him; and he said he seemed to study them with concern and zeal. He shewed what errors they committed, and how they ought to be corrected, as if he had been a viceroy to France, rather than a king that ought to have watched over and prevented that progress they made, as the greatest of all the mischiefs that could happen to him or to his people. They that judged the most favourably of this thought it was done out of revenge to the Dutch, that with the assistance of so great a fleet as France could join to his own he might be able to destroy them. But others put a worse construction on it; and thought that, seeing he could not quite master or deceive his subjects by his own strength and management, he was willing to help forward the greatness of the French at sea, that by their assistance he might more certainly subdue his own people; according to what was generally believed to have fallen from Lord Clifford, that if the king must be in a dependance, it was better to pay it to a great and generous king, than to five hundred of his own insolent subjects.

No part of his character looked wickeder as well as meaner than that he, all the while that he was professing to be of the Church of England, expressing both zeal and affection to it, yet secretly reconciled to the Church of Rome; thus mocking God, and deceiving the world with so gross a prevarication. And his not having the honesty or courage to own it at the last; and not shewing any sign of the least remorse for his ill-led life, or any tenderness either for his subjects in general, or for the queen and his servants; and his recommending only his whores and bastards to his brother's care, would have been a strange conclusion to any other life, but was well enough suited to all the other parts of his.

The Czar Peter in England in 1698.

I mentioned, in the relation of the former year, the Czar's coming out of his own country; on which I will now enlarge. He came this winter over to England, and stayed some months among us. I waited often on him, and was ordered both by the king and the archbishop and bishops to attend upon him, and to offer him such informations of our religion and constitution as he was willing to receive. I had good interpreters, so I had much free discourse with him. He is a man of a very hot temper, soon inflamed, and very brutal in his passion. He raises his natural heat by drinking much brandy, which he rectifies himself with great application; he is subject to convulsive motions all over his body, and his head seems to be affected with these; he wants not capacity, and has a larger measure of knowledge than might be expected from his education, which was very indifferent; a want of judgment, with an instability of temper, appear in him too often and too evidently; he is mechanically turned, and seems designed by nature rather to be a ship-carpenter than a great prince. This was his chief study and exercise while he stayed here; he wrought much with his own hands, and made all about him work at the models of ships. He told me he designed a great fleet at Azuph, and with it to attack the Turkish empire; but he did not seem capable of conducting so great a design, though his conduct in his wars since this has discovered a greater genius in him than appeared at that time. He was desirous to understand our doctrine, but he did not seem disposed to mend matters in Moscovy. He was indeed resolved to encourage learning, and to polish his people by sending

some of them to travel in other countries, and to draw strangers to come and live among them. He seemed apprehensive still of his sister's intrigues. There was a mixture both of passion and severity in his temper. He is resolute, but understands little of war, and seemed not at all inquisitive that way. After I had seen him often, and had conversed much with him, I could not but adore the depth of the providence of God, that had raised up such a furious man to so absolute an authority over so great a part of the world.

David, considering the great things God had made for the use of man, broke out into the meditation: 'What is man that thou art so mindful of him?' But here there is an occasion for reversing these words, since man seems a very contemptible thing in the sight of God, while such a person as the Czar has such multitudes put, as it were, under his feet, exposed to his restless jealousy and savage temper. He went from hence to the court of Vienna, where he purposed to have stayed some time; but he was called home sooner than he had intended, upon a discovery or a suspicion of intrigues managed by his sister. The strangers to whom he trusted most were so true to him that those designs were crushed before he came back. But on this occasion he let loose his fury on all whom he suspected. Some hundreds of them were hanged all round Moscow; and it was said that he cut off many heads with his own hand, and so far was he from relenting or shewing any sort of tenderness that he seemed delighted with it. How long he is to be the scourge of that nation or of his neighbours God only knows. So extraordinary an incident will, I hope, justify such a digression.

Character of William III.

