The White Devil - The Hypocrite

To the Reader.

H Onest and understanding Reader; (if neither, hands off) I never saluted thy General name by a special Epistle, till now: and now, perhaps, soon enough: but if Honesty be Usher to thy understanding, and understanding Tutor to thy Honesty; as I cannot fear, so I need not doubt, or treat with thee for Truce: Truce, of what? of Suspense, not of Suspension; it belongs to our Betters: Suspend thy censure, do not suspend me by thy censure. I do not call thee aside, to ask, with what applause this Sermon passeth, but (it is all, I would have and hear) with what benefit. I had rather convert one soul, then have an hundredth praise me. Whereof, if I were (so besotted to be) ambitious, by this I could not hope it: for it pulls many tender and tendered sins out of their downy neasts; and who strikes vice, and is not stricken with calumnies? I must rather think, it hath passed from one press to another, to a worse, hazarding it self to be pressed to death with censures: which yet (though I lowly hope better) I cannot fear; since it speaks no more, nor other, then justifiable truth. What hath been objected already, I must briefly answer. It is excepted, that I am too merry, in describing some vices. Indeed, such is their ridiculous nature, that their best conviction is derision; yet I abominate any pleasantness here, but Christian; and would provoke no smile but of Disdaine: wherein the gravity of matter, shall free my form of words from lightness. Others say, I am other-where too Satyrically-bitter. It is partly confessed: I am bitter enough to the sins, and therein (I think) better to the sinners, more charitable to the persons. Some wish I would have spared the Church-thieves, because it is not yet generally granted, that Impropriations of Tythes, are appropriations of wrongs; but if there be a competent maintenance to the Minister, and not to him neither, except of worthy gifts, (provided, that they judge of his gifts and competency) it is enough: well, if any such be grieved, let him allow his Minister a Sufficiency, under which he cannot live, without want to his family, or disgrace to his profession (at least, so taken.) and heerof certified, I will take counsel to draw the books, and put his name out of the Catalogue of Thieves: But it would be strange if any of these Ziba's should yield to Mephibosheth a division of his own lands or goods; when they do, I will say, David is come again to his Kingdom, or rather, the Son of David is come to Judgment. Others would have Inclosers put out, because (commonly) great men, but therefore the greater their sins, and deserving the greater taxation. Nay some would persuade Usury to step in, to traverse his Inditement, and prove himself no Thief, by the verdict of the Country; because Sub Iudice lis est, it is not yet decided, that Usury is a Sin. It is Sub Iudice indeed, but the Judge hath already interposed his Interlocutory, and will one day give his Definitive Sentence, that Usury shall never dwell in his holy Mountain. Others blunder in their verdict, that I have too violently baited the Bagge at the stake of Reproch, and all because I want it: I will not return their censure, that they are hence known to have it, that speak against me, for speaking against it: who yet, if they would light the candle of their Speech, at the fire of their Vnderstandings, would easily see and say, that it is not the fullness of the Bagge, but the foulness of the Bagge-bearer, that I reprove: I could allow your purses fuller of wealthinesse, so your minds were emptier of wickedness: but the Bags effects, in our affects, usually load us, either with parcimony or prodigality; the lightest of which burdens, saith Saint Bernard, is able to sink a Ship. Others affirm, that I have made the Gate of Heaven too narrow, and they hope to find it wider; God and the Scriptures are more merciful. True it is, that Heaven-Gate is in it self wide enough; and the narrowness is in respect of the Enterer: and though thy sins cannot make that too little to receive thee, yet they make thee to gross and unfit, to get into that: thus the Straitenesse ariseth from the deficiency, (not of their Glory, but) of our Grace. Lastly, some have the Title sticking in their stomachs; as if Christ him self had not called Judas a Devil; and likened an Hypocrite to a Whited Sepulcher: as if Luther did not give Judas this very Attribute; and other Fathers of the Church, from whom Luther derives it. Good Christian Reader, leave cavils against it, and fall to caveats in it: read it through: if there be nothing in it to better thee, either the fault is in my hand, or in thy heart. Howsoever, give God the praise; let none of his. Glory cleave to us earthen Instruments. If thou likest it, then (quo animo legis, obserua, quo obseruas, serua) with the same affection thou readest it, remember it, and with the same thou rememberest, practice it. In hope of this, and prayer for this, I commend this Book to thy Conscience, and thy conscience to God. Willington, March. 27. 1613.

THE WHITE DEVIL OR THE HYPOCRITE VNCASED: In a Sermon preached at PAUL'S Cross, March the seventh, 1612.

I Am to speak of Judas, a Devil by the testimony of our Savior: have I not chosen you twelve, and one of you is a Devil? yet so transformed into a show of sanctimony, that he, who was a Devil in the knowledge of Christ, seemed an Angel in the deceived judgment of his fellow-Apostles. A Devil he was, black within and full of ranckour, but white without, and skinned over with hypocrisy; therefore to use Luther's word, we will call him the white Devil. Even here he discovers himself, and makes good this title: Consider the occasion thus.

Christ was now at supper among his friends, where everyone shown him several kindness; among the rest Marie powers on him a box of ointment: take a short view of hir affection. 1. She gave a precious unction, Spikenard: Judas valued it at 300. pence, which (after the best computation) is with us, above 8. pounds; as if she couldnot be too prodigal in hir love. 2. She gave him a whole pound, verse 3. she did not cut him out devotion by piece-meal or remnant, nor serve God by the ounce: but she gave all; for quality, precious; for quantity, the whole pound: Oh that our service to God were answerable! We rather give one ounce to lust, a second to pride, a third to malice &c. so dividing the whole pound to the Devil: she gave all to Christ. 3. To omit hir annointing his feet, and wiping them with the hairs of hir head: when hir humility and zeal met: his feet as unworthy to touch his head: with hir hairs, as if hir chief ornament was but good enough to honor Christ withal; the beauty of hir head to serve Christ's feet; she brake the box, tanquam ebria amore; and this of no worse then Alablaster, that Christ might have the remaining drop: and the whole house was filled with the odour: at this repines Judas, pretending the poor, for he was white; intending his profit, for he was a Devil.

The words contain in them a double

Censure,

• 1. Judas censure of Mary: this repeatingly folded up: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : he said thus; with reference to his former words: verse 5. why was not this &c.
• 2. God's oensure of Judas: this

  Partlie

  • 1. Negative: he cared not for the poor: to convince his hypocrisy, that roaued at the poor, but levelled at his profit; like a Ferry-man, looking toward charity with his face, rowing toward couetosnesse with his arms.

  • 2. Affirmative, demonstrating his

    • 1. Meaning: he was a thief.
    • 2. Means: he had the bag.
    • 3. Maintenance: he bare what was given; or put therein.

In Judas censure of Mary, many things are observable, to his shame, our instruction; and these. 1. some more general. 2. some more special and personal; all worthy your attention, if there wanted nothing in the deliverance.

1. Observe that Saint John lays this fault on Judas only: but Saint Matthew and Mark charge the Disciples with it, and find them guilty of this repining: and that (in both, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ) not without Indignation. This knot is easily untied; Judas was the ring-leader, and his voice was the voice of Jacob, all charitable; but his hands were the hands of Esau, rough and injurious: Judas pleads, for the poor, the whole Synod, likes the motion well; they second it with their verdits: their words agree; but their spirits differ: Judas hath a further reach; to distill this ointment thorough the Limbecke of hypocrisy into his own purse; the Apostles mean plainly: Judas was malicious against his master; they simply thought the poor had more need. So sensible and ample a difference do circumstances put into one and the same action: presumption or weakness, knowledge or ignorance, simplicity or craft do much aggravate or mitigate an offense. The Apostles consent to the circumstance, not to the substance, setting as it were) their hands to a blank paper: it was in them pity, rather then piety, in Judas neither pity nor piety, but plain perfidy, an exorbitant and transcendent sin, that would have brought innocence it self into the same condemnation: thus the aggregation of circumstances, is the aggravation of offenses. Consider his covetise, fraud, malice, hypocrisy, and you will say, his sin was monstrous; sine modo, like a Mathematical line, (diuisibilis in semper diuisibilia) infinitely diuisible. The other Apostles receive the infection, but not into so corrupted stomachs, therefore it may make them sick, not kill them: sin they do, but not unto death. It is a true rule even in good works: finibus non officijs, discernendae sunt virtutes a vitijs: virtues are discerned from vices not by their offices, but by their ends or intents: neither the outward form, no nor (often) the event, is a sure rule to measure the action by: the eleven Tribes went twice by God's special word and warrant against the Benjamites, yet in both assaults received the overthrow. Cùm Pater filium, Christus corpus, Judas Dominum, res eadem, non causa, non intentio operantis: when God gave his son, Christ gave himself, Judas gave his Master; here was the same work, not the same cause nor intention in the workers: the same rule holds proportion in offenses: here they all sin, the Apostles in the imprudence of their censure, Judas in the impudence of his rancor.

I might here first lead you into the distinction of sins, secondly, or traverse the Inditement with Judas, whereby he accuseth Mary, justifying her action convincing his slander. thirdly, or discover to you the fowlnesse of rash judgment, which often sets a rankling tooth into virtues side; often calls chastity her self an harlot, and with a guilty hand throws the first stone at Innocence.

But that which I fasten on, is the power and force of example: Judas with a false weight sets all the wheels of their tongues a going: the steward hath begun a health to the poor, and they begin to pledge him round. Authority shows it self in this, to beget a likeness of manners: Tutum est peccare autoribus illis: It is safe sinning after such authors: if the Steward say the word, the fiat of consent goes round. Imperio maximus, exemplo major . He that is greatest in his government, is yet greater in his precedent. A great man's livery is countenance enough, to keep drunkenness from the stocks, whoredom from the post, murder and stealth from the gallows: such double sinners shall not escape with single judgments: such leprous and contagious spirits, shall answer to the justice of God, not only for their own sins, but for all theirs, whom the pattern of their precedēcy hath induced to the like, to the like, said I? nay, to worse: for if the master drink (ad plenitudinē) to fullness, the servant will (ad ebrietatē) to madness: the imitation of good comes for the most part short of the pattern, but the imitation of ill exceeds the example: a great man's warrant is like a charm or spel, to keep quick and stirring spirits within the circle of combined mischief: a Superiors example is like strong or strange physic, that ever works the servile patients to a likeness of humors, of affections: thus when the mother is an Hittite, and the father an Amorite, the daughter seldom proves an Israelite. Regis ad exemplum totus componitur orbis. Greatness is a copy, which every action, every affection strives to write after. The Son of Nebat is never without his commendation following him, he made Israel to sin. The imitation of our Governors manners, fashion, vices, is styled obedience: if Augustus Caesar loves poetrie, he is nobody that cannot versifie: now (saith Horace:)

when Leo lived, because he loved merry fellows, and stood well affected to the Stage, all Rome swarmed with iuglers, singers, plaiers. To this, I think, was the proverb squared: Confessor Papa, confessor populus. If the Pope be an honest man, so will the people be. In vulgus manant exempla Regentum. The common people are like tempered wax, whereon the vicious seal of greatness makes easy impression. It was a custom for young gentlemen in Athens to play on Recorders: at last Alcibiades seeing his blown cheeks in a glass, threw away his pipe, and they all followed him: our gallants in steed of Recorders embrace scorching lust, staring pride, staggering drunkenness, till their souls are more blown, than those Athenians cheeks; I would some Alcibiades would begin to throw away these vanities, and all the rest would follow him. Thus spreads example, like a stone thrown into a pond, that makes circle to beget circle, till it spread to the banks. Judas train soon took fire in the suspectless Disciples; and Satan's infections shoot through some great star, the influence of damnation into the air of the communaltie. Let the experience hereof make us fearful of examples.

Observe, that no society hath the privilege to be free from a Judas: no, not Christ college it self: I have chosen you twelve, and behold one of you is a Devil: and this no worse man than the Steward, put in trust with the bread of the prophets. The Synod of the Pharisees, the Conuent of Monks; the Consitory of Jesuits, the Councils of Bishops, the holy Chair at Rome, the sanctified parlor at Amsterdam, is not free from a Judas. Some tares will show, that the envious man is not a sleep. They heard him preach that had the words of eternal life: they attended him, that could feed them with miraculous bread: they followed him, that could quiet the seas, and control the winds: they saw a precedent, in whom there was no defect, no default, no sin, no guile; yet behold, one of them is an hypocrite, an Iscarioth, a Devil: what, among Saints? Is Saul among the Prophets? Among the Jews a wicked Publican, a dissolute soldier was not worth the wondering at: for the publicans, you may judge of their honesty, when you always find them coupled with harlots, in the Scripture: for the soldiers (that roabed Christ in jest, and robbed him in earnest) they were irreligious Ethnics: but amongst the sober, chaste, pure, precise Pharisees, to find a man of sin, was held uncouth, monstrous: they run from their wits, then, that run from the Church, because there are Judases. Thus it will be, till the great Judge with his fan shall purge his floor; till the Angels shall carry the wheat into the barn of glory. Until that day comes, some rubbish will be in the net, some goats among the sheep, some with the mark of the Beast, in the congregation of Saints; one Ishmael in the family of Abraham, one without his wedding garment, at the marriage Feast; among the Disciples a Demas, among the Apostles a Judas. Thus generally.

