ESSAYS CIVIL AND MORAL.

I. OF TRUTH.

WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labour which men take in finding out of truth; nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts; that doth bring lyes in favour: but a natural though corrupt love of the lye itself. One of the later school of the Grecians examineth the matter, and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love lyes; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets; nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lye's sake. But I cannot tell this same truth is a naked and open day-light, that doth not shew the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day: but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lye doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like; but it would leave the minds of a number of men, poor shrunken things; full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing

to themselves? One of the fathers, in great severity, called poesy, vinum dæmonum; because it filleth the imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lye. But it is not the lye that passeth through the mind, but the lye that sinketh in, and settleth in it, that doth the hurt, such as we spake of before. But howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth, that the inquiry of truth, which is the love-making, or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it; is the sovereign good of human nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his sabbath work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit. First he breathed light upon the face of the matter, or chaos; then he breathed light into the face of man; and still he breatheth and inspireth light into the face of his chosen. The poet that beautified the sect, that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well: "It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and "to see ships tost upon the sea: a pleasure to stand "in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and "the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is "comparable to the standing upon the vantage "ground of truth, a hill not to be commanded, and "where the air is always clear and serene: and to see "the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tem"pests, in the vale below :" so always, that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in Providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.

To pass from theological and philosophical truth, to the truth of civil business; it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man's nature; and that mixture of falsehood is like allay in coin of gold and silver; which may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding and crooked

courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious. And therefore Montagne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the word of the lye should be such a disgrace, and such an odious charge? Saith he, "If it be well "weighed, to say that a man lyeth, is as much as to say, that he is brave towards God, and a coward "towards men. For a lye faces God, and shrinks "from man." Surely the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith, cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations of men: it being foretold, that when Christ cometh he shall not find faith upon the earth.

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II. OF DEATH.

MEN fear death, as children fear to go in the dark and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations, there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read in some of the friars' books of mortification, that a man should think with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger's end pressed or tortured; and thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when many times death passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb: for the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake only as a philosopher, and natural man, it was well said, Pompa mortis magis terret, quam mors ipsa. Groans, and convulsions, and a discoloured face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, shew death terrible. It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear of death: and therefore death is no such

terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honour aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear pre-occupateth it: nay, we read, after Otho the emperor had slain himself, pity, which is the tenderest of affections, provoked many to die, out of mere compassion to their sovereign, and as the truest sort of followers. Nay, Seneca adds, niceness and satiety; cogita quamdiu eadem feceris; mori velle, non tantum fortis, aut miser, sed etiam fastidiosus potest. A man would die, though he were neither valiant nor miserable, only upon a weariness to do the same thing so oft over and over. It is no less worthy to observe, how little alteration in good spirits the approaches of death make; for they appear to be the same men till the last instant. Augustus Cæsar died in a compliment; Livia conjugii nostri memor vive, et vale. Tiberius in dissimulation; as Tacitus saith of him; Jam Tiberium vires et corpus, non dissimulatio, deserebant. Vespasian in a jest; sitting upon the stool; Ut puto, Deus fio. Galba with a sentence; Feri, si ex re sit populi Romani; holding forth his neck. Septimius Severus in dispatch; Adeste, si quid mihi restat agendum: and the like. Certainly the Stoics bestowed too much cost upon death, and by their great preparations made it appear more fearful. Better saith he, qui finem vitæ extremum inter munera ponit natura. It is as natural to die, as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other. He that dies in an earnest pursuit, is like one that is wounded in hot blood; who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixt and bent upon somewhat that is good, doth avert the dolors of death: but above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is, Nunc dimittis; when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations. Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.-— Extinctus amabitur idem.

III. OF UNITY IN RELIGION.

RELIGION being the chief band of human society, it is a happy thing, when itself is well contained within the true band of unity. The quarrels and divisions about religion were evils unknown to the heathen. The reason was, because the religion of the heathen consisted rather in rites and ceremonies, than in any constant belief. For you may imagine what kind of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors and fathers of their church were the poets. But the true God hath this attribute, that he is a jealous God; and therefore his worship and religion will endure no mixture nor partner. We shall therefore speak a few words concerning the unity of the Church; what are the fruits thereof; what the bounds; and what the means.

The fruits of unity, next unto the well-pleasing of God, which is all in all, are two; the one towards those that are without the Church; the other towards those that are within. For the former; it is certain, that heresies and schisms are of all others the greatest scandals; yea more than corruption of manners. For as in the natural body, a wound, or solution of continuity, is worse than a corrupt humour; so in the spiritual. So that nothing doth so much keep men out of the Church, and drive men out of the Church, as breach of unity: and therefore, whensoever it cometh to that pass, that one saith, ecce in deserto; another saith, ecce in penetralibus; that is, when some men seek Christ in the conventicles of heretics, and others in an outward face of a church, that voice had need continually to sound in men's ears, nolite exire, go not out. The doctor of the Gentiles, the propriety of whose vocation drew him to have a special care of those without, saith; If an heathen come in, and hear you speak with several tongues, will he not say that you are mad? And certainly it is little better, when atheists, and profane persons, do hear of so many discordant and contrary opinions in religion; it doth avert them from the Church, and maketh them to sit

VOL. II.