For those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow:
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery,

Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperato men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally;

And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

XI.-Spit in my face, you Jews, and pierce my side,
Buffet and scoff, scourge and crucify me;
For I have sinn'd, and sinn'd; and only he,
Who could do no iniquity, hath died:
But by my death cannot be satisfied
My sins, which pass the Jews' impiety:
They kill'd once an inglorious man, but I
Crucify him daily, being now glorified.
O, let me then his strange love still admire :
Kings pardon, but he bore our punishment;
And Jacob came, clothed in vile harsh attire,
But to supplant, and with gainful intent:
God clothed himself in vile man's flesh, that so
He might be weak enough to suffer woe.

XII.-Why are we by all creatures waited on!
Why do the prodigal elements supply
Life and food to me, being more pure than I,
Simpler, and further from corruption?
Why brook'st thou, ignorant horse, subjection?
Why do you, bull and boar, so sillily

Dissemble weakness, and by one man's stroke die,
Whose whole kind you might swallow and feed upon
Weaker I am, woe's me! and worse than you;
You have not sinn'd, nor need be timorous,
But wonder at a greater, for to us
Created nature doth these things subdue;
But their Creator, whom sin, nor nature tied,
For us, his creatures, and his foes hath died.

XIII.-What if this present were the world's last night?
Mark in my heart, O soul, where thou dost dwell,

The picture of Christ crucified, and tell

Whether his countenance can thee affright!

Tears in his eyes quench the amazing light,

Blood fills his frowns, which from his pierced head feil.
And can that tongue adjudge thee unto hell,

Which pray'd forgiveness for his foes' fierce spite!
No, no; but as in my idolatry

I said to all my profane mistresses,

Beauty of pity, foulness only is

A sign of rigour; so I say to thee;

To wicked spirits are horrid shapes assign'd,
This beauteous form assumes a piteous mind.

XIV. Batter my heart, three-person'd God; for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
1, like an usurp'd town, to another due,

Labour t' admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, we should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weak or untrue;
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov'd fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy.
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me; for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free;
Nor ever chaste except you ravish me.

XV.-Wilt thou love God, as he thee? then digest,
My soul, this wholesome meditation,

How God the Spirit, by angels waited on
In heav'n, doth make his temple in thy breast;
The Father having begot a Son most bless'd,
And still begetting, (for he ne'er begun),
Had deign'd to choose thee by adoption,
Coheir to his glory, and sabbath's endless rest,
And as a robb'd man, which by search doth find
His stol'n stuff sold, must lose or buy 't again :
The Son of glory came down, and was slain,
Us whom h' had made and Satan stole t' unbind;
'Twas much, that man was made like God before;
But, that God should be made like man, much more.

XVI.-Father, part of his double interest

Unto thy kingdom thy Son gives to me;

His jointure in the knotty Trinity

He keeps, and gives to me his death's conquest.

This Lamb, whose death with life the world hath bless'd,
Was from the world's beginning slain; and he

Hath made two wills, which, with the legacy

Of his and thy kingdom, thy sons invest :
Yet such are these laws, that men argue yet
Whether a man those statues can fulfil;
None doth; but thy all-healing grace and spirit
Revive again, what law and letter kill:
Thy law's abridgment and thy last command
Is all but love; O let this last will stand!

211.-LUXURY.

SIR G. MACKENZIE. [SIR GEORGE MACKENZIE, who filled the distinguished post of King's Advocate in Scotland, was born at Dundee in 1636, and died in 1691. He has the reputation of being amongst the first Scotsmen who wrote the English language with purity. The following extract is from a treatise published after his death, and dedicated by him to the University of Oxford, entitled, The Moral History of Frugality.']

One might reasonably have thought that as the world grew older luxury would have been more shunned; for the more men multiplied, and the greater their dangers grew, they should have been the more easily induced to shun all expense, that they might the more successfully provide against those inconveniences. But yet it proved otherwise, and luxury was the last of all vices that prevailed over mankind; for after riches had been hoarded up, they rotted, as it were, into luxury; and after that tyranny and ambition had robbed many poor innocents, luxury, more cruel than they, was made use of by Providence to revenge their quarrel, and so triumphed over the conquerors. Thus, when Rome had by wit and courage subdued the world, it was drowned in that inundation of riches which these brought upon it.