1 Observe: Judas is bold to reprove a lawful, laudable, allowable work: he said this. I do not read him so peremptory in opportunity, he could swallow a gudgeon, though he keckes at a sly: he could observe, obey, flatter the compounding Pharisees, & thought, he should get more by licking, than by biting; but here because his mouth waters at the money, his teeth rankle the woman's credit: for so I find malignant reprouers styled: corrodunt, non corrigunt; correptores, immo corruptores: they do not mend but make worse; they bite, they gnaw: thus was Diogenes surnamed Cynicke for his snarling; Conuitiorum canis: the dog of reproaches: such forget that (monendo plus, quàm minando possumus) mercies are above menaces: many of the Jews, whom the thunders of Sinai, terrors of the Law moved not, John the Baptist wins with the songs of Zion Judas could fain and sawne, and fan the cool wind of flattery on the burning malice of the consulting Scribes: here he is hot, sweats and swells without cause: either he must be unmerciful or ouermercifull; either wholly for the rains, or all upon the spurr: he hath soft and silken words for his masters enemies, course and rough for his friends: there he is a dumb dog and finds no fault, here he is a barking cur, and bites a true man instead of a thief; he was before an ill mute, and now he is a worse consonant. but (as Pierius ambitious daughters were turned to meg-pies for correcting the muses, so) God justly reproves Judas, for unjustly reproving Marie. Qui mittit in altum lapidem, recidet in caput eius. A stone thrown up in a rash humor, falls on the throwers head, to teach him more wisdom: he that could come to the Pharisees (like Martials parrat, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; or like Jupiter's priest to Alexander with a love sat) commending their piety, which was without mercy, here condemns mercy, which was true piety and pity.

I could here find cause to praise reprehension: if it be reasonable, seasonable, well grounded for the reproouer, well conditioned for the reproved. I would have no profession more wisely bold than a Ministers; for sin is bold, yea saucy and presumptuous: it is miserable for both, when a bold sinner, and a cold Priest shall meet: when he that should lift up his voice like a trumpet, doth but whisper through a trunk. Many men are dull beasts without a goad, blind Sodomites without a guide, deaf Adders and Idols without ears, forgetful like Pharaohs Butler without memories: our connivance is sinful, our silence baneful, our allowance damnable. Of sin neither the fathers, factors, nor fautors are excusable: nay the last may be worst, whiles they may and will not help it. Let Rome have the praise without our envy or riualrie: Peccat is Roma patrocinium est. Sodomy is licenced, sins to come pardoned, drunkenness defended, the Stews maintained, perjury commended, treason commanded: as sinful as they think us, and we know ourselves, we would blush at these. Nihil interest sceleri an faue as, an illud facias: there is little difference between permission and commission: between the toleration and perpetration of the sin: he is an abettor of the evil, that may and will not better the evil. Amici vitia, fi feras, facis tua, thy unchristian sufferance adopts thy brothers sins for thine own; children of thy fatherhood, of so great a parentage is many a sin-favoring Magistrate; he begets moe bastards in an hour, then Hercules did in a night; and except Christ be his friend, God's Sessions will charge him, with the keeping of them all: no private man can plead exemption from this duty: for amicus is animi custos; he is thy friend, that brings thee to a fair and free end. Doth human charity bind thee to reduce thy neighbors straying beast, and shall not Christianity double thy care to his erring soul? cadit afina, & est qui subleuet, perit anima, non est qui recogitet. The fallen beast is lifted up, the burdened soul is let sink under her load.

2. Observe his devilish disposition, bent and intended to stifle goodness in others, that had utterly choked it in himself? Is the Apostle Judas an hinderer of godliness? surely man hath not a worse neighbor, nor God a worse servant, nor the Devil a better factor, than such a one: an Aesop's dog, that because he can eat no hay himself, lies in the manger and will not suffer the horse. he would be an ill porter of heaven gates, that having no lust to enter himself, will not admit others: as Christ reported and reproved the Lawyers. Here fruitless trees, that cumber the ground: cockle and darnel that hinder the good corns growth: malicious devils, that plot to bring more partners to their own damnation: as if it were, (aliquid socios habuisse doloris) some ease to them, to have fellows in their misery.

Let me paint out a short complaint against this sin: dolendum à medico, quod non delendum à medicina: we may bewail, where we cannot prevail. The good old man must weep, though he cannot drive away the disease of his child with tears. Thou that hindrest others from good works, makest their sins thine, which, I think thou needest not do, for any scarcity of thine own: whiles thou temptest to villainy, withstandest his piety, thou at once pullest his sins, and God's curses on thee. For the author sins more, than the actor, as appears by God's Judgment in Paradise; where three punishments were inflicted on the Serpent, as the original plotter; two on the woman as the mediate procurer, and but one on Adam, as the party seduced. Is it not enough for thee, oh Judas, to be a villain thyself, but thou must also cross the piety of others? hast thou spoiled thyself, and wouldst thou also mar Mary?

3 Nay observe; he would hinder the works of piety thorough color of the works of charity: diuerting Mary's bounty from Christ to the poor; as if respect to man, should take the wall of God's service? thus he strives to set the two tables of the Law, at war, one against the other; both which look to God's obedience as the two cherubins to the mercy-seat; and the Catholic Christian hath a Catholic care. I prefer not the laws of God one to the other: one star, here, differs not from another star in glory. Yet, I know, the best distinguishers caution to the Lawyer: this is the great Commandment, and the other is (but) like unto it. Indeed I would not have Sacrifice turn Mercy out of doors, as Sara did Agar; nor the fire of zeal drink up the dew and moisture of charity; as the fire from heaven dried up the water at Elijah's sacrifice: neither would I that the precise observation of the second table, should guild over the monstrous breaches of the first. Yet I have heard Divines (reasoning this point) attribute this privilege to the first Table above the second; that God never did (I will not say, never could) dispense with these commandments which have himself for their proper and immediate object. For then (say they) he should dispense against himself, or make himself no God, or more: He never gave allowance to any, to have. 1. another God. 2. another form of worship. 3. the honor of his name he will not give to another. 4. nor suffer the profaner of his Holy-day to escape unpunished. For the second table, you have read him, commanding the brother to raise up seed to his brother: notwithstanding the Law, Thou shalt not commit adultery: commanding the Israelites to rob the Egyptians, without infringing the law of stealth, all this without wrong: for, the earth is his, and the fullness thereof. Thou art a father of many children; thou sayest to the younger, sirrah, wear you the coat today which your other brother wore yesterday; who complains of wrong? we are all (or at least, say we are all) the children of God: have earthly Parents a greater privilege than our heavenly? if God then have given dispensation to the second Table, not to the first; the observation of which (think you) best pleaseth him?

Let not then, oh Judas, charity shoulder out piety: nay charity will not, cannot: for faith worketh by love. And love never dined in a conscience, where faith had not first broken her fast. Faith and love are like a pair of compasses; whilst faith stands perfectly fixed in the center, which is God; love walks the round, and puts a girdle of mercy about the loins: there may indeed be a show of charity without faith, but there can be no show of faith without charity: Man judgeth by the hand, God by the heart.

Hence our Pollicies in their positive laws, lay severe punishments on the actual breaches of the second Table, leaving most sins against the first, to the hand of the Almighty Justice. Let man's name be slandered. Currat lex, the law is open; be God's name dishonouted, blasphemed, there is no punishment but from God's immediate hand. Carnal fornication speeds (though not ever bad enough, yet) sometimes worse than spiritual: which is idolatry. Yet this last is ( maius adulterium) the greater adultery: because ( non ad alteram mulierem, sed ad alterum Deum) it is not the knitting of the body to another woman, but of the soul to another God. The poor slave, is convented to the spiritual court, and meets with a shrewd penance for his incontinence: the rich noble man, knight or gentleman (for Papists are no beggars) breaks the Commissaries cords as, easily as Sampson the Philistines withes, and puts an Excommunication in his pocket. All is answered, who knows the spirit of man, but the spirit of man? and he stands or falls to his own master. Yet again, who knows whether bodily stripes may not procure spiritual health? and a seasonable blow to the estate may not save the soul in the day of the Lord Jesus. often (detrimentum pecuniae & sanitatis, propter bonum animae) a loss to the purse, or a cross to the corps, is for the good of the conscience. Let me then complain. 1. are there no laws for Atheists; that would scrape out the deepeingrauen characters of the souls eternity, out of their consciences; and think their souls as vanishing as the spirits of dogs: not contenting themselves to lock up this damned persuasion in their own bowels, but belching out this unsavory breath to the contagion of others (witness many an Ordinary that this is an ordinary custom); that in despite of the Oracles of heaven, the Prophets; and the Secretaries of nature, the philosophers; would enforce, that either there is no God, or such a one, as had as good be none: nominal Protestans, verbal Neuters, real Atheists. 2. Are there no laws for image-worshippers, secret friends to Baal, that eat with us, sit with us, play with us, not pray with us, nor for us, unless for our ruins. Yes, the sword of the Law is shaken against them: (alas that, but only shaken:) but either their breasts are invulnerable, or the sword is obtuse, or the strikers troubled with the palsy & numbness in the arms. 3. Are there no laws for blasphemers, common swearers, whose constitutions are so ill tempered of the four elements, that they take and possess several seats in them: all Earth in their harts, all Water in their stomachs, all Air in their brains, and (saith Saint James) all Fire in their tongues: they have heavy earthen hearts, watery and surfeited stomaches, light, aierie, mad-brains, fiery and flaming tongues. 4. Are there no laws to compel them on these days, that God's house may be filled? no power to bring them from the puddles to the springs? from walking the streets, sporting in the fields, quaffing in taverns, slugging, wantonizing on couches, to watch with Christ one hour in his house of prayer? why should not such blisters be lanced by the knife of authority, which will else make the whole body of the Common-wealth (though not incurable, yet) dangerously sick? I may not seem to prescribe, give me leave to exhort: non est meae humilitatis dictare vobis &c. It suites not with my mean knowledge, to direct you the means, but with my conscience to rub your memories: oh let not the pretended equity to men, countenance out our neglected piety to God!

4. Lastly observe his unkindness to Christ: what, Judas, grudge thy master a little unction? and wich is yet viler) from another's purse? with what detraction, derision, exclamation wouldest thou have permitted this to thy fellow servant, that repinest it to thy master? how hardly had this been derived from thy own estate, that didest not tolerate it from Mary's? what? thy master, that honored thee with Christianity, graced thee with Apostleship, trusted thee with Stewardship, wilt thou deny him this courtesy, and without thine own cost? thy Master, Judas, thy friend, thy God, and yet in a sweeter manner, thy Savior, and canst not endure another gratuital kindness towards him? shall he pour forth the best unction of his blood, to bath and comfort thy body and soul, and thou not allow him a little refection? hath Christ hungered, thirsted, fainted, sweet, and must he instantly bleed and die, and is he denied a little unction? and doest thou, Judas, grudge it? it had come more tolerably from any mouth: his friend, his follower, his Professor, his Apostle, his Steward! unkind, unnatural, unjust, unmerciful Judas.

