Unto which I answer, as Solon did to one who told him when he wept for his son, that he troubled himself, but profited nothing by it. "That is the very reason,” said he, "why I cannot but weep." So, when men say, that nature is hurt by sorrow, the reply may justly be, that is one of the things which should make you sorrowful: to see how you have spoiled the beauty and goodliness of human nature; how you have sullied it by your sins, and darkened the brightness and cheerfulness of it; by eclipsing the light of God's countenance, which we were made to enjoy and to rejoice therein; and causing this world to become nothing but a scene of misery, a place of mourning and lamentation; either for our sins, or for our sufferings.

It is a sad sight indeed to behold a creature made for great happiness, to be now so altered, that in all the creation there is not one so full of complaints as man: but it will be a sadder, if his first complaint be not of the cause of all this, which is our sins. These, if they be not sorrowfully bewailed, are the most grievous

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and lamentable of all things else; in the account of those who rightly weigh them.

But besides this, we must consider; that this is the way to make men leave their sins; and so be restored to true joy and gladness. If they can take pleasure in evil courses, as well as in good, they will never be at the trouble of an exchange: nor scarce think of it, till they be mourning there, where tears will never cease to flow, and drown them in eternal sorrows.

Nay, more than this, to think of our sins without due sorrow and grief for them, is in truth to repeat them. So far are they from leaving them, who are not grieved for them; that whensoever they call them to mind without such grief, it is, in effect, again to commit them. Their minds are pleased with them; and there they do that over again, which was done before in outward actions. Upon this score therefore we are to be afflicted for them; and if we be, mourning, and tears, and sad lamentations will not be wanting, proportionable to the affliction which they give our spi

rits. According to that saying of Philemon, "Grief, like a tree, hath tears for its fruit.” Which spring out of sorrow, as a natural expression thereof; and are a means, as I shall show more hereafter, to remove the cause. And what greater cause, as I have said, is there for our grief and heaviness, and all their mournful attendants, than this; that we have offended Him by our sins, who is able to punish them in endless sorrows? When lesser things produce sometimes a flood of tears; we cannot but conclude, without any other reason for it, that they are justly expected, in a very great measure, here.

CHAPTER IV.

OF THE CHRISTIAN PRACTICE IN THIS MATTER.

ND thus the constant practice of the

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christian Church, hath expounded these words of St. James: by requiring such humiliations, affliction, and doleful bemoaning of themselves, from those who had so grievously offended God, as to be thrown out of their communion, before they would receive them. again into it. Which is a thing so notorious, that by the word Repentance, among the ancient writers of religion, nothing else is commonly meant, but open confession of their sins, with sad lamentations of them, and of the woeful condition into which they had brought them.

There are many remarkable things to this purpose in the records of the Church, more than enough to fill a much bigger book than this; if I would give myself liberty to relate with what humble prostrations, with what

tears and doleful lamentations, "conciliciati et concinerati" (as Tertullian's words are) covered with hair-cloth, and buried, as it were, in ashes, with fastings and watchings, with sighs and groans and mournful voices, looking dismally lean, pale and meagre, by long grief and neglect of their bodies, penitents were wont to cast themselves down upon the earth, and not only supplicate God's mercy, but beg and beseech in the most miserable manner, the pardon and prayers of their christian brethren.

But my design is not only to show that all this, which was the unquestionable practice of the early ages of the Church, had its foundation in the very beginning of our religion, and was directed by the Apostles themselves, who when any sinner was so senseless that he was not at all afflicted for the crimes he had committed, so impudent that he was not ashamed of the foulest wickedness (and therefore was to be excommunicated and cut off from the body of Christ) required the whole Church to bewail his sin and his misery, in