This vice has its own masks and disguises too; for it transforms itself into virtue, whilst, like that, it runs faster from avarice, and laughs more loudly at it than liberality itself does, and to that height that it seems to be angry at liberality, as being only a kind of niggardliness. It pretends to keep open table to those who starve, and to have an open purse always for men of merit. Beauty and learning are its pensioners, and all manner of divertisements are still in his retinue. It obliges the peaceable to favour it, as an enemy to every thing that is uneasy; and it engages men of parts to speak for it, because, whilst it lavishes the treasures others have hoarded up, it feeds the hope and expectations of such as were provided by Nature of nothing but a stock of wit. And there being seldom other matches betwixt liberality and prodigality but such as are to be measured by exact reflections upon the estates of the spenders, it sometimes praises that as liberality which ought to be condemned as luxury; and even where the transgression may be discerned, the bribed and interested multitude will not acknowledge that liberality, by exceeding its bounds, has lost its name. Some, also, from the same principle, authorise this vice by the pretext of law, crying out that every man should have liberty to dispose of his own as he pleases, and by the good of commerce, saying, with a serious face, that frugality would ruin all trade, and if no man spent beyond his measure riches would not circulate; nor should virtuous, laborious, or witty men find in this circulation occasions to excite or reward their industry. And from this, probably, flows the law of England's not interdicting prodigals, denying him the administration of his own estate, as the laws of all other nations do.

The great arguments that weigh with me against luxury are, first, that luxury disorders, confounds, and is inconsistent with that just and equal economy, whereby God governs the world as his own family, in which all men are but children or servants; for as the avaricious hoards up for one that which should be distributed

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among many; so, in luxury, one vicious man spends upon himself what should maintain many hundreds; and he surfeits to make them starve. This is not to be a steward, but master. Nor can we think that the wise and just Judge of all things will suffer, in his beautiful world, what the most negligent and imprudent amongst us could not suffer in his private family.

The second argument is, that nature should be man's chief rule in things relating to this world; and reason his great director, under God, in making use of that rule, and the eyes (as it were) by which we are to see how to follow it. By this nature teaches us how to proportion the means to the end, and not to employ all the instruments whereby such an end may be procured, but only such as are necessary and suitable for the procuring of it, which proportion luxury neither understands nor follows; and therefore we must conclude it unnatural and unreasonable, and that frugality is the true mathematics of moral philosophy: and by this we may condemn, not only such as Senecio was in the Roman History, who delighted to have his clothes and his shocs twice as large as were fit for his body and feet, which the luxurious laughed at with others; but even such as keep twice as great tables, build twice as great houses, pay twice as many servants as are fit for them, are as mad as he. For though that disproportion be not so very perceptible as the other, because the bulk of a man's estate is not so easily measured and known as that of his person, and because there are twice as many fools of this kind as there are of the other, so that reason is out-voted though it cannot be answered, yet the folly is the same every where; and in this it is more dangerous, that Senecio wronged only himself, whilst they oft-times wrong and ruin both their posterity and neighbours. Thus I have seen a man, otherwise judicious enough, much surprised when it was represented that his building (though it seemed to him and many others to carry no great disproportion to his estate) yet would, in forty-four years (which is but a short time), equal his estate, allowing the interest of his money to equal the capital sum in the space of eleven years and a half, which it did by law; for 1007., forborne for forty-eight years, at six per cent. compound interest, amounts to 17341. 4s. 2d. And how many may forbear 1007.? and this sum, in ten years, which is but a very short time, will amount to 27747. 128. by simple multiplication, without compound interest. We should be proportionable in our expense, for that which widens a man's fancy in any one thing makes it extravagant in all things, as they who use their stomachs to too much of any one meat will make it craving as to all others. Whereas, on the other hand, that which should enamour men of frugality is, that it accustoms us to reasoning and proportion, observing exactly the least perceptible proportions, and the smallest consequences, which makes me call to mind the remarkable story of the Holland merchant, who having married his daughter to a luxurious, rich citizen, to the great dissatisfaction of his wife, she came the next day to the bride and bridegroom, and offered them the egg of a turkey hen, and desired her daughter to use herself, in exactly looking to the product of that egg, to consider the great things which frugality can do in other matters. But, her husband and she having laughed at the lesson, the mother improved so far the egg, that within twenty years the advantage of it and the luxury of that married couple grew so fast, that they needed the meanest assistance, and the product of the egg afforded a comfortable one; for with the considerable sum that was gathered by it they stocked themselves anew, and by the help of the (formerly slighted) lesson, of not despising the meanest things, raised themselves again to a very considerable estate. And if any man will but consider yearly what he superfluously spends, and how much that would multiply in process of time, he will asily perceive that what he spends in the consequence is vastly greater than appears to him in the first calculation; as, for instance, if a man who may spend 500l. per