Nay, he terms it no better then a waste and a loss: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ? ad quid perditio haec? Why is this wast? What, lost and given to Jesus? can there be any waste in the creatures due service to the Creator? no: pietas est, pro pietate sumptus facere: this is godliness, to be at cost with God: therefore our fathers left behind them (deposita pietatis) pledges, evidences, sure testimonies of their Religion, in honoring Christ with their riches: (I mean not those in the days of Popery, but before ever the locusts of the Papal sea made our Nation drunk with hir enchanted cup:) they thought it no waste either (noua construere, aut vetera conseruare) to build new Monuments to Christ's honor, or to better the old ones: we may say of them, as Rome bragged of Augustus Caesar: quae inuenerunt lateritia, reliquerunt marmorea: what they found of Brick, they left of Marble; in imitation of that precedent in Isaiah, though with honester hearts: The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones: the Sycomores are cut down, but we will change them into Cedars. In those days, charity to the Church was not counted waste: The people of England, devout like those of Israel, cried one to another (afferte) Bring ye into God's house; till they were stayed with a statute of Mort-main, like Moses prohibition, the people bring too much, but now they changed a letter, and cry, (Auferte) take away as fast as ever they gave, and no Inhibition of God or Moses, Gospel or statute, can restrain their violence: till the Alablaster box be as empty of oil, as their own consciences are of grace. We need not stint your devotion, but your deuoration: every contribution to God's service is held waste: ad quid perditio haec? now any required ornament to the church is held waste: but swallowing down (I say not, of ornaments, as things better spared, but) necessary maintenance, Tythes, Fruits, Offrings, are all too little: Gentlemen in these cold Countries have very good stomachs, they can devour (and digest too) three or four plumpe Personages; in Italy, Spain, and those hot Countries, (or else nature and experience too lies) a Temporal man cannot swallow a morsel or bit of a spiritual preferment, but it is reluctant in his stomach, up it comes again: surely these Northern Countries, coldly situate, and nearer to the Tropicke, have greater appetites: the Africans think the Spaniards gluttons, the Spaniards think so of the French-men, French men and all think and say so of English-men; for they can devour whole Churches: and they have sed so liberally, that their poor seruitors (ashamed I am to call them so) the Vicars have scarce enough left to keep life and soul together: nor so much as (sitis & fames & frigoraposcunt) the defense of hunger and thirst and cold requires: your fathers thought many Acres of ground well bestowed, you think the Tythe of those Acres a waste: Oppression hath plai'd the Judas with the Church, and because he would prevent the sins incurable by our fullness of bread, hath scarce left us bread to feed upon, Daniel's dict among the Lions, or Elias his in the wilderness. I will not censure you in this, ye Citizens; let it be your praise, that though you dwell in ceiled houses yourselves, you let not God's house lie waste: yet sometimes it is found, that some of you so careful in the City, are as negligent in the Country, where your lands lie; and there the Temples are often the ruins of your oppression; your poor, undone, blood-sucked Tenants, not being able to repair the windows or the leads, to keep out rain or birds: if a leuy or taxation would force your benevolence, it comes maleuolently from you, with a Why is this wast? Raise a contribution to a lecture, a collection for a fire, an alms to a poor destitute soul, and lightly there is one Judas in the congregation to cry, ad quid perditio haec? why is this waste? Yet you will say, if Christ stood in need of an unction, though as costly as Mary's, you would not grudge it, nor think it lost: Cosen not yourselves, ye hypocrites; if ye will not do it to his Church, to his poor ministers, to his poor members, neither would you to Christ: if you cloth not them, neither would you cloth Christ if he stood naked at your doors. Whiles you count that money lost, which God's service receiveth of you, you cannot shake away Judas from your shoulder. What would you do, if Christ should charge you, as he did the young-man in the Gospel Sell all, and give to the poor, that think your superfluities a waste? oh, durus sermo! a hard sentence! Indeed a cup of cold water is bounty praised and rewarded, but in them that are not able to give more: the Widows two mites are accepted, because all hir estate. If God thought it no waste to give you plenty, even all you have, think it no wast to return him some of his own. Think not the Oile waste, which you pour into the Lamp of the Sanctuary: think not the bread waste, which you cast on the waters of Adversity: think nothing lost, whereof you have feossed God in trust. But let me teach you soberly to apply this, and tell you what indeed is waste.

1. Our immoderate diet: indeed not diet, for that contents nature, but surfeit, that overthrows nature: this is waste. Plain M ^r . Nabal made a feast like a Prince. Dives hath no other arms to prove himself a Gentleman; but a scutchion of these 3. colors: first he had money in his purse: he was rich: secondly, he had good rags on his back, clothed in purple: thirdly, dainties on his table; he fared deliciously, and that, every day: this was a Gentleman without Heraldry. It was the rule: ad alimenta; vt ad medicamenta: to our meat, as to our medicine: man hath the least mouth of all creatures: (malum non imitari, quod sumus.) Therefore it is ill for us, not to imitate that which we are; not to be like our selves: there are many shrewed contentions between the appetite and the purse; the wise man is either a Neuter, or takes part with his purse: to consume that at one banket, which would keep a poor man with convenient sustenance all his life, this is waste. But alas our slavery to Epicureanism is great in these days, mancipia seruiunt dominis, domini cupiditatibus: servants are not more slaves to their masters, then their masters are slaves to lusts. Tim •• reons Epitaph fits many:

Multa bibeus, & multa vorans, mala plurimadicens &c. he eat much, and drunk much, and spake much evil: we sacrifice to our palates as to God's: the rich feast, the poor fast: the dogs dine, the poor pine: ad quid perditio haec? Why is this waste?

2. Our unreasonable ebrieties.— Tenent{que}

They take their fill of wine here, as if they were resolved with Dives, they should not get a drop of water in Hell: Eat, drink, play: quid aliud sepulchro bouis inscribi poterat? what other epitaph could be written on the sepulcher of an Ox? Epulonum crateres, sunt epulonum carceres: their boules are their bolts: there is no bondage, like to that of the Vintage. The furnace beguiles the oven; the Celler deceives the Buttery: we drink away our bread, as if we would put a new petition into the Lord's prayer, and abrogate the old; saying no more with Christ, give us this day our daily bread, but give us this day our daily drink: quod non in diem, sed in mensem sufficit: which is more then enough for a day, nay would serve a month. Temperance, the just Steward, is put out of his office: what place is free from these Ale-house recusants? that think better of their drinking-room, then Peter thought of Mount Tabor, bonum est esse hîc: it is good being here; vbi nec Deus, nec Daemon; where both God and the Devil are fast a sleep. It is a question, whether it be worse to turn the image of a beast to God, or the image of God to a beast: if the first be Idolatry, the last is impiety. a voluptuous man is a murderer to himself, a covetous man a thief, a malicious a witch, a drunkard a devil thus to drink away the poor's relief, our own estate; ad quid perditio haec? why is this wast?

3. Our monstrous pride, that turns hospitallity into a dumb show: that which fed the belly of hunger, now feeds the eye of lust: akers of land are metamorphised into trunkes of apparel; and the soul of charity is transmigrated into the body of bravery: this is wast: we make our selves the compounds of all Nations: we borrow of Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Turkey and all; that death when he robs an Englishman, robs all Countries: where lies the wealth of England? in three places: on Citizens tables, in Usurers coffers, and upon Courtiers backs: God made all simple, therefore woe to these compounded fashions: God will one day say, (hoc non optas meum nec imago mea est.) this is none of my workmanship, none of my image. One man wears enough on his back at once, to cloth two naked wretches all their lives: ad quid &c. why is this wast?

4. Our vainglorious building, to emulate the skies, which the wise-man calls, the lifting up of our gates too high. Houses built like palaces; Tabernacles, that in the Masters thought, equal the Mansion of heaven: structures to whom is promised eternity, as if the ground, they stood on, should not be shaken. Whole towns depopulate to rear up one man's walls; chimneyes built in proportion, not one of them so happy as to smoke; brave gates, but never open: sumptuous parlours, for Owls and Bats to fly in, pride begun them, riches finished them, beggary keeps them: for most of them molder away, as if they were in the dead builders case, a consumption. Would not a less house, Jeconiah, have served thee for better hospitality? our Fathers lived well under lower roofs: this is wast, and wast indeed, and these worse then the Devil: the Devil had once some charity in him, to turn stones into bread, but these men turn bread into stones; a trick beyond the Devil: ad quid perditio haec? Why is this waste?

5. Our ambitious seeking after great alliance: the son of the Thistle must match with the Cedars daughter: The father tears dear years out of the Earthes bowels, and raiseth a bank of usury, to set his son upon, and thus mounted, he must not enter save under the noble roof: no cost is spared to ambitious advancement: ad quid &c. why is this waste.

Shall I say? our upholding of Theaters to the contempt of Religion: our maintaining Ordinaries to play away our patrimonies: our four-wheeled Porters: our Antic the fashion: our smoky consumption; our perfumed putrefaction: ad quid perditio haec? Why are these wastes? experience will testify at last, that these are wastes indeed; for they waste the body, the blood, the state, the freedom, the soul it self, and all is lost, thus laid out: but what is given (with Mary) to Christ, is lost like sown grain, and shall be found again at the harvest of Joy.

We have heard Judas censuring Mary: let us now hear God censuring Judas; and that first negatively: he cared not for the poor. For the poor he pleads, but himself is the poor, he means well too: but let his pretence be what it will, God's witness is true against him; he cared not for the poor.

1. Observe: doth Christ condemn Judas for condemning Mary? then it appears, he doth justify hir action: he doth, and that after in express terms: Let hir alone: &c. ver. 7. Happy Mary that hast Jesus to plead for thee: blessed Christians, for whom Jesus Christ is an Advocate. He is near me, that justifies me, who will contend with me? verse 9. behold the Lord will help me, who is he that can condemn me? hence David resigns his protection into the hands of God. Judge me, oh God, and defend my cause against the unmerciful people. And Paul yet with greater boldness, sends a frank defiance and challenge to all the actors & pleaders that ever condemnation had, that they should never have power to condemn him, since Jesus Christ justifies him. Happy man, whose cause God takes in hand to plead. Here is a Judas to accuse us, a Jesus to acquit us: Iudasslanders, Jesus clears: wicked men censure, the just God approves: earth judgeth evil, what is pronounced good in heaven! oh then do well, though (fremant gentes) great men rage, though perverseness censures, impudence slanders, malice hinders, tyranny persecutes; there is a Jesus, that approves: his approbation shall out-weigh all their censures: let his spirit testify with me, though the whole world oppose me.

2. Observe: It is the nature of the wicked to have no care of the poor. Sibi nati, sibi viuunt, sibi moriuntur, sibi damnantur: they are all for themselves, they are borne to themselves, live to themselves, (so let them) die for themselves, and go to Hell for themselves. The fat Bulls of Bashan, love the lambes from the flock, and the Calves from the stall &c. But think not on the affliction of Joseph. Your gallant thinks not the distressed, the blind, the lame to be part of his care: it concerns him not: true and therefore heaven concerns him not: it is infallible truth, if they have no feeling of others miseries, they are no members of Christ: go on now in thy scorn, thou proud Royster: admire the fashion and stuff, thou wearest; whiles the poor mourns for nakedness: feast royallie Dives, whiles Lazarus can get no crumbs: Apply, Absalom, thy sound, healthful limbs to lust and lewdness, whiles the lame, blind, maimed cannot derive a penny from thy purse, though he move his suit in the name of Jesus; thou givest testimony to the world, to thy own conscience, that thou art but a Judas. Why, the poorest and the proudest have though not Uestem communem, yet cutem communem? there may be difference in the fleece, there is none in the flesh: yea perhaps, as the gallants perfumed body is often the sepulcher to a putrefied soul: so a white, pure, innocent spirit may be shadowed under the broken roof of a maimed corpse. Nay, let me terrify them: not many rich, not many mighty, not many noble are called: It is Paul's thunder against the flashes of greatness: he says not, not any, but not many: for seruatur Lazarus pauper, sed in finu Abrahami Diuitis: Lazarus the poor man is saved, but in the bosom of Abraham the rich. It is a good saying of the son of Sirach: The affliction of one hour will make the proudest stoop, sit upon the ground, and forget his former pleasure, a piercing misery will soften your bowels, and let your soul see through the breaches of hir prison, in what need distress stands of succor. Then you will be charitable or never, as physicians say of their Patients, take whiles they be in pain; for in health nothing will be wrung out of them. so long as health & prosperity clothe you, you reck not the poor: Nabal looks to his sheep, what cares he for David? if the truth were known, there are many Nabal's now, that love their own sheep, better than Christ's sheep: Christ's sheep take coats, their own sheep give coats. Say some that cavil, if we must care for the poor, then for the covetous; for they want, what they possess, and are indeed poorest: no, pity not them, that pity not themselves; who in despite of God's bounty will be miserable: but pity those, whom a fatal distress hath made wretched.

Oh, how unfit is it among Christians, that some should surfeit, whiles others hunger? that one should have two coats, and another be naked, yet both one man's servants. Remember that God hath made many his stewards, none his Treasurer: he did not mean, thou shouldest hoard his blessings, but expend them to his glory: he that is infinitely rich, yet keeps nothing in his own hands, but gives all to his creatures: at his own cost and charges he hath maintained the world, almost 6000. years: he will most certainly admit no hoarder into his kingdom: yet, if you will needs love laying up, God hath provided you a coffer: the poor man's hand is Christ's treasury. The besotted worldling hath a greedy mind, to gather goods, and keep them; and loe, his keeping loseth them: for they must have either (finem tuum, or finem suum) thy end, or their end: Job tarried and his goods went; but the rich man went, and his goods tarried. Si vestra sunt, tollite vobiscum: if they be yours, why do you not take them with you? no, hîc acquiruntur, hîc amittuntur: here they are gotten, here lost. But God himselfebeing witness (nay he hath past his word) what we for his sake give away here, we shall find again hereafter; and the charitable man dead and buried, is richer under the ground, than! was above it. It is an usual song, which the Saints now sing in heaven.

This riddle poseth the worldling, as the Fishermens did Homer: Quaecepimus, reliquimus: quae non cepimus, nobiscum portamus: what we caught, we left behind us; what we could not catch, we carried with us. So, what we loose, we keep: what we will keep, we shall loose. he that looseth his goods, his lands, his freedom, his life for Christ's sake shall find it. This is the charitable man's case: all his alms, mercies, relieuings are (wisely and without executorship) sown in his life time; and the harvest will be so great, by that time he gets to heaven, that he shall receive a thousand for one: God is made his debtor, and he is a sure paymaster. Earth hath not riches enough in it to pay him, his requital shall be in heaven, and there with no less degree of honor, than a kingdom.

