CHARITY. WOULDST thou traffic with the best advantage, and crown thy ventures with the best return? Make the poor thy chapman and thy factor; so shalt thou give trifles which thou couldst not keep, to receive treasure which thou canst not lose. There is no such merchant as the charitable man. Quarles, Enchiridion. CHARITY. BE charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and lose not the glory of the mite. Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals. CHARITY. 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 they are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an epitome. Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici. CHARITY. BE charitable it is certainly a most generous and enlivening pleasure, which results from a seasonable liberality. When thou seest a man struggling with want, his very spirit as well as body stooping under a pressure, if thou then relievest him, the human nature within thee, which is common to you both, does, by a kind of sympathetic motion, exult and raise up itself. Fuller, Introduction to Prudence. CHARITY. WHO shuts his hand hath lost his gold; G. Herbert. CHARITY. IT disposeth rather to oversee and connive at faults than to find them, or to pore on them; rather to hide and smother, than to disclose or divulge them; rather to extenuate and excuse, than to exaggerate or aggravate them. Are words capable of good sense? Charity will expound them thereto. May an action be imputed to any good intent? Charity will refer it thither. Doth a fault admit any plea, apology, or diminution? Charity will be sure to allege it. May a quality admit a good name? Charity will call it thereby. Barrow, Sermons, xxvii. CHARITY. CHARITY is a right noble and worthy thing; greatly perfective of our nature; much dignifying and beautifying our soul. It rendereth a man truly great, enlarging his mind unto a vast circumference, and to a capacity near infinite; so that it by a general care doth reach all things, by an universal affection doth embrace and grasp the world. Charity rendereth us as angels, or peers to those glorious and blessed creatures who, without receiving or expecting any requital from us, do heartily desire and delight in our good, are ready to promote it, do willingly serve and labour for it. Nothing is more amiable, more admirable, more venerable, even in the common eye and opinion of men ; hath in it a beauty and a majesty apt to ravish every heart; even a spark of it in generosity of dealing breedeth admira it tion, a glimpse of it in formal courtesy of behaviour procureth much esteem, being deemed to accomplish and adorn a man: how lovely, therefore, and truly gallant is an entire, sincere, constant and uniform practice thereof, issuing from pure good-will and affection! Barrow, Sermons, xxviii. CHARITY. FORMED of such clay as yours, The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates. CHARITY. It is wonderful to consider how a command, or call to be liberal, either upon a civil or religious account, all of a sudden impoverishes the rich, breaks the merchant, shuts up every private man's exchequer, and makes those men in a minute have nothing at all to give, who, at the very same instant, want nothing to spend. So that instead of relieving the poor, such a command strangely increases their number, and transforms rich men into beggars presently. For, let the danger of their prince and country knock at their purses, and call upon them to contribute against a public enemy or calamity, then immediately they have nothing, and their riches upon such occasions (as Solomon expresses it) never fail to make themselves wings, and to fly away. South, Sermons, x. CHARITY. THE measures that God marks out to thy charity are these thy superfluities must give place to thy neighbour's great convenience; thy convenience must yield to thy neighbour's necessity; and lastly, thy very necessities must yield to thy neighbour's extremity. This is the gradual process that must be thy rule; and he that pretends a disability to give short of this, prevaricates with his duty, and evacuates the precept. God sometimes calls upon thee to relieve the needs of thy poor brother, sometimes the necessities of thy country, and sometimes the urgent wants of thy prince: now, before thou fliest to the old, stale, usual pretence, that thou canst do none of all these things, consider with thyself that there is a God who is not to be flammed off with lies, who knows exactly what thou canst do, and what thou canst not; and consider in the next place, that it is not the best husbandry in the world to be damned to save charges. South, Sermons, x. CHEERFULNESS. AND her against sweet Cheerfulness was placed, CHEERFULNESS. A CHEERFUL mind is not only disposed to be affable and obliging, but raises the same good humour in those who come within its influence. A man finds himself pleased, he does not know why, with the cheerfulness of his companion. It is like a sudden sunshine that awakens a secret delight in the mind, without her attending to it. The heart rejoices of its own accord, and naturally flows out into friendship and benevolence towards the person who has so kindly an effect upon it. Addison, Spectator, No. 381. CHILD. A CHILD is a man in small letter, yet the best copy of Adam, before he tasted of the apple; and he is happy whose small practice in the world can only write his character. His soul is yet a white paper unscribbled with observations of the world, wherewith, at length, it becomes a blurred note-book. He is purely happy, because he knows no evil, nor hath made means by sin to be acquainted with misery. He arrives not at the mischief of being wise, nor endures evils to come by foreseeing them. He kisses and loves all, and, when the smart of the rod is past, smiles on his beater. Nature and his parents alike dandle him, and tice him on with a bait of sugar to a draught of wormwood. He plays yet, like a young prentice the first day, and is not come to his task of melancholy. All the language he speaks yet is tears, and they serve him well enough to express his necessity. His hardest labour is his tongue, as if he were loth to use so deceitful an organ; and he is best company with it when he can but prattle. We laugh at his foolish sports, but his game is our earnest; and his drums, rattles, and hobby-horses, but the emblems and mocking of man's business. His father hath writ him as his own little story, wherever he reads those days of his life that he cannot remember, and sighs to see what innocence he hath outlived. The elder he grows, he is a stair lower from God. He is the Christian's example, and the old man's relapse; the one imitates his pureness, and the other falls into his simplicity. Could he put off his body with his little coat, he had eternity without a burden, and exchanged but one heaven for another. John Earle, Mircocosmography. |