annum does spend 6007, this small error of 100l. a year will amount, in forty-four years, at six per cent., to the sum of 13737. 6s. and odd pence. And though a man thinks it scarce worth his pains to manage so as to preserve 100l., he must be very luxurious who thinks it not worth his pains to gain the sum of 13731. And it is a great defect in our reason, that those ills which follow as necessary consequence are despised as mean, because the consequences themselves are remote. And as that is the best eye, so that is likewise the best reason, which sees clearly at a great distance. Another great error that luxury tempts us to, by not reasoning exactly, is, that it makes us calculate our estates without deducting what is payable out of them to the poor, to the king, and to creditors, before we proportion our expense; whereas we should spend only what is truly our own; and the law, to prevent luxury, tells us that id tantum nostrum est quod, deductis debitis, apud nos remanet: That is only ours which remains with us, after our debts are deducted. Nor will a proportional part of our estates answer the equivalent of our debts. For, if I owe 100%. a year, no part of my estate that pays me 1007. a year will pay it; for many accidents may hinder me to get my own rent, but no accident will procure an abatement of my debt. And this leads me to consider that frugality numbers always the accidents that may intervene amongst other creditors; and the wise Hollander observes, that a man should divide his estate in three parts; upon one third he should live, another third he should lay up for his children, and the last he should lay by for accidents. There are few men who do not in their experience find, that their whole life being balanced together, they have lost a third part always of their revenue by accidents. And most families are destroyed by having the children's provision left as a debt upon them. So that a man should at least endeavour to live upon the one half; and leave the other half for his children.

The next argument that discredits luxury with me is, that it occasions many and great inconveniences, both to him who labours under it, and to the commonwealth under which he lives.

The luxurious man oppresses that nature which should be the foundation of his joy; and, by false reasoning, he is made by this vice to believe, that because some ease and aliments are pleasant, therefore, the more he takes of them, the more he will be pleased. And the first proofs by which he is convinced that he is cheated in this are those diseases, into which those vices, when they are swelled, overflow, and destroy that ground which a gentle watering would have refreshed. Then he begins to understand that a mediocrity is the Golden Rule, and that proportion is to be observed in all the course of our life.

Luxury also makes a man so soft, that it is hard to please him, and easy to trouble him. So that his pleasures at last become his burden. Luxury is a nice master, hard to be pleased: Res est severa voluptas, said he who knew it best. Whereas the frugal and temperate man can, by fasting till a convenient time, make any food pleasant; and is by travelling, when it is convenient, hardened sufficiently not to be troubled by any ordinary accidents. The luxurious must at last owe to this temperance that health and ease which his false pleasures have robbed him of; he must abstain from his wines, feastings, and fruits, until temperance has cured him. And I have known many, who after they have been tortured by the tyranny of luxury, whilst they had riches in abundance to feed it, become very healthful and strong when they fell into that poverty which they had so abhorred. Some whereof have confessed to me, that they never thought themselves so happy, and that they were never so well pleased, as since they had escaped the temptations of that dangerous vice. Luxury does not more ruin a man's body, than it debases his mind; for it makes him servilely drudge under those who support his luxury; in pimping to all their vices, flattering all their extravagances, and executing the most dreadful of