Judas cares not for the poor: Judas is dead, but this fault of his lives still: the poor had never more need to be cared for: but how: there are two sorts of poor, and our care must be proportionable to their conditions, there are. 1. some poor of God's making. 2. some of their own making: let me say, there are God's poor and the Devils poor: those the hand of God hath crossed; these have forced necessity on themselves by a dissolute life. The former must be cared for by the compassion of the heart, and charity of the purse: God's poor must have good alms; a seasonable relief according to thy power; or else the Apostle fearfully and peremptorily concludes against thee: the love of God is not in thee. If thou canst not find in thy heart to diminish a grain from thy heap, a penny from thy purse, a cut from thy loaf, when Jesus Christ stands at thy door and calls for it, profess what thou wilt, the love of earth hath thrust the love of heaven out of thy conscience. even Judas himself will pretend charity to these.

For the other poor, who have pulled necessity on themselves with the cords of Idleness, riot, or such disordered courses, there is another care to be taken; not to cherish the lazy blood in their veins by abusive mercy; but rather chafe their stonied sinews by correction, relieve them with punishment, and so recover them to the life of obedience. The sluggard lusteth, and hath an empty stomach: he loves sustenance well, but is loath to set his foot on the cold ground for it. The laws sanction, the good man's function saith, if he will not labor, let him not eat. For experience telleth that where sloth refuseth the ordinary pains of getting, therelust hunes for it in the vnbeaten paths of wickedness; and you shall find, that if ever occasion should put as much power into their hands, as idleness hath put villainy into their harts; they will be ready to pilfer your goods, fire your houses, cut your threats. I have read of the King of Macedon, deserying two such in his dominions, that (alterum e Macedonia fugere, alterum fugare fecit.) he made one fly out of his kingdom, and the other drive him. I would our Magistrates would follow no worse a precedent: indeed our laws have taken order for their restraint; wheresoever the fault is, they are rather multiplied; as if they had been sown at the making of the statute, and now (as from a harvest) they arise ten for one: surely our laws make good willes, but they have bad luck for executors: their willes are not performed; nor their legacies distributed; I mean the legacies of correction to such children of sloth, Impunitas delicti inuit at homines ad malignandum: Since chief encouragement is the want of punishment: favor one, harten many. It is fit therefore, that (poena ad paucos, met us ad omnes perueniat) penalty be inflicted on some, to strike terror into the rest.

It was Saint Augustine's censure: Illicit a non prohibere, consensus erroris est, not to restrain evil, is to maintain evil. The common wealth is an Instrument, the people are the strings, the magistrate is the musitian: let the musitian look, that the instrument be in tune, the jarring strings ordered; and not play on it, to make himself sport, but to please the ears of God. Doctors, the ministers of mercy now can do no good, except Ductores, the ministers of justice put to their hands. We can but forbid the corruption of the heart; they must prohibit the wickedness of the hand. Let these poor be cared for, that have no care for themselves: runnagates, renegates, that will not be ranged (like wandering planets) within the sphere of obedience: yet a little more sleep, says the sluggard: but (modicum non habet modum) their bunch will swell to a mountain; if it be not prevented and pared down. Care for these ye magistrates, lest you answer for the subornation of their sins: for the other, let all care, that care to be received into the arms of Jesus Christ.

3. Observe: Judas cares not for the poor; what, and yet would he for their sakes have drawn comfort from the Son of God? what an hypocrite is this? could there be so deep dissimulation in an Apostle? yes in that Apostle, that was a Devil. Loe still I am haunted with this white Devil, Hypocrisy: I cannot sails two leagues, but I rush upon this rock; nay, it will encounter, incomber me quite thorough the voyage of this verse. Judas said, and meant not, there is hypocrisy: he spake for the poor, and hates them, there is hypocrisy: he was a privy thief, a false steward, &c. all this not without hypocrisy. shall I be rid of this Devil at once, and conjure him out of my speech? God give me assistance, and add you patience, and I will spend a little time, to uncase this white Devil, and strip him of all his borrowed colors.

Of all bodily creatures, man (as he is God's image) is the best: but basely dejected, degenerated, debauched, the (simply) worst: of all earthly creatures a wicked man is the worst, of all men a wicked Christian, of all Christians a wicked professor, of all professors a wicked hypocrite, of all hypocrites a wicked, warped, wretched Judas. Take the extraction or quintessence of all corrupted men, and you have a Judas: this then is Judas a man degenerate, a Christian corrupted, a professor putrefied, a guilded hypocrite, a white-skind Devil. I confess I am sparingly affected to this point, and would fain shift my hands of this monster, and not encounter him: for it is not to fight with the Unicornes of Assyria, nor the Bulls of Samaria, nor the Beasts of Ephesus: neither absolute Atheists, nor dissolute Christians, nor resolute ruffians: the horns of whose rapine and malice are no less manifest, than malignant; but at once imminent in their threats, and eminent in their appearance. But to set upon a Beast, that hath with the heart of a Leopard, the face of a man, of a good man, of the best man; a star placed high in the orbe of the Church, though swooped down with the Dragons tail, because not fixed; a darling in the mothers lap, blessed with the Churches indulgence, yet a bastard: a brother of the fraternity, trusted sometimes with the Churches stock, yet no brother, but a broker of treacheries, a brocher of falsehoods: I would willingly save this labor, but that the necessity of my Text over-rules my disposition.

I know, these times are so shameless and impudent, that many strip of the white, and keep the Devil; wicked they are, and without show of the contrary: men are so far from giving house-room to the substance of religion, that they admit not an out-room for the show; so backward to put on Christ, that they will not accept of his livery; who are short of Agrippa, scarce persuaded to seem Christians, not at all to be: these will not drink hearty draughts of the waters of life, nay scarce vouchsafe (like the dogs that run by Nile) to give a lap at Jacob's well: unless it be some, as they report, that frequent the sign of it, to be drunk: they salute not Christ at the Cross, nor bid him good morrow in the Temple, but go blustering by, as if some serious business had put haste into their feet, and God was not worthy to be staid & spoke withal: if this be a riddle, show me the day, shall not expound it by a demonstrative experience. For these I may say, I would to God, they would seem holy, and frequent the places, where sanctimony is taught, but the Devil is a nimble, running, cunning fencer, that strikes on both hands, duplici ictu, and would have men either (non sanctos, aut non parùm sanctos) not holy, or not a little holy, in their own opinion, and outward ostentation: either no fire of devotion on the harth, or that that is, in the top of the chimney: That subtle winnower persuades men, that they are all chaff, and no wheat, or all wheat and no chaff; and would keep the soul either lank with ignorance, or rank with insolence: let me therefore woo you, win you to reject both these extremes, between which, your harts lie, as the grain betwixt both the millstones.

Shall I speak plainly? You are sick at London of one disease (I speak to you settled Citizens, not extrauagants) and we in the Country of another: a Sermon against hypocrisy in most places of the Country, is like phlebotomy to a consumption (the spilling of innocent blood) our sicknesses are cold palseys and shaking agues: yours in the City are hotter diseases, the burning fevers of fiery zeal, the inflammations and impostumes of hypocrisy: we have the frosts, and you have the lightnings; most of us profess too little, and some of you profess too much, unless your courses were more answerable; I would willingly be in none of your bosoms; only I must speak of Judas. His hypocrisy was vile in 3. respects.

1. He might have been sound: I make no question but he heard his Master preach, and preached himself, that God's request is the heart: so Christ schools the Samaritan woman; so prescribed the Scribe. Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart, &c. cord Judas, with the heart, which thou reseruest like an equivocating Jesuit: nay, (toto cord, for it is not tutum, except it be totum) with the whole heart, which thou never stoodest to divide, but gavest it wholly to him, that wholly killed it, thy masters enemy, and none of thy friend, the Devil. Thou heardest thy master, thy friend, thy God denounce many a fearful, fatal, final woe against the Pharisees; (hac appellatione, & ob hanc caussam) under this title, and for this cause) hypocrites, and because hypocrites. As if his woes were but words, and his words wind, empty and aiery menaces, without intention of hurt, or extension of a revengeful arm, behold thou art an hypocrite: thou art therefore the worse, because thou mightest be better.

2. He seemed sound: (spem vnltu simulat, premit altum cord dolorem; nay dolum rather) craft rather than grief, unless he grieved, that out of his cunning, there was so little coming, small prize or booty: yet like a subtle gamester, he keeps his countenance, though the dice do not favor him. And as Fabius Maximus told Scipio preparing for Africa concerning Syphax: Fraus fidem in paruis sibi perstruit, vt cum operaepretium sit, cum magna mercede fallat. Judas creeps into trust by justice in trifles, that he might more securely cheat for a fit advantage. Without pretence of fidelity how got he the stewardship? perhaps if need required, he spared not his own purse in Christ's service; but he meant to put it to usury: he carried not the purse, but to pay himself for his pains: thus iactura in loco, res quaestuosissima:) a seasonable damage is a reasonable vantage: in this then his vileness is more execrable, that he seemed good.

If it were possible, the Devil was then worse than himself, when he came in Samuel's mantle. Iesabels paint made her more ugly: if ever you take a fox in a lambes skin, hang him up, for he is the worst of the generation: a Gibeonite in his old shoes, a Seminary in his hairecloth, a Ruffian in the robes of a Iacobine, fly like the plague: these are so much the worse Devils, as they would be holy Devils: true Traitors that would fight against God with his own weapons; and by being out of cry religious, run themselves out of breath to do the Church a mischief.

3. He would seem thus to his master; yet knew in his heart, that his master knew his heart: therefore his hypocrisy the worst. Had he been an Aliant to the common wealth of Israel, and never seen more of God, than the eye of nature had discovered, (yet says even the Heathen: 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; God hath a revenging eye.) then no marvel, if his eyes had been so blind, as to think Christ's blind also, and that he, which made the eye, had not an eye to see withal: but he saw that son of David give sight to so many sons of Adam casually blind, to one naturally and borne blind; miraculum inauditum, a wonder of wonders: and shall Judas think to put out his eye, that gave them all eyes? oh incredible, insensible, invincible ignorance!

You see his hypocrisy: me thinks even the sight of it is disuasion forcible enough, and it should be needless to give any other reason than the discovery. yet whiles many censure it in Judas, they condemn it not in themselves, and either think they have it not, or not in such measure. Surely we may be no Judases, yet hypocrites: and who will totally clear himself? let me tell thee, if thou doest, thou art the worst hypocrite, and but for thee, we had not such need to complain. He that clears himself from all sin, is the most sinner, and he that says, he hath not sinned in hypocrisy, is the rankest hypocrite: but I do admit a distinction. All the sons of Adam are infected with this contamination, some more, some less, heres the difference; all have hypocrisy, but hypocrisy hath some: aliud habere peccatum, aliud haberi à peccato. It is one thing for thee to possess sin, another thing for sin to possess thee. All have the same corruption, not the same eruption: in a word, all are not hypocrites, yet who hath not sinned in hypocrisy? Do not then send your eyes like Dinah's gadding abroad, forgetting your own business at home: strain not courtesy with these banquets, and having good meat carved thee, lay it liberally upon another man's trencher, be not sick of this plague and conceal it, or call it by another name: hypocrisy is hypocrisy, whatsoever you call it: and as it hath learned to leave no sins naked, so I hope, it hath not forgot to clothe it self: it hath as many names as Garnet had, and more Protean shapes than the Seminaries: the white Devil is in this a true Devil; multorum nominum, non boni nominis: of many names, but never a good one. The vileness of this white Devil appears in 6. respects.

1. It is the worst of sins, because it keeps all sins: they are made sure and secure by hypocrisy. Indeed some vices are quarter-masters with it, and some Sovereigns over it: for the hypocrisy is but another sins pandar: except to content some affected guest, we could never yield to this filthy Herodias. It is made a stawking horse for covetousness, under long prayers many a Pharisee deuours the poor, houses, goods and all. It is a complexion for lust, who, were she not painted over with a religious show, would appear as loathsome to the world, as she is indeed. It is a sepulcher of rotten impostures, which would stink like a putrefied corps, if hypocrisy were not their cover. It is a mask for treason, whose shop-full of poisons, pistols, daggers, gunpowder-trains, would easily be spied out, had hypocrisy left them bare-faced. Treachery under this visard thrusts into Court-revels, nay, Court-councils; and holds the torch to sports, nay the books to serious consultations; deviseth, adviseth, plots with those that provide best for the Common-wealth, Thus are all sins beholding to hypocrisy: she maintains them at her own proper costs and charges.