Thus lived and died William the Third, King of Great Britain, and Prince of Orange. He had a thin and weak body, was brown-haired, and of a clear and delicate constitution. He had a Roman eagle nose, bright and sparkling eyes, a large front, and a countenance composed to gravity and authority. All his senses were critical and exquisite. He was always asthmatical; and the dregs of the small-pox falling on his lungs, he had a constant deep cough. His behaviour was solemn and serious, seldom cheerful, and but with a few. He spoke little and very slowly, and most commonly with a disgusting dryness, which was his character at all times, except in a day of battle; for then he was all fire, though without passion; he was then everywhere, and looked to everything. He had no great advantage from his edu cation. De Witt's discourses were of great use to him; and he, being apprehensive of the observation of those who were looking narrowly into everything he said or did, had brought himself under a habitual caution that he could never shake off; though in another scene it proved as hurtful as it was then necessary to his affairs. He spoke Dutch, French, English, and German equally well; and he understood the Latin, Spanish, and Italian, so that he was well fitted to command armies composed of several nations. He had a memory that amazed all about him, for it never failed him; he was an exact observer of man and things; his strength lay rather in a true discerning and a sound judgment, than in imagination or invention; his designs were always great and good. But it was thought he trusted too much to that, and that he did not descend enough to the humours of his people to make himself and his notions more acceptable

to them.

This in a government that has so much

of freedom in it as ours was more necessary than he was inclined to believe. His reservedness grew on him, so that it disgusted most of those who served him; but he had observed the errors of too much talking, more than those of too cold a silence. He did not like contradiction nor to have his actions censured; but he loved to employ and favour those who had the arts of complacence, yet he did not love flatterers. His genius lay chiefly to war, in which his courage was more admired than his conduct. Great errors were often committed by him; but his heroical courage set things right, as it inflamed those who were about him. He was too lavish of money on some occasions, both in his buildings and to his favourites, but too sparing in rewarding services, or in encouraging those who brought intelligence. He was apt to take ill impressions of people, and these stuck long with him; but he never carried them to indecent revenges. He gave too much way to his own humour almost in everything, not excepting that which related to his own health. He knew all foreign affairs well, and understood the state of every court in Europe very particularly. He instructed his own ministers himself, but he did not apply enough to affairs at home. He tried how he could govern us by balancing the two parties one against another; but he came at last to be persuaded that the Tories were irreconcilable to him, and he was resolved to try and trust them no more. He believed the truth of the Christian, religion very firmly, and he expressed a horror at atheism and blasphemy; and though there was much of both in his court, yet it was always denied to him and kept out of sight. He was most exemplarily decent and devout in the public exercises of the worship of God; only on week-days he came too seldom to them. He was an attentive hearer of sermons, and was constant in his private prayers and in reading the Scriptures; and when he spoke of religious matters, which he did not often, it was with a becoming gravity. He was much possessed with the belief of absolute decrees. He said to me he adhered to these because he did not see how the belief of Providence could be maintained upon any other supposition. His indifference as to the forms of church-government and his being zealous for toleration, together with his cold behaviour towards the clergy, gave them generally very ill impressions of him. In his deportment towards all about him he seemed to make little distinction between the good and the bad, and those who served well or those who served him ill. He loved the Dutch, and was much beloved among them; but the ill returns he met from the English nation, their jealousies of him, and their perverseness towards him, had too much soured his mind, and had in a great measure alienated him from them; which he did not take care enough to conceal, though he saw the ill effects this had upon his business. He grew in his last years too remiss and careless as to all affairs, till the treacheries of France awakened him, and the dreadful conjunction of the monarchies gave so loud an alarm to all Europe for a watching over that court, and a bestirring himself against their practices, was the prevailing passion of his whole life. Few men had the art of concealing and governing passion more than he had; yet few men had stronger passions, which were seldom felt but by inferior servants, to whom he usually made such recompenses for any sudden or indecent vents

