those abstracted and ecstatic souls do walk about in their own corpses as spirits with the bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear and feel, though indeed the organs are destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves; for then the soul, beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality. (142)

We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. It is indeed a part of life that best expresseth death; for every man truly lives, so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself: Themistocles, (143) therefore that slew his soldier in his sleep, was a merciful executioner; it is a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented; I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily; a death which Adam died before his mortality; a

(142) A very eloquent and beautiful passage, which at bottom resembles that of Waller,

"The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,

Lets in new light through chinks that time has made."-ED.

(143) This was not Themistocles but Iphicrates, who, at the siege of Corinth, going his rounds found a sentinel asleep at his post, and pierced him through the heart. On some one's remarking upon his severity, "Why," said he, "I found him asleep, and I have left him so."-ED.

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death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life and death; in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and a half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God.

The night is come, like to the day;
Depart not thou great God away.
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre of thy light.
Keep still in my horizon; for me
The sun makes not the day, but thee.
Thou whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep,

Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacob's temples blest.
While I do rest, my soul advance,
Make my sleep a holy trance;
That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake into some holy thought;
And with as active vigour run
My course, as doth the nimble sun.
Sleep is a death; O make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die;
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
Howe'er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at least with thee.
And thus assured, behold I lie
Securely, or to awake or die.

These are my drowsy days; in vain

I do now wake to sleep again :

O come that hour, when I shall never
Sleep again, but wake for ever.

This is the dormative I take to bedward; I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep: after which, I close mine eyes in security, content

to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection. (144)

The method I should use in distributive justice, I often observe in commutative; and keep a geometrical proportion in both; whereby becoming equable to others, I become unjust to myself, and supererogate in that common principle, Do unto others as thou wouldst be done unto thyself.' I was not born unto riches, neither is it I think my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the freedom of my mind, and frankness of my disposition, were able to contradict and cross my fates. For to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; to conceive ourselves urinals, or be persuaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous or so many degrees beyond the power of hellebore, as this. The opinion of theory, and positions of men, are not so void of reason, as their practised conclusions: some have held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is air, fire, water; but all this is philosophy, and there is no delirium, if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice, to that subterraneous idol, and God of the earth. I do confess I am an atheist; I cannot persuade myself to honour what the world adores; whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my body, it hath no influence or operation without; I would not entertain a base design, or an action that should call me villain, for the Indies; and for this only do I love

(144) A strain of splendid piety.-ED.

and honour my own soul, and have methinks two arms too few to embrace myself. Aristotle is too severe, (145) that will not allow us to be truly liberal without wealth, and the bountiful hand of fortune; if this be true, I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions, and bountiful wellwishes. But if the example of the mite be not only an act of wonder, but an example of the noblest charity, surely poor men may also build hospitals, and the rich alone have not erected cathedrals. I have a private method which others observe not; I take the opportunity of myself to do good; I borrow occasion of charity from mine own necessities, and supply the wants of others, when I am in most need myself; for it is an honest stratagem to make advantage of ourselves, and so to husband the acts of virtue, that where they were defective in one circumstance, they may repay their want, and multiply their goodness in another. I have not Peru in my desires, but a competence, and ability to perform those good works, to which he hath inclined my nature. He is rich, who hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be so poor, that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord; there is more rhetoric in that one sentence, than in a library of sermons; and indeed if those sentences were understood by the reader, with the same emphasis as

(145) This subject is also discussed in the Rhetoric. I. 5, 6. but the exact passage referred to I have been unable to discover. -ED.

they are delivered by the author we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar without relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers; (146) these scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untouched part of us both; there is under these cantos and miserable outsides, these mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose genealogy is God's as well as ours, and is as fair a way to salvation as ourselves. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without our poverty, take away the object of charity, not understanding only the commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ.

Now there is another part of charity, which is the basis and pillar of this, and that is the love of God, (147) for whom we love our neighbour; for this I think charity, to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God. All that is truly amiable is God, or, as it were, a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is it strange that we should place affection on that which is invisible: all that we truly love is thus; what we adore under affection of our senses, deserves not the honour of so pure a title. Thus we adore virtue though to the eyes of sense she be invisible: thus

(146) He was, therefore, no convert to the modern theories on mendicancy.-ED.

(147) "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy soul and with all thy strength, and thy neighbour as thyself."-ED.

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