2. It is the worst of sins, because it counterfeits all virtues: he that counterfeits the Kings coin, is liable to death, if hypocrisy find not death, and (mortem sine morte) death without death, for counterfeting the king of heavens Seal manual of grace, it speeds better then it merits: vice is made virtues ape in an hypocrites practice. If he see Chusi run, this Ahimaaz will outrunne him: he mends his pace, but not his path: the goodman goes slower, but will be at heaven before him: thus thriftiness in a Saint, is counterfetted by niggardliness in an hypocrite. be thou charitable, behold he is bountiful, but not except thou may behold him: his vainglorious pride shall emulate thy liberality: thou art good to the poor, he will be better to the rich: he follows the religious man a far of, as Peter did Christ, but when he comes to the cross, he will deny him. Thus hypocrisy can but put blood into your cheeks, (like the Aliptae) and better your colors; but you may be sick in your consciences, and almost dead at the heart, and (non est medicamen in hortis) there is no medicine in this drugsters shop can cure you.

3. An hypocrite is a kind of honest Atheist: for his own Good is his God: his heaven is upon earth, and that not the Peace of his conscience, or that kingdom of heaven, which may be in a soul living on earth, but the secure peace of a worldly estate: he stands in awe of no Judge, but man's eye; that he observes with as great respect, as David did the eyes of God; if man takes notice, he cares not, yet laughs at him for that notice, and kills his soul by that laughter: so Pygmalion- like, he dotes on his own carved and painted piece: and perhaps dies Zeuxis death, who painting an old woman, and looking merrily on her, brake out into a laughter that killed him. if the world doth not praise his doings, he is ready to challenge it, as the Jews God, wherefore have we fasted, and thou seest it not? he crosseth Christ's precept: the left hand must be privy to the right hands charity, he dares not trust God with a penny, except before a whole congregation of witnesses, lest perhaps, God should deny the receipt.

4. An hypocrite (at last) is hated of all, both God and man: the world hates thee, Judas, because thou retainest to Christ, Christ hates thee more because thou (but) only retainest, and doest no faithful service. The world cannot abide thee, thou hypocrite, because thou professest godliness; God can worse abide thee, because thou doest no more than profess. It had been yet some policy, on the loss of the worlds favor to keep God's; or if lost God's, to have (yet) kept in with the world: thou art not thy own friend, to make them both thy enemies: miserable man, destitute of both refuges, shut out both from God's and the worlds doors. Neither God nor the Devil loves thee, thou hast been true to none of them both, and yet most false (of all) to thyself. So (this white Devil) Judas, that for the Pharisees sake betrayed his master, and for the Devils sake betrayed himself, was in the end rejected of Pharisees and master; and like a ball, tost by the rackets of contempt and shame, bandied from the Pharisees to Christ, from Christ to the Pharisees, from wall to wall, till he fell into the Devils hazard; not resting like a stone, till he came to his center, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 ; into his own place. Purposeth he to go to Christ? his own conscience gives him a repulsiue answer: no, thou hast betrayed innocent blood. Goes he to the chief Priests and Elders? cold comfort: what is that to us? see thou to that. Thus (your ambi-dexter proves at last ambo-sinister) he that plays so long on both hands, hath no hand to help himself withal. This is the hypocrites misery; because he wears God's livery, the world will not be his mother; because his heart, habit, service is sin-wedded, God will not be his father: he hath lost earth for heavens sake, and heaven for earths sake; and may complain with Rebeccaes fear of hir two sons; why should I be deprived of you both in one day? or as sorrowful Jacob expostulated for his, Me have you robbed of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and will you take Benjamin also? all these things are against me. This may be the hypocrites mournful Dirge: My hypocrisy hath robbed me of all my comforts: my Creator is lost, my Redeemer will not own me; and will ye take away (my beloved Benjamin) the world also? all these things are against me. Thus an open sinner is in better case, then a dissembling Saint. There are few that seem worse to others, then they are in themselves: yet I have both read and heard of some, that have with broken hearts, and mourning bowels, sorrowed for themselves, as if they had been reprobates; and not spared so to proclaim themselves, when yet their estate was good to godward, though they knew it not: perhaps their wickedness and ill life hath been grievous, but their repentance gracious: I may call these black Saints. The hypocrite is neat and curious in his religious outside, but the linings of his conscience are filthy and polluted rags: then I say still, a black Saint is better than a white Devil.

5 Hypocrisy is like the Devil, for he is a perfect hypocrite: so he begun with our first Parents, to put out his apparent horns in Paradise: non moriemini, ye shall not die: yet he knew this would kill them. An hypocrite then is the child of the Devil, and (quoth Time the midwife) as like the father, as it may possibly look, he is the father of lies; and there is no liar like the hypocrite, for as Peter to Ananias, thou hast not lied to men, but to God. Nay, the hypocrite is his eldest son. Now, the privilege of primogeniture by the law, was to have a double portion: wretched hypocrite in this eldership: (Math. 24. 51.) Satan is called a Prince, and thus stands his monarchy, or rather Anarchy. The Devil is king, the hypocrite his eldest son: the usurer his younger; Atheists are his viceroyes in his several provinces, for his dominion is beyond the Turks for limits: Epicures are his Nobles: Persecutors his Magistrates; Heretics his ministers, Traitors his executioners: sin his law; the wicked his subjects, Tyrannie his government: hell his court, and damnation his wages. Of all these the hypocrite is his eldest Son.

6 Lastly, an hypocrite is in greatest difficulty to be cured. Why should the minister administer physic to him, that is perfectly sound? or why should Christ give his blood to the righteous? well may he be hurt and swell, swell and rankle, rankle and fester, fester and die, that will not bewray his disease, least he betray his credit.

A man of great Profession, little Devotion, is like a body so repugnantly composed, that he hath a hot liver, and a cold stomach: that which heats the stomach, ouerheates the liver: that which cools the liver, ouercooles the stomach: so, exhortations, that warm his conscience, inflame his outward zeal: desuasiues to cool his hypocrisy, freeze his devotion, he hath a flushing in his face, as if he had eaten fire: zeal burns in his tongue, but come near this gloeworme, and he is cold, dark, squalid. Summer sweates in his face, winter freeseth in his conscience: March, many forwards in his words, December in his actions: pepper is not more hot in the tongues end, nor more cold at heart: and (to borrow the words of our worthy Divine and best Characterer) we think him a Saint, he thinks himself an Angel, flatterers make him a God, God knows him a Devil.

This is the white Devil, you will not think how glad I am, that I am rid of him: let him go; yet I must not let you go, till I have persuaded you to hate this monster, to abhor this Devil. Alas! how forget we (in these days) to build up the cedar work of piety, and learn only to paint it over with vermillion! we white and parget the walls of our profession, but the rubbish and cobwebs of sin hang in the corners of our consciences: take heed, a Bible under your arms, will not excuse a false conscience in your bosoms: think not you fathom the substance, when you embrace the shadow: so the fox seeing sweet meats in the violl, licked the glass, and thought he had the thing: so the ignorant sick man eats up the Physicians bill, instead of the receipt contained in it. It is not a day of seven, nay an hour of seven days, the grudged parting with an alms to a fire, the conjuring of a paternoster, (for the heart only prays) or once a year renewing thy acquaintance with God in the sacrament can privilege or keep impune thy injuries, usuries, perjuries, frauds, slanders, oppressions, lusts, blasphemies. Beware of this white Devil, lest your portion be with them in hell, whose society you would defy on earth, God shall smite thee, thou painted wall; and wash of thy vermilliondye with the rivers of brimstone. You have read of some, that heard Christ preach in their pulpits, feasted at his communion-table, cast out devils in his name, yet not admitted: whiles they wrought miracles, not good works, cast out devils from others, not sins from themselves, they miss of entrance. Go then and solace thyself in thy bodily devotion, thou hearest, readest, receauest, releeuest; where is thy conscience, thy heart, thy spirit? God asks not for thy livery, but thy service: he knows none by their confession, but by their conversation. Your looks are the objects of strangers eyes, your lives of your neighbors, your consciences of your own, all of God's. Do not Ixion- like take a cloud for Juno, a mist of presumption for a sound and solid faith: more can say the Creed, than understand it, more feel it than practice it. Go into your grounds in the dead of winter, and of two naked and destitute trees, you know not which is the sound, which the doted: the summer will give Christ's mark: By their fruits you shall know them.

I speak not to discourage your zeal, but to harten it, but to better it. Your zeal goes through the world, ye worthy Citizens: Who builds hospitalls? the City. Who is liberal to the distressed Gospel? the City. Who is ever faithful to the Crown? the City. Beloved your works are good; oh do not loose their reward through hypocrisy. I am not bitter, but charitable: I would fain put you into the Chariot of grace with Elias, and only wish you to put off this Mantle. Oh that it lay in my power to prevail with your affections, as well as your judgments: you loose all your goodness, if your hearts be not right, the ostentation of man shall meet with the detestation of God. You loose your attention now, if your zeal be in your eye, more than heart. You loose your prayers, if, when the ground hath your knee, the world hath your conscience: as if you had two gods: one for Sundays, another for work days; one for the Church, another for the Change. You loose your charity whiles you give glosingly, illiberally, too late: not a window you have erected, but must bear your names: but some of you rob Peter to pay Paul, take Tenths from the Church, and give not the poor the Twentiths of them. It is not seasonable, nor reasonable charity, to undo whole towns by your usuries, enclosings, oppressions, impropriations; and for a kind of expiation, to give three or four the yearly pension of Twentie marks: an Almshouse is not so big as a village, nor thy superfluity whereout thou givest, like their necessity whereout thou extortest: he is but poorly charitable, that having made a hundred beggars, relieves two. You loose all your pious observations, whiles you loose your integrity: your solemn censuring, mourning for the times evil, whiles yourselves are the evil cause thereof: your counterfeit sorrow for the sins of your youth, whiles the sins of your age are worse; your casting salt and brine of reproof at others faults, whiles your own hearts are most unseasoned; all these artificial whitings, are but thrifty leasings, sick healths, bitter sweetes, and more pleasing deaths. Cast then away this bane of religion, hypocrisy; this candle with a great wicke and no tallow, that often goes out quickly, never without stench; this fair, flattering, white Devil. How well have we bestowed this pains, I in speaking, you in hearing, if this Devil be cast out of your consciences, out of your conversations: It will leave some prints behind it in the best, but bless not yourselves in it, and God shall bless you from it: Amen.

The affirmative part of God's censure, stands next to our speech; Describing his. 1. meaning. 2. means. 3. maintenance. His meaning was, to be a thief, and sharke for himself, though his pretence pleaded (forma Pauperis) in the behalf of the poor. He might, perhaps, stand upon his honesty, and rather than loose his credit, strive to purge himself by his suspectless neighbors: but there need no further Jury pass upon him, God hath given testimony, and his witness is beyond exception, Judas is a thief. A thief: who saw him steal? he that hath now condemned him for his pains. Indeed the world did not so take him, his reputation was good enough: yet he was a thief, a crafty, cunning, cheating thief.

There are two sorts of thieves: public ones, that either with a violent hand take away the passengers money, or rob the house at midnight: whose Church is the highway; there they pray (not to God, but) on men: their dwelling like Cain's, very unsure; they stand upon thorns whiles they stand upon certenties: Their refuge is a wood, the instrument of their vocation a sword: of these some are land-thieves, some sea-thieves: all roaue on the sea of this world, and most commonly suffer shipwreck, some in the deep, some on a hill. I will say little of these as not pertinent to my text, but leave them to the Jury: And speak of thieves like Judas, secret robbers, that do more mischief with less danger to themselves. These ride in the open streets, whiles the other lurk in close woods. And to reason, for these private thieves are in greater hazard of damnation: the grave exhortations of the Judge, the serious counsel of the assistant minister, together with the sight of present death, and the necessity of an instant account with God, work strongly on a public thief’s conscience, all which the private thief neither hath, nor hath need of in the general thought. The public thief wants but apprehension, but this private thief needs discovery: for they lie close as treason, dig low like pioners, and though they be as familiar with us, as familiars, they seem stranger than the Indians.

To define this manner of thieves: A private thief is he, that without danger of law robs his neighbor; that sets a good face on the matter, and hath some profession to countenance it: a justifiable cloke hides a damnable fraud; a trade, a profession, a mystery, like a Rome-hearted Protestant, hides this Deuillish Seminary under his roof without suspicion. To say truth, most of our professions (thanks to ill professors) are so confounded with sins, as if there went but a pair of sheeres between them: nay they can scarce be distinguished: you shall not easily discern between a hot, furious professor and an hypocrite; between a covetous man and a thief; between a Courtier and an aspirer: between a gallant and a swearer; between an officer and a bribetaker: between a seruitour and a parasite: between Farmers and poor-grinders: between gentlemen and pleasure-lovers: between great men and mad men: between a tradesman and a fraudesman: between a monied man and an usurer; between an usurer and the Devil. In many arts, the more skillful, the more ill-full: for now-adaies: armis pollentior astus: fraud goes beyond force: this makes Lawyers richer than soldiers, userers than Lawyers, the Devil than all. The old Lion (saith the Fable) when his nimble days were over, and he could no longer pray by violence, kept his den with a feigned sickness: the suspectless beasts drawn thither to a dutiful visitation, thus became his pray: cunning served his turn, when canning did no good. The world, whiles it was young, was simple, honest, plain-dealing: gentlemen then delued in the ground, now the soles of their feet must not touch it: then thy drunk water, now wine will not serve, except to drunkenness: then they kept sheep, now they scorn to wear the wool; then Jacob returned the money in the sacks mouth, now we are ready to steal it and put it in. Plain-dealing is dead, and what we most lament, died without issue. Virtue had but a short reign, and was soon deposed: all the examples of sin in the Bible are newly acted over again, and the interest exceeds the principal, the counterpaine the original. The Apostasy, now, holds us in our manners: we leave God for man, for Mammon. Once, Orbis ingemuit, factum se videns Arrianum; the world groaned, seeing it self made an Arian: It'may now groan worse, factum se videns Machiauellum, seeing it self made a Machiavelli. nisi Deus opem praestat, deperire restat. Greeued devotion had never more cause to sing, Mundum dolens circuiui; fidem vndi{que} quaesiui, &c.