His

he might give his anger, that they were glad at every time that it broke upon them. He was too easy to the faults of those about him when they did not lie in his own way, or cross any of his designs; and he was so apt to think that his ministers might grow insolent if they should find that they had much credit with him, that he seemed to have made it a maxim to let them often feel how little power they had even in small matters. favourites had a more entire power, but he accustomed them only to inform him of things, but to be sparing in offering advice except when it was asked. It was not easy to account for the reasons of the favour that he shewed in the highest instances to two persons beyond all others, the Earls of Portland and Albemarle, they being in all respects men not only of different, but of opposite characters; secrecy and fidelity were the only qualities in which it could be said that they did in any sort agree. I have now run through the chief branches of his character. I had occasion to know him well, having observed him very carefully in a course of sixteen years. I had a large measure of his favour, and a free access to him all the while, though not at all times to the same degree. The freedom that I used with him was not always acceptable; but he saw that I served him faithfully; so after some intervals of coldness, he always returned to a good measure of confidence in me. I was in many great instances much obliged by him; but that was not my chief bias to him; I considered him as a person raised up by God to resist the power of France and the progress of tyranny and persecution. The series of the five Princes of Orange that was now ended in him was the noblest succession of heroes that we find in any history. And the thirty years from the year 1672 to his death, in which he acted so great a part, carry in them so many amazing steps of a glorious and distinguishing Providence that in the words of David he may be called 'The man of God's right hand, whom he made strong for himself.' After all the abatements that may be allowed for his errors and faults, he ought still to be reckoned among the greatest princes that our history or indeed that any other can afford. He died in a critical time for his own glory, since he had formed a great alliance and had projected the whole scheme of the war; so that if it succeeds, a great part of the honour of it will be ascribed to him; and if otherwise, it will be said he was the soul of the alliance that did both animate and knit it together, and that it was natural for that body to die and fall asunder when he who gave it life was withdrawn. Upon his death, some moved for a magnificent funeral; but it seemed not decent to run into unnecessary expense when we were entering on that must be maintained at a vast charge; so a private funeral was resolved on. But for the honour of his memory, a noble monument and an equestrian statue were ordered. Some years must shew whether these things were really intended, or if they were only spoke of to excuse the privacy of his funeral, which was scarce decent, so far was it from being magnificent.

a war

The candid Dr Routh's Clarendon Press edition (1823 and 1833). in which the suppressed passages were restored, was long the standard of My Own Time; on it was based that by Mr Osmund Airy's edition (vols. i. and ii. 1897-1900). A revised edition of the History of the Reformation was published in 1865. The Dictionary of National Biography specifies, out of his very numerous publications theological or political, twenty-eight as his principal works. Of sermons he printed over fifty.

