pliny said of the poppies growing in the river Caicus, ἔχει ἀντὶ καρποῦ Xilov, “it brings a stone instead of a flower or fruit;" so are the pleasures of these pretending sins; the flower at the best is stinking, but there is a stone in the bottom; it is gravel in the teeth, and a man must drink the blood of his own gums when he manducates such unwholesome, such unpleasant fruit.

vitiorum gaudia vulnus habent;

They make a wound, and therefore are not very pleasant. Τὸ γὰρ ζῇν μὴ καλῶς, μέγας πόνος, "It is a great labor and

travail to live a vicious life."

6. The pleasure in the acts of these few sins that do pretend to it, is a little limited nothing, confined to a single faculty, to one sense, having nothing but the skin for its organ or instrument, an artery, or something not more considerable than a lute-string; and at the best, it is but the satisfaction of an appetite which reason can cure, which time can appease, which every diversion can take off; such as is not perfective of his nature, nor of advantage to his person; it is a desire to no purpose, and as it comes with no just cause, so can be satisfied with no just measures; it is satisfied before it comes to a vice, and when it is come thither, all the world cannot satisfy it: a little thing will weary it, but nothing can content it. For all these sensual desires are nothing but an impatience of being well and wise, of being in health, and being in our wits; which two things if a man could endure, (and it is but reasonable, a man would think, that we should) he would never lust to drown his heart in seas of wine, or oppress his belly with loads of undigested meat, or make himself base by the mixtures of a harlot, by breaking the sweetest limits and holy festivities of marriage. Malum impatientia est boni, said Tertullian, it is nothing else; to please the sense is but to do a man's self mischief; and all those lusts tend to some direct dissolution of a man's health or his felicity, his reason or his religion; it is an enemy that a man carries about him and as the Spirit of God said concerning Babylon, Quantum in deliciis fuit, tantum date illi tormentum et luctum, 'Let her have torment and sorrow according to the measure of her delights,' is most eminently true in the pleasing of our senses; the lust and desire is a torment, the remembrance and the absence is a torment, and the enjoyment does not satisfy, but disables the instrument, and tires the faculty; and when a man hath but a little of what his sense covets, he is not contented, but impatient for more ; and when he hath loads of it, he does not feel it. For he that swallows a full goblet does not taste his wine: and this is the

pleasure of the sense; nothing contents it but that which he cannot perceive; and it is always restless, till it be weary; and all the way unpleased, till it can feel no pleasure; and that which is the instrument of sense, is the means of its torment; by the faculty by which it tastes, by the same it is afflicted; for so long as it can taste, it is tormented with desire; and when it can desire no longer, it cannot feel pleasure.

7. Sin hath little or no pleasure in its very enjoyment; because its very manner of entry and production is by a curse and a contradiction: it comes into the world like a viper through the sides of its mother, by means unnatural, violent, and monstrous. Men love sin only because it is forbidden; 'Sin took occasion by the law,' saith St. Paul; it could not come in on its own pretences, but men rather suspect secret pleasure in it because there are guards kept on it.

Sed quia cæcus inest vitiis amor, omne futurum
Despicitur, suadentque brevem præsentia fructum,
Et ruit in vetitum damni secura libido.

Men run into sin with blind affections, and against all reason despise the future, hoping for some little pleasure for the present; and all this is only because they are forbidden: do not many men sin out of spite? Some out of the spirit of disobedience, some by wildness and indetermination, some by imprudence, and because they are taken in a fault;

-frontemque a crimine sumunt;

some because they are reproved; many by custom, others by importunity:

Ordo fuit crevisse malis

It grows on crab-stocks, and the lust itself is sour and unwholesome and since it is evident that very many sins come in wholly on these accounts, such persons and such sins cannot pretend pleasure; but as naturalists say of pulse, cum maledictis et probris serendum præcipiunt, ut lætius proveniat : "the country-people were used to curse it, and rail on it all the while that it was sowing, that it might thrive the better;" it is true with sins, they grow up with curses, with spite and