But I am to deal with none but thieves, and those private ones: and because Judas is the precedent, I will begin with him, that is most like him: according to the proverb, which the Grecians had of Philo Judaeus: ( 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 : aut Plato Philonem sequitur, aut Platonem Philo.) Either Plato followed Philo, or Philo imitated Plato. Let me only change the names: Either Judas played the Pope, or the Pope plays the Judas. This is the most subtle thief of the world, and robs all Christendom under a good color: who can say, he hath a black eye, or a light finger? for experience hath taught him, that cui pollis Leonina non sufficit, vulpina est assuenda: whē the Lions skin cannot threat, the foxes skin can cheat. Pope Alexander was a beast, that having entered like a fox, he must needs reign like a Lion, worthy he was to die like a dog: for, vis confilij expers, moleruit sua, power without policy is like a piece without powder: many a Pope sings that common Ballad of hell: Ingenio perij, qui miser ipse meo: Wit, whither wilt thou? woe is me: my wit hath wrought my misery.

To say truth their Religion is nothing in the circumstance but craft; and policy maintains their Hierarchy; as Judas subtlety made him rich. Judas was put in trust with a great deal of the Devils business; yet not more than the Pope. Judas pretended the poor and robbed them: and doth not the Pope think you? Are there no alms-boxes rifled and emptied into the Popes Treasury? Our Fathers say that the poor gave Peter-pence to the Pope, but our grandfathers cannot tell us, that the Pope gave Caesar-pence to the poor: did not he sat in the holy chair, (as Augustus Caesar in his imperial throne) and cause the whole Christian world to be taxed: and what? did they freely give it? no, a taxation forced it; what right then had the Pope to it? just as much as Judas had to his masters money? was he not then a thief? yet, what need a rich man be a thief? the Pope is rich, and needs must, for his comings in be great: he hath rent out of heaven, rent out of hell, rent out of purgatory: but more sacks come to his mill out of purgatory, than out of hell and heaven too; and for his toling, let the world judge: therefore saith Bishop Jewel, he would be content to loose hell and heaven too, to save his purgatory. Some by pardons he prevents from hell: some by Indulgences he lifts up to heaven; and infinite by merits he ransomes from purgatory: not a jot without money; cruces, altaria, Christum: he selles Christ's cross, Christ's blood, Christ's self; all for money. Nay, he hath rent from the very Stews a hell above ground, and swells his coffers by the sins of the people: he suffers a price to be set on damnation; and maintains lust to go to Law for her own; gives whoredom a toleration under his seal; that Lust the son of Idleness, hath free access to Liberty the daughter of Pride.

Judas was a great Statesman in the Devils Commonwealth; for he bore four main offices: either he begged them shamefully, or he bought them bribingly, or else Beelzebub saw desert in him, and gave him them gratis, for his good parts; for Judas was his white boy. he was 1. an hypocrite. 2. a thief. 3. a traitor. 4. a murderer. Yet the Pope shall vie offices with him, and win the game too for plurality. The Pope sits in the holy chair, yet a Devil: perjury, Sodomy, sorcery, homicide, parricide, patricide, treason, murder, &c. are many and essential things to the Pope. He is not content to be Steward, but he must be Uicar, nay indeed, Lord himself: for what can Christ do, and the Pope cannot do? Judas was nobody to him. He hath stolen Truths garment, and put it on Errors back, turning poor Truth naked out of doors. he hath altered the primitive institutions, and adulterated God's sacred laws; maintaining vagas libidines: he steals the harts of subjects from their Sovereigns, by stealing fidellity from the harts of Subjects: and would steal the crown from the kings head, and all under the shadow of religion. This is a thief; a notable, a notorious thief, but let him go: I hope he is known well enough, and every true man will bless himself out of his way.

I come to our selves: there are many kinds of private Thieves in both the houses of Israel and Aaron: in foro & choro, in Change and Chancel; Common-wealth and Church. I can tax no man's person; if I could, I would abhor it, or were worthy to be abhorred: the Sins of our Times are the Thieves, I would arraign, testify against, condemned, have executed, the persons I would have saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

1. If there be any magistrates (into whose mouths God hath put the determination of doubts; and the distribution of right into their hands:) that suffer popularity, partiality, passion to rule, over-rule their judgments, these are private thieves: they rob the poor man of his just cause, and equities relief, and no law can touch them for it: thus may causes go, not according to right, but friendship: as Themistocles boy could say, As I will, the whole Senate will: for as I will, my mother will; as my mother will, my father will; as my father will, the whole Senate will. Thus as a groome of the chamber, a Secretary of the closet, or a porter of the gate will, the cause must go: this is horrible theft, though not araignable, hence a knot is found in a bulrush: delay shifts of the day of hearing; a good paint is set on a foul pastbord; circumstances are shuffled from the bar; the Sun of truth is clouded: the poor confident Plaintiff goes home undone: his moans, his groans are vented up to heaven: the just God sees and suffers it, but he will one day judge that Judge. Who can indite this thief? what law may pass on him? what Jury can find him? what Judge can fine him? none on earth: there is a bar he shall not escape: if there be any such, (as I trust there is not) they are thieves.

2. If there be any Lawyer, that takes fees on both hands, one to speak, another to hold his peace: as (Demosthenes answered his bragging fellow Lawyer) this is a thief, though the law doth not call him so: a mercenary tongue and a money-spel'd conscience, that undertakes the defense of things known to his own heart to be unjust, is only proper to a thief: a double thief, he robs both sides: the adverse part in pleading against the truth, his own client in drawing him on to his further damage. If this be not, as the Roman complained, latrocinium in foro, thievery in the Hall, there is none: happy Westminster hall, if thou wert freed from this kind of cutpurses. If no plummets, except of unreasonable weight, can set the wheels of their tongues a going: and then if a golden addition can make the hammer strike to our pleasure: if they keep their ears and mouths shut, till their purses be full; and will not understand a cause till they feel it: if they shuffle difficulties into plainness, and trip up the Laws heels with tricks: if they Surgionlike keep the Clients disease from healing, till he hath no more money for salve: then to speak in their own language, Noverint vniuersi, Be it known to all men by these presents that these are thieves: though I could wish rather, that Noverint ipsi, they would know it themselves, and reform this deformity.

3. If there be any officer, that walks with unwashen hands, I mean, with the fowl fingers of bribery, he is a thief: be the matter penal or capital, if a bribe can pick Justices lock, and plead against the innocent, or for himself being nocent, and prevail, this is theft. Theft? who is robbed? the giver? doth not the freedom of his will transfer a right of the gift to the receiver? no; for it is voluntary or willing will: but as a man gives his purse to the over-mastring thief, rather than ventures his life; so this his bribe, rather than endanger his cause: shall I say, the thief hath as much right to the purse, as the officer to the bribe; and they are both, though not equally palpable, yet equally culpable thieves. Is the giver innocent or nocent? innocent, and shall not innocence have her right without a bribe? nocent; and shall gold conceal his fault, or cancel his punishment? Dost thou not know whether, and wilt thou blind thyself before hand with a bribe? for bribes are like dust thrown in the eyes of Justice, that she cannot without pain look on the Sun-shine of truth. Though a second to thyself receive them, wife or friend, by thy allowance, they are but stolen goods, coles of fire put in the roof of thy house: for fire shall devour the houses of bribes. And there have been many houses built by report, the first stone of whose foundation was hewn out of the quarry of bribery. These are thieves.

4. There is theeuerie too among Tradesmen: and who would think it? many (they say) rob us, but we rob none: yes, but they think that (verba lactis will countenance frandom in factis) smooth words will smoother rough deeds. This web of theft is many ways woven in a shop or a warehouse, but three especially.

1. By a false weight, and no true measure, whose content or content is not justifiable by law; or the cunning conveyances in weighing or metting, such as cheat the buyer: are not these pretty tricks to pick men's purses? the French word hath well expressed them: they are Lieger dumaines. Now had I not as good loose my purse on Salisbury plain, as in London Exchange? is my loss the less, because violence forbears and craft picks my purse? The high-way thief is not greater abomination to God, than the shop-thief: and for man, the last is more dangerous: the other we knowingly fly; but this laughs us in the face, whiles he robs us.

2. By insufficient wares, which yet with a dark window and an impudent tongue, will appear good to the buyers eye and ear too. Sophistry is now fled from the schools into shops: from disputation to merchandising: he is a silly tradesman, that cannot sophisticate his wares, as well as he hath done his conscience; and wear his tongue with protestations, barer than trees in Autumn, the head of old age, or the livings of Church-men. Oaths indeed smell too rank of infidelity; marry, we are Protestants, and protest away our souls: there is no other way to put off bad wares, and put up good monies: are not these thieves?

3. By playing or rather praying upon men's necessities: they must have the commodity, therefore set the dice on them: vox latronis: the advantage taken of a man's necessity is a trick of a worse Devil than Judas: Thou shouldest rather be like Job, a foot to lame necessity, and not take away his crutch: or perhaps God hath put more wit into thy brains, than his, thou seest further into the bargain: and therefore takest opportunity to abuse his plainness: thou seruest thyself in gain, not him in love: thou mayest, and laugh at the law; but there is a law, thou hast transgressed, that without Jesus Christ shall condemn thee to hell.

Go now, and applaud yourselves, ye sons of fraud, that eagle-eyed scrupulousity cannot find you faulty, nor the Lyon-handed law touch you, please yourselves in your security. You practice belike, behind the hangings, and come not on the public stage of Injury: yet you are not free from spectators: testante Numine, homine, Daemone: God, man, Angels, Devils shall witness against you: ex cordibus, ex codicibus: by your hearts, by your books, God shall judge you. Injury is often in the one, perjury in the other: the great Justice will not put it up: they shall be convicted thieves.

5. There are thieves crope into the Church too; or rather they encroach on the Church; for Ministers cannot now play the thieves with their livings, they have nothing left to steal: but there are secret Judases, can make shift to do it. Difficilis magni custodia census. The Eagles flock to a carcase, and thieves hanker about rich doors: at the dispersion of church-livings, they cried as the Babylonians, to the spoil, to the spoil. The Church was once rich, but it was (diebus illis) in the golden time: when honesty went in good clothes; and ostentation durst not give religion the check-mate, now they plead prescription, and prove them their own by long possession. I do not tax all those for private thieves, that hold in their hands, lands and possessions, that were once the Churches; but those that withhold such as are due to Church-men. Their estates were once taken away by (more than) God's (mere) sufferance, for a just punishment of their idleness, Idolatry, lusts: sure there is some Achanism in the campe of the Levites, that makes this plague-sore to run still: there is some disobedient and fugitive Ionasses that thus totter our ship. I complain not, that claustra are turned into castra; Abbeys into Gentlemens houses; places of monition, to places of munition: but that men rob (aram dominicam) God's house, to furnish (haram domesticam) their own house, this is theft, and sacrilegious theft: a succession of theft; for the fingers of the sons are now heavier than the loins of their fathers: those were (improbi Papistae) wicked Papists, and these are (improbirapistae) ungodly robbers.

This is a monstrous theft, and so exceeding all thefts, as (non nisi in Deum fieri potest) it can be committed against none but God. When Scipio robbed the temple of Tholossa, there was not a man, that carried away any of the gold, whoever prospered after it: and I pray you tell me, how many have thrived with the goods of the Church? they go from man to man without rest, like the Ark among the Philistines, which was removed from Ashdod, to Gath; from Gath to Ekron, as if it could find no place to rest in, but vexed the people that kept it, till it returned to the old seat in Israel. oftentimes these goods left by Gentlemen to their heirs, prove gangrenes to their whole estates; and house is joined to house so fast, God's house to their own, that the fire, which begins at the one consumes the other: as the Eagle, that stole a piece of meat from the Altar, carried a cole with it, that set her nest on fire. I am persuaded many a house of blood in England, had stood at this hour, had not the forced springs of impropriations turned their foundation to a quagmire. In all your knowledge, think but on a Churchrobbers heir, that ever thrived to the third generation: yet alas! horror to my bones, and shame to my speech! there are not wanting among our selves, that give encouragement to these thieves: and without question, many a man, so well otherwise disposed, would have been reclaimed from this sin, but for their distinctions of competencies: I appeal to their own consciences, there is not an humorist living, that in heart thinks so, or would forbear their reproof, were he not well provided for. These are the foxes, that content not themselves to steal the grapes, but they must forage the vine: thus yet still is God's house made a den of Thieves, without envy or partiality they are thieves.