John Tillotson (1630-94), Archbishop of Canterbury, was the son of a clothier at Sowerby near Halifax, and was brought up in the Calvinistic faith of the Puritans. At Clare Hall, Cambridge, his early opinions were modified by Chillingworth's Religion of the Protestants; and though at the Savoy Conference (1661) he still ranked with the Presbyterians, on the Act of Uniformity in 1662 he submitted without hesitation and accepted a curacy. He very quickly became noted as a preacher, and began to rise in the Church. In 1663 he became rector of Keddington in Suffolk ; it was when (1664) he became preacher at Lincoln's Inn that his sermons attracted attention, though his mild and evangelical, but undoctrinal, theology provoked criticism. In 1670 he became Prebendary, in 1672 Dean, of Canterbury. He used his influence in favour of the Nonconformists, whom he was anxious to bring within the pale of the Establishment; but his efforts led to nothing but disappointment. Meanwhile he had married a niece of Oliver Cromwell. His moderate principles commended him to William III., who made him Clerk of the Closet in 1689, and Dean of St Paul's. In 1691 he was raised to the see of Canterbury, vacant by the death of the Nonjuror Sancroft. He accepted the elevation with the greatest reluctance, and the insults of the Nonjurors to the end of his life, three years after, extorted neither complaint nor retaliation. As Archbishop he exerted himself to remove the abuses in the Church, such as nonresidence among the clergy; and these efforts and his latitudinarianism excited much enmity. His Sermons, his widow's sole endowment, were purchased by a bookseller for no less than two thousand five hundred guineas, and for long were the most popular of English sermons. Tillotson's style is frequently careless and languid, and he lacks the power and humour of Barrow and South; yet there is in him such manifest sincerity, earnestness, kindliness, simplicity, and freedom from affectation that the Sermons well deserved the popularity they enjoyed in an unenthusiastic age. Whitefield, the apostle of a more fervid faith, saw in him the conspicuous representative of the lukewarmness of eighteenth-century religion, and called him that traitor who sold his Lord'-a judgment he afterwards repented as unjust. Contemporary judg ment was summed up by Burnet: 'He was not only the best preacher of the age, but seemed to have brought preaching to perfection; his sermons were so well heard and liked, and so much read, that all the nation proposed him as a pattern, and studied to copy after him.' Voltaire reported him the wisest and most eloquent of English preachers; and Addison said he was 'the most eminent and useful author of the age we live in.' Dryden, born the year after him, used with undue modesty to say that what talent he had for English prose was due to his familiarity with Tillotson. Locke recommended him as a model of perspicuity and propriety; his most notable difference from great

contemporaries such as Barrow and South is his eminently modern tone, in virtue of which he ranks with Temple and Halifax as one of the founders of modern English prose.

Advantages of Truth and Sincerity.

Truth and reality have all the advantages of appearance, and many more. If the show of anything be good for anything, I am sure sincerity is better: for why does any man dissemble or seem to be that which he is not but because he thinks it good to have such a quality as he pretends to? for to counterfeit and dissemble is to put on the appearance of some real excellency. Now the best way in the world for a man to seem to be anything is really to be what he would seem to be. Besides that it is many times as troublesome to make good the pretence of a good quality as to have it; and if a man have it not, it is ten to one but he is discovered to want it, and then all his pains and labour to seem to have it is lost. There is something unnatural in painting, which a skilful eye will easily discern from native beauty and complexion. It is hard to personate and act a part long; for where truth is not at the bottom, nature will always be endeavouring to return, and will peep out and betray herself one time or other. Therefore if any man think it convenient to seem good, let him be so indeed, and then his goodness will appear to everybody's satisfaction; for truth is convincing, and carries its own light and evidence along with it; and will not only commend us to every man's conscience, but, which is much more, to God, who searcheth and seeth our hearts. So that upon all accounts sincerity is true wisdom. Particularly as to the affairs of this world, integrity hath many advantages over all the fine and artificial ways of dissimulation and deceit; it is much the plainer and easier, much the safer and more secure way of dealing in the world; it has less of trouble and difficulty, of entanglement and perplexity, of danger and hazard in it; it is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line, and will hold out and last longest. The arts of deceit and cunning do continually grow weaker, and less effectual and serviceable to them that use them; whereas integrity gains strength by use; and the more and longer any man practiseth it, the greater service it does him, by confirming his reputation, and encouraging those with whom he hath to do to repose the greater trust and confidence in him, which is an unspeakable advantage in the business and affairs of life. . . .

Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out; it is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware: whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack, and one trick needs a great many more to make it good. It is like building upon a false foundation, which continually stands in need of props to shore it up, and proves at last more chargeable than to have raised a substantial building at first upon a true and solid foundation; for sincerity is firm and substantial, and there is nothing hollow or unsound in it, and because it is plain and open, fears no discovery; of which the crafty man is always in danger; and when he thinks he walks in the dark, all his pretences are so transparent, that he that runs may read them. He is the last man that finds himself to be found out; and whilst he takes it for granted that he makes fools of others, he renders himself ridiculous.

Add to all this, that sincerity is the most compendious wisdom, and an excellent instrument for the speedy despatch of business; it creates confidence in those we have to deal with, saves the labour of many inquiries, and brings things to an issue in few words; it is like travelling in a plain, beaten road, which commonly brings a man sooner to his journey's end than byways, in which men often lose themselves. In a word, whatsoever convenience may be thought to be in falsehood and dissimulation, it is soon over; but the inconvenience of it is perpetual, because it brings a man under an everlasting jealousy and suspicion, so that he is not believed when he speaks truth, nor trusted perhaps when he means honestly. When a man has once forfeited the reputation of his integrity, he is set fast, and nothing will then serve his turn, neither truth nor falsehood. And I have often thought that God hath, in his great wisdom, hid from men of false and dishonest minds the wonderful advantages of truth and integrity to the prosperity even of our worldly affairs. These men are so blinded by their covetousness and ambition, that they cannot look beyond a present advantage, nor forbear to seize upon it, though by ways never so indirect; they cannot see so far as to the remote consequences of a steady integrity, and the vast benefit and advantages which it will bring a man at last. Were but this sort of men wise and clear-sighted enough to discern this, they would be honest out of very knavery, not out of any love to honesty and virtue, but with a crafty design to promote and advance more effectually their own interests; and therefore the justice of the divine providence hath hid this truest point of wisdom from their eyes, that bad men might not be upon equal terms with the just and upright, and serve their own wicked designs by honest and lawful means.

Indeed, if a man were only to deal in the world for a day, and should never have occasion to converse more with mankind, never more need their good opinion or good word, it were then no great matter-speaking as to the concernments of this world-if a man spent his reputation all at once, and ventured it at one throw but if he be to continue in the world, and would have the advantage of conversation whilst he is in it, let him make use of truth and sincerity in all his words and actions; for nothing but this will last and hold out to the end all other arts will fail, but truth and integrity will carry a man through and bear him out to the last. (From Tillotson's last Serinon.)

Louis XIV. and William III.: a Contrast. You have heard two sorts of persons described in the text by very different characters; the one that glory in their wisdom, and might, and riches; the other, that glory in this, that they understand and know God to be the Lord, which exerciseth loving-kindness, and judg ment, and righteousness in the earth. And we have seen these two characters exemplified, or rather drawn to the life, in this present age. We who live in this western part of Christendom have seen a mighty prince by the just permission of God raised up to be a terror and scourge to all his neighbours; a prince who had in perfection all the advantages mentioned in the former part of the text; and who, in the opinion of many who had been long dazzled with his splendor and greatness, hath passed for many years for the most politic, and powerful, and richest monarch that hath appeared in

these parts of the world for many ages. Who hath governed his affairs by the deepest and steadiest counsels, and the most refined wisdom of this world. A prince mighty and powerful in his preparations for war; formidable for his vast and well disciplined armies, and for his great naval force; and who had brought the art of war almost to that perfection, as to be able to conquer and do his business without fighting; a mystery hardly known to former ages and generations: and all this skill and strength united under one absolute will, not hampered or bound up by any restraints of law or conscience. A prince that commands the estates of all his subjects, and of all his conquests; which hath furnished him with an almost inexhaustible trea. sure and revenue: and one who, if the world doth not greatly mistake him, hath sufficiently gloried in all these advantages, and even beyond the rate of a mortal man. But not knowing God to be the Lord, which exercises loving-kindness, and judgment, and righteousness in the earth; how hath the pride of all his glory been stained, by tyranny and oppression, by injustice and cruelty; by enlarging his dominions without right, and by making war upon his neighbours without reason, or even colour of provocation and this in a more barbarous manner than the most barbarous nations ever did; carrying fire and desolation wheresoever he went, and laying waste many and great cities, without necessity, and without pity! . . . Thus have I represented unto you a mighty monarch, who like a fiery comet hath hung over Europe for many years; and by his malignant influence hath made such terrible havock and devastations in this part of the world.