6. There is more store of thieves yet: covetous Landlords, that stretch their rents on the tenter-hooks of an evil conscience, and swell their coffers by undoing their poor tenants: these sit close, and stare the law in the face, yet by their leave they are thieves: I do not deny the improoument of old rents, so it be done with old minds, I mean, our forefathers charity: but with the Devil, to set right upon the pinnacles, and pitch so high a price of our lands, that it strains the Tenants heart-blood to reach it, is theft, and killing theft. What all their immoderate toile, broken sleeps, sore labors can get, with a miserable diet to themselves, not being able to spare a morsel of bread to others, is a pray to the Landlords rapine: this is to rob their estates, grind their faces, suck their bloods. These are thieves.

7. Engrossers; that hoard up commodities, and by stopping their propagation raise the price; these are thieves. Many Block-houses in the city, monopolies in the court, garners in the country, can testify, there are now such thieves abroad: we complain of a dearth; sure the heavens are too merciful to us, that are so unmerciful one to another: scarcity comes without God's sending: who brings it then? even the Devil and his brokers, engrossing misers. The Common-wealth may often blow her nails, unless she sit by an engrossers fire: her limbs may be faint with hunger, unless she buy grain at an engrossers price. I confess, this is a sin, which the Law takes notice of, but not in the full nature, as theft. The pick-purse (in my opinion) doth not so much hurt, as this general robber; for they rob millions. These do not with Joseph, buy up the superfluity of plenty, to prevent a dearth; but hoard up the store of plenty, to procure a dearth. rebels to God, trespassers to nature, thieves to the Common-wealth: if these were apprehended and punished, neither City nor Country should complain as they do, Mean time, the people's curse is upon them, and I doubt not but God's plague will follow it; if repentance turn it not away: till when, they are private thieves.

8. Inclosers; that pretend a distinction of possessions, a preservation of woods, indeed to make better and broader their own territories, and to steal from the poor commons; these are horrible thieves. The poor man's beast is his maintenance, his sustenance, his life, to take food from his beast, is to take the beasts food from his belly: so he that incloseth Commons is a monstrous thief, for he steals away the poor man's living and life; hence many a Cottager, nay perhaps Farmer, is fain (as the Indians do to Devils) to sacrifice to the lord of the soil, a yearly bribe for a nenoceat. For though the law forbids such enclosures: yet (quod fieri non debet, factum valet) when they are once ditcht in, say the law what it will, I see no throwing out: force bears out, what fraud hath borne in: let them never open their mouths to plead the Common-wealths benefit: they intend it as much as Judas did, when he spake for the poor: no, they are thieves, the bane of the common good, the surfeit of the land, the scourge of the poor: good only to themselves; and that in opinion only: for they do it, to dwell alone, and they dwell alone indeed: for neither God nor good Angel keeps them company: and for a good conscience, it cannot get thorough their quick-sets. These are thieves, though they have enclosed their theft, to keep the Law out, and their wickedness in: yet the day shall come, their lands shall be thrown out, their lives thrown out, their souls thrown out: their lands out of their possessions, their lives out of their bodies, their souls out of heaven; except repentance and restitution prevail with the great Judge for their pardon: mean time, they are thieves.

9 Many Tap-house-keepers, Tauerners, victuallers; which the provident care of our worthy magistrates, hath now done well to restrain: if at least this Hidraes heads do not multiply. I do not speak to annihilate the profession: they may be honest men, and doubtless some are, which live in this rank: but if many of them should not chop away a good conscience for money, drunkenness should never be so welcome to their doors. The dissolute wretch sits there securely, and buys his own sickness, with great expense: which would preserve the health of his poor wife and children at home: that lamentably mone for bread, whiles he lauisheth all in drink. Thus the pot robs him of his wit, he robs himself of grace, and the victualler robs him of his money. This theft might yet be borne: but the Common-wealth is here robbed too. Drunkenness makes so quick riddance of the ale, that this raiseth the price of mault: and the good sale of mault, raiseth the price of barley: thus is the land distressed, the poor's bread is dissolved into the drunkards cup. the markets are hoysed up, if the poor cannot reach the price, the maultmaster will, he can utter it to the rap-house: and the tap-house is sure of her old friend drunkenness. Thus theft sits close in a drinking room, and robs all that sails into that coast. I confess, they are (most of them) bound to suffer no drunkenness in their houses, yet they secretly acknowledge, that if it were not for drunkenness, they might shut up their doors, as utterly unable to pay their rents. These are thieves.

10. Flatterers, that eat like moths into liberal men's coats, the bane of Greatness, are thieves, not to be forgotten in this catalogue. These rob many a great man of his goodness, and make him rob the common-wealth of hir happiness. Doth his Lord want money? he puts into his head, such fines to believed, such grounds enclosed, such rents improved. Be his maintainers courses never so fowl, either he furthers them, or he smothers them: sin hath not a more impudent bawd, nor his master a more impious thief, nor the common-wealth a more sucking horseleach. He would raise himself by his Great-one, and cannot contrive it, but by the ruin of others. He robs the flattred of his goods, of his grace, of his time, of his freedom, of his soul: is not this a thief? beneficia, veneficia: all their good is poison. They are Dominis arrisores, reip. arrosores: their Masters Spaniels, the common-wealths wolves, put them in your Pater-noster, let them never come in your Creed: pray for them, but trust them no more than thieves.

11. There is another nest of thieves more in this City, Brokers and breakers: I conjoin them in my description, for the likeness of their condition. Brokers' that will upon a good pawn lend money to a Devil: whose extortion, by report, is monstrous; and such as to find in men is improbable, in Christians impossible: the very vermin of the earth. Indeed man had a poor beginning; we are the sons of Adam, Adam of dust, dust of deformity, deformity of nothing; yet made by God: but these are bred like monsters of the corruption of nature and wicked manners; and carry the Devils cognizance. for Breakers, such as necessity compels to it, I censure not: if they desire with all their harts to satisfy the uttermost farthing and cannot; God will then accept votall restitution for total restitution; that which is affected, for that which is effected: the will for the deed: and in those debt is not (as the vulgar speech is) deadly sin: a sore it may be, no sin. But they that with a purpose of deceit, get goods into their hands in trust, & then without need hide their heads, are thieves: for the intent to steal in their minds directed their injurious hands. The Law arraigns them not, the Judgment seat of God shall not acquit them. These steal more quickly and with security, than a high-way robs all his life time and that in perpetual danger: It is but passing their words, allowing a good price, conuaying home the wares, and on a sudden dive under the waters: a close concealment shall save them five hundred pounds in a thousand. They live upon others sweat, fare richly upon others meat, and the debtor is often made a gentleman, when the creditor is made a beggar.

Such false Gibeonites enrich Scriveners: their unfaithfulness, hath banished all trust and fidellity. Time was, that Nouerint vniuersi was unborn, the Lawyer himself knew not what an obligation meant. Security stood on no other legs, but promises, and those were so sound, that they never failed their burden: but Time adulterating with the Harlot Fraud, begot a brood of Nouerints: and but for these shackles, debt would often show credit a light pair of heels. Therefore now (plus creditor annulis, quàm animie) there is more faith given to men's seals, than to their souls. Owe nothing but love; saith the Apostle: all owe this, but few pay it; or if they do, it is in cracked money, not currant in God's Exchequer: for our love is dissimulation, and our charity is (not cold, but) dead. But these bankrouts of both wealth and honesty, owe all things but love, and more than ever they mean to pay, though you give them time till Doomes-day. These are Thieves.

12. The twelfth and last sort of thieves (to make up the just dozen) are the userers. This is a private thief like Judas, and for the bag like Judas, which he steals from Christ like Judas, or rather from Christians, that have more need, and therefore worse than Judas. This is a man made out of wax: his Pater-noster is a Pawn: his Creed is, The condition of this obligation: his religion is all religation; a binding of others to himself; of himself to the Devil: for look how far any of the former thieves have ventured to hell, the usurer goes a foot further by the standard. The Poet exclaims against this sin:

Describing in that one line, the names and nature of usury. Foenus, quasi foetus: It is a teeming thing, ever with child, pregnant, and multiplying: money is an unfruitful thing by nature made only for commutation: it is a praeternaturall thing, it should engender money: this is monstrosus partus, a prodigious birth. Usura, quasi propter vsum rei. The nature of it is wholly devouring: their money to necessity is like cold water to a hot ague, that for a time refresheth, but prolongs the disease. The usurer is like the worm we call the timber-worm; which is wonderful soft to touch, but hath teeth so hard, that it eats timber: but the usurer eats timber and stones too. The Prophet hedgeth it in, between Bribery and Extortion: In thee have they taken gifts to shed blood: thou hast taken usury and increase: and thou hast greedily gained of thy neighbors by extortion; and hast forgotten me, saith the Lord. Therefore I have smitten my hands at thy dishonest gain, &c. You hear God's opinion of it. Beware this dishonest gain: take heed lest this casting your money into a Bank, cast not up a Bank against you: when you have found out the fairest praetexts for it, God's justice shall strike of all: let no man deceive you with vain words: for, for such things God's wrath will fall on the children of disobedience. Infinite colors, mitigations, evasions, distinctions are invented, to countenance on earth, heaven-exploded usury: God shall then frustrate all, when he pours his wrath on the naked conscience. God saith, Thou shalt not take usury: go now, study paintings, excuses, apologies, dispute the matter with God: hell fire shall decide the question. I have no other trade to live on, but usury: only the Devil first made usury a trade. But can this plea in the thief (I have no other trade to live on but stealing) protect and secure him from the gallows?

The usurer then is a thief: nay a double thief, as the old Roman law censured them; that charged the thief with restitution double, the usurer with four-fold: concluding him a double thief. Thieves steal sometimes, userers always. Thieves steal for necessity, userers without need. The usurer wounds deeper with a piece of paper, than the robber with a sword. many a young gentleman, newly broke out of the cage of wardship, or blessed with the first Sun-shine of his one and twenty, goes from the vigilancy of a restraining Governor, into the tempting hands of a merciless usurer, as if he came out of God's blessing into the warm Sun. Many a man, that comes to his lands, ere he comes to his wits, or experience of their villainy, is so let blood in his estate by usury, that he never proves his own man again.

Either prodigality or penury or dissembled riches borrow on usury: to rack the poor with over-plus, all (but Devils) hold monstrous: to lend the Prodigal, is wicked enough, for it feeds his issue with ill humors, and puts Stibium into his broth, who was erst sick of the vomiting disease, and could not digest his (Fathers ill-gotten) Patrimony. For the rich, that dissemble poverty, to borrow on usury, (for there is that maketh himself poor and hath great riches) they do it, either to defeat creditors, or to avoid taxations and subsidies, or some such sinister respects. The gentleman that borroweth on usury, by racking his rents makes his Tenants pay his usury. The Farmer so borrowing, by inhauncing his corn, makes the poor pay his usury. The Trades-man, raiseth his wares, that the buyer must pay his usury. I will not tax every borrower: it is lawful to suffer injury, though not to offer it: & it is no sin for the true man to give his purse to the thief, when he cannot choose. To redeem his lands, liberty, life, he may (as I suppose) give interest; but not for mere gain only which he may get by that wicked money; lest he encourage the usurer; for a receiver upholds a thief. This is the privy-pocket, whose death is the more grievous because he is repriued till the last Sessions: a Gibbet is built in hell for him, and all the gold in the world cannot purchase a pardon. I know there is mercy in Christ's blood to any repentant and believing sinner, but (excepted Zacchaeus) show me the usurer, that repents: for as humility is the repentance of pride, and abstinence the repentance of surfeit, so is restitution the repentance of vsurse: he that restores not, repents not his usury: and then (non remittitur peccatum, nisi restituatur ablatum) the sin is retained, till the gains of usury be restored. This is (durus sermo, sed verus sermo) a hard saying, but true: then we may give all; do, if they be so gotten: Dabit Deus meliora, maiora, plura: God will give better things, God will give greater things, God will give more things; as the Prophet to Amasiah: The Lord is able to give thee more than this.

Thus I have discovered by occasion of Judas some privy thieves; if without thanks, yet not without conscience; if without profit, yet not without purpose of profit. Indeed these are the sins, which I vowed with my self to reprove; not that others have not done it, or not done it better then I from this place: I acknowledge both freely; yet could I not pass this secret thief Judas, without discovering his companions, or (as it were) breaking open the knot of Thieves, which under allowed pretences, are arrant cut-purses to the Common-wealth. How to punish, how to restrain, I meddle not: it is enough to discharge my conscience, that I have endeavored to make the sins hateful to the trespassers, to the trespassed: Deus tam faciat commodum, quam fecit accommodum: God make it as prevalent, as (I am sure) it is pertinent.

Give me leave, yet ere I leave, to speak a word of the Bagge, first his means, and secondly his maintenance. I will join them together, a fit and a fat booty makes a thief. Judas hath got the bag, and the bag hath got Judas: he could not carry it, but he must make it light enough for his carriage: he empties it into his own coffer; as many Stewards rise by their good Lord and Masters fall. Judas means to be a thief, and Satan means to fit him with a booty: for after he had once wrought journey-work with the Devil, he shall not want work, and a subject to work on. I will limit my remaining speech to these three heads. First the difficulty, to bear the bag, and not to be covetous. Secondly the usual incidency of the bag to the worst men. Thirdly, the progress of sin; only faint not in this last act.

1 It is hard to bear the bag, and not to be covetous: Judas is Burser, and he shuts himself into his pouch: the more he hath the more he couets: the Apostles, that wanted money, are not so having: Judas hath the bag, and yet he must have more, or he will filch it. So impossible is it, that these outward things should satisfy the heart of man. Soli habent omnia, qui habent habentem omnia. They alone possess all things, that possess the possessor of all things. The nature of true content, is to fill all the chinks of our desires, as the wax doth the seal: None can do this but God, for (as it is well observed) the World is round; man's Heart three cornered: a globe can never fill a triangle; but one part will be still empty: only the blessed Trinity can fill these three corners of man's heart. I confess, the Bagge is a thing much reckoned of, and makes men much reckoned of, for, Pecunia obediunt omnia: all things make obeasance to money: Et qui ex diuitijs tam magnifiant, non miror, sihi diuitias tam magnifaciant: they may admire money, whom money makes admired. Such is the plague and dropsy, the bag brings to the mind, that the more covetousness drinks down, the thirstier it is: This is a true drunkard: dum absorbet vinum, absorbetur à vino, he drinks down his wealth, and his wealth drinks down him. Qui tenet marsupium, tenetur à marsupio, he holds his purse fast, but not so fast as his purse holds him: the strings of his Bagge tie his heart faster then he ties the strings of his Bagge. He is a Jailor to his Jailor, a prisoner to his prisoner, he iayles up his gold in the prison of his Coffer, his gold iayles up him in the prison of covetousness, thus dum vult esse praedo, fit praeda: whiles he would come to a pray, he becomes a pray. The Devil gets his heart, as the Crab the Oyster: the Oyster lies gaping for air on the sandes, the Crab chops in hir claw, and so devoureth it; whiles the covetous gapes for money, the Devil thrusts in his (hairy and cloven foot, I mean his) baits of temptation, and chokes the conscience.

Thus the Bagge never comes alone, but it brings with it cares, saith Christ; snares, saith Paul. It is better to be without riches, then like Judas, conjured into the circle of his bag: his heaven is among his bags; in the sight of them, he applauds himself against all censures, revilings, curses. It had profited some, to have wanted the bag; and this the wicked (waked) consciences confess dying; wishing to be without riches, so they were without sins; yea even those, their riches have procured. It is none of God's least favors, that wealth comes not trolling in upon us: for many of us if our estates were better to the world, would be worse to God. The poor laborer hath not time to luxuriate; he trusts to God, to bless his endeavours, and so rests content: but the bag commonly makes a man either (prodigum or auarum) a prodigal man, or a prodigious man; for (auarus, monstrum) the covetous man is a monster: how many wretches hath this bag drowned, as they swome over the sea of this world, and kept them from the shore of blisle? be proud then of your Bagge, ye Judases when God's Bailiff death shall come with a babeas corpus, what shall become of your bag? or rather of yourselves for your bag? your bag will be found, but yourselves lost. It will be one day said of you, as great as the bag hath made you, as the Poet sung of Achilles.

Can your bag commit any penance in Hell? or can you by a Fine, answer your faults in the Star-chamber of heaven? no, Judas and his bag too are perished. As he gave Religion the bag for the World, so the world gave him the bag, and turned him a begging in that miserable Country, whereall the bags in the world, cannot purchase a drop of water, to cool his tongue. Thus are the covetous Judas and his bag well met.

2. The Bagge is most usually given to the worst men: of all the Apostles, he that was to betray Christ, is made his Steward. Goods are in themselves good: Ne putentur mala, dantur & bonis, ne putentur summa bona dantur & malis. Lest they should be thought not good, they are given to good men; lest they should be thought too good, they are given to evil men: doubtless, some rich-men are in heaven, and some poor out; because some rich in the purse are poor in the spirit; and some poor in purse are proud in spirit: and it is not the Bagge, but the Mind, which condemns a man; for the bag is more easily contemned, then the mind conquered. Therefore foolish Crates, to throw away his money into the Sea: ego mergamte, ne mergar a te: I will drown thee, lest thou drown me: since wealth well employed, comforts our selves, relieves others; and brings us (as it were) the speedier way to heaven, and perhaps, to a greater portion of glory: but for the most part, the rich are enemies to goodness, and the poor friends: Lazarus the poor man was in Abraham's bosom, and it was Dives, that went to hell; the rich and not the poor.

Search the scriptures, consult all authors, and who are they, that have sailed through the world in the tallest vessels; and you shall meet loden with the bag Cain's, Nimrods, Chams, Ishmael's, Esaues, Saul's, Ahab's, Laban's, Nabal's, Demasses, Judases, Devils; the slime of nature, the worst of men, and as bad as the best of Devils. What do men cast to swine and dogs, but draff and carions? what else are the riches that God gives to wicked men? himself is pleased to call them by these names. If they were excellent things, they should never be cast on those God hates (I have hated Esau) and means to condemn. There is no privilege then, in the bag to keep thee from being a Judas: nay therefore thou art most likely, and thereby made most likely to be a Judas. Who hath so much beauty as Absalom? who so much honor as Nebuchadnezzar? Who so much wealth as Nabal? Who the bag but Judas?

Surely God is wise in all his ways; he knows what he does: Judas shall hence bag up for himself the greater damnation. It is then no argument of God's favor to be his Purse-bearer, no more, then it was a sign, that Christ loved Judas above the other Apostles, because he made him his Steward: he gave the rest Grace; and him the Bagge: which sped best? These outward things are the scatterings of his mercies, like the gleaning after the Vintage: the full crop goes to his children. Ishmael shall have wealth, but Ishac the inheritance: Esau his pleasures, but Jacob goes away with the blessing. God bestows favors upon some, but they are angry favors: they are in themselves, bona, goods; and from God, dona, gifts; (for he is not only a living God, but a giving God) but to the receauers, banes. The Israelites had better have wanted their Quails, then eaten them with such sauce. Judas had better been without the Bagge, then have had the Bagge, and the Devil with it.

I would have no man make his riches an argument of God's disfauour, and his own dereliction; no, but rather of comfort, if he can find his affections ready to part with them at Christ's calling. I never was in your bosoms; how many of you lay up this resolution in your Closet among your bags? how many (resolve said I, nay) perform this? you cannot want opportunity in these days. I would wish you to try your hearts, that you may secure your consciences of freedom from this Iudasme: oh, how few Good-riches there be in these days? but one Apostle goes to hell, and he is the richest. Make then your riches a means to help you to heaven; whither you can have no direct and ready way, till you have gotten the Moon beneath your feet, I mean, the world. Lay up your bag in the bosom of charity, and your treasure in the lap of Christ, and then the Bagge shall not hinder, but further your flight to heaven.

3. Observe, how Judas runs through sin, from one wickedness to another without stay: from covetousness to hypocrisy, from hypocrisy to theft, from theft to treason, from treason to murder; for since he could not get the Ointment bestowed on Christ, he means to get Christ himself: and to this purpose goes instantly to the Elders and Priests, with a quid dabitis &c. He values the ointment at 300. pence, and Christ at (but) 30. as if he was worth no more, then the interest-money, ten in the hundredth: and herein he makes his own price, for they gave him his asking: he betrays Jesus Christ a man, Jesus Christ his master; Jesus Christ is maker; as if he would destroy his Savior, and mar his maker.

Thus he runs from sin to sin, and needs he must, for he, that the Devil drives, feels no lead at his heels. Godliness creeps to heaven, but wickedness runs to hell: Many Parliament Protestants go but a Statutepace, yet look to come to heaven; but without more hast, when the Pharisees come out of hell. But facilis descensus Auerni: were you blinder then Superstition, you may find the way to hell: It is but slipping down a hill, and hell stands at the bottom: this is the cause, that Judas runs so fast.

I have read of one Ruffus, that upon his Sheel'd, painted God on the one side, and the Devil on the other: with this motto, situme nolis, isterogitat: if thou, oh God, wilt none of me, heres one will: either God must take him suddenly, or he will run quick to the Devil. The Gallant gallops in riot. The Epicure reels a drunken pace. The Lust-full scorns to be behind; he runs from the fire of lust, to the fire of hell; as the fondly impatient fish leaps out of the boiling panne, into the burning flame. The Swearer is there, ear he be aware, for he goes by his tongue. The Covetous rides post, for he is carried on the back of Mammon: The Usurer sirs still in his chair or the Chimney-corner, lame of the gout, and can but halt; yet he will be at hell, as soon as the best runner of them all.

Usury is a Coach, and the Devil is driuer: needs must he go, whom the Devil drives. He is drawn to hell in pomp, by two Coach-horses, wild spirits, with wings, on their heels, (swifter then Pegasus, or Mercury) Covetousness, and Infidellity: what makes him put money to use, but covetousness? what makes him so wretchedly covetous, but want of faith? Thus he is hurried to hell in case, state, triumph: If any be worthy to bear the Usurer company, let it be the Rioter though of contrary dispositions, yet in this journey fitly and accordantly met: for the Usurer commonly hath money, but no Coach, and the Prodigal Gallant hath a Coach, but no money: if they want company yet, let them take in the Cheater; for he waits upon both these, and may perhaps fail of the like opportunity.

Thus because the ways to hell are full of green, smooth, soft, and tempting pleasures, infinite run apace with Judas, till they come to their own place. But Heavens way is harsh and ascending, and the gate narrow. Indeed the City of glory is capacious and roomthy: ^a In my fathers house there are many mansions, saith Christ. It is (domus speciosa, & domus spatiosa) not, either scant of beauty, or pent of room. But the gate hath two properties. It is 1. low. 2. strait. and requires of the entrers: 1. a stooping. 2. a stripping.

Low. Pride is so stiff, that many a Gallant cannot enter: you have few women with the top-gallant head-tires get in here; they cannot stoop low enough; few proud in and of their offices, that have eaten a stake, and cannot stoop: few sons of pride, so starched and laced up, that they cannot without pain salute a friend: a wonderful scarcity of over-precise, (over-dissolute) factious humorists; for they are so high in their own conceits, that they cannot stoop to this low gate. The insolent, haughty, well-opinioned of themselves cannot be admitted: for, not humbled to this day. This low gate, and an high state do not accord Wretched fools, that rather refuse the glory within, then stoop for entrance: as if a Souldior should refuse the honor of Knighthood, because he must kneel to receive it.

Strait, or narrow; they must stoop that enter this low gate, so they must strip, that enter this strait gate. No make-bates get in, they are too full of tales and lies: God by word of mouth excludes them. Into it shall enter none unclean thing, or that worketh abomination or lies. Few litigious neighbors: they have so many suits, contentions, nisi-priusses on their backs, that not get in. Some Lawyers may enter, if they be not overladen with fees: you have few Courtiers taken into this Court, by reason, there is no Coach-way to it, the gate is too narrow: no Officers, that are big with bribes. Not an Incloser: he hath too much of the poor's commons in his belly. The usurer hath no hope, for besides his bags, he hath too much wax and paper about him. The Citizen hopes well, but a false measure sticks so cross in his mouth, that he cannot thrust in his head. The Gentleman makes no question, and there is great possibility, if two things do not cross him, a bundle of racked rents, or a kennel of lusts and sports. The plain-man is likely, if his ignorance can but find the gate. Husband-men were in great possibility, but for the hoarding of corn, and hoising of markets. Tradesmen, if they would not swear good credit into their bad wares, might be admitted. Ministers may enter without doubt or hindrance, if they be as poor in their spirits, as they are in their purses. But Impropriators have such huge barns full of Church-grains in their bellies, that they are too great. Let all these take the Physic of Repentance, to abate their swollen souls, or there will be no entrance.

You hear how difficult the way is to heaven, how easy to hell; how fast sin runs, how slowly godliness creeps; what should you then do, but ^b strive to enter in at the narrow gate: which you shall the better do, if you lighten yourselves of your Bags: oh, do not (Judas-like) for the Bag, sell your honesty, conscience, heaven: The Bag is a continent to money, and the world is a continent to the Bag: and they shall all perish. Meat for the belly, and the belly for meat: Gold for the Purse, and the Purse for gold; and God shall destroy them both. Trust not then a wealthy bag, nor a wealthy man, nor the wealthy world; all will fail; but trust in God, whose mercy, endureth forever: The time shall come, that

God shall be God, when the world shall be no world, man no man; or at least no man, no world of our expectation, or of ability to help us. To God, then, our only help, be all praise, power, and glory, now and forever.