Let us now turn our view to the other part of the text: and behold a greater than he is here; a prince of a quite different character, who does understand and know God to be the Lord, which does exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth; and who hath made it the great study and endeavour of his life to imitate these divine perfections, as far as the imperfection of human nature in this mortal state will admit: I say, a greater than he is here; who never said or did any insolent thing, but instead of despising his enemies, has upon all occasions encountered them with an undaunted spirit and resolution. This is the man whom God hath honoured to give a check to this mighty man of the earth, and to put a hook into the nostrils of this great leviathan, who has so long had his pastime in the seas. But we will not insult, as he once did in a most unprincely manner over a man much better than himself, when he believed him to have been slain at the Boyne. And indeed death came then as near to him as was

possible without killing him. But the merciful providence of God was pleased to step in for his preservation, almost by a miracle: for I do not believe that from the first use of great guns to that day, any mortal man ever had his shoulder so kindly kissed by a cannon-bullet. But I will not trespass any farther upon that which is the great ornament of all his other virtues; though I have said nothing of him but what all the world does see and must acknowledge: he is as much above being flattered, as it is beneath an honest and a generous mind to flatter.

The Creator seen in the Structure of the World.

How often might a man, after he hath jumbled a set of letters in a bag, fling them out upon the ground before

they would fall into an exact poem, yea, or so much as make a good discourse in prose! And may not a little book be as easily made by chance, as this great volume of the world? How long might a man be in sprinkling colours upon a canvas with a careless hand, before they could happen to make the exact picture of a man? And is a man easier made by chance than his picture? How long might twenty thousand blind men, which should be sent out from the several remote parts of England, wander up and down before they would all meet upon Salisbury Plains, and fall into rank and file in the exact order of an army? And yet this is much more easy to be managed, than how the innumerable blind parts of matter should rendezvous themselves into a world.

Tillotson's complete works appeared in 1707-12; with Life by Birch, 1752; an annotated selection of the Sermons by Weldon appeared in 1886.

Edward Stillingfleet (1635-99), born at Cranborne in Dorset, studied at St John's College, Cambridge, in 1653 was elected a Fellow, and, ordained by the deprived Bishop Brownrig, became rector of Sutton in Bedfordshire (1657) and St Andrews, Holborn (1665), Dean of St Paul's (1678), and, after the Revolution, Bishop of Worcester (1689). He had been decidedly hostile to James's ecclesiastical polity. His Irenicum; or the Divine Right of Particular Forms of Church Government Examined (1659), considered by Burnet ‘a masterpiece,' is a broad-minded but rather latitudinarian attempt to find a basis of union for the divided Church, between Presbyterians and Anglicans. The title of his principal work is Origines Sacræ ; or a Rational Account of the Christian Faith (1662). Towards the end of his life he published A Defence of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1697), in which some passages on Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding were attacked as subversive of fundamental doctrines of Christianity; but in the controversy which ensued the Bishop was not generally held to have come off victorious, and his chagrin at this result was absurdly reported to have hastened his death! The prominent points in this controversy were the resurrection of the body and the immateriality of the soul. Locke argued that although the resurrection of the dead is revealed in Scripture, the reanimation of the identical bodies which inhabited this world is not revealed; and that even if the soul were proved to be material, this would not imply its mortality, since an Omnipotent Creator may, if he pleases, impart the faculty of thinking to matter as well as to spirit. The theologian replied that there is no self-consciousness in matter, and mind, when united to it, is still independent. During the reign of James II., Stillingfleet, who leaned towards the Arminian section of the Church of England, was the great defender of Protestantism. His sermons are notable for good sense rather than for fervour. So handsome as to be known as 'the beauty of holiness,' he was a strenuous and copious controversialist, but fair in argument and courteous to opponents. He was also an accomplished antiquary.

True Wisdom.

That is the truest wisdom of a man which doth most conduce to the happiness of life. For wisdom as it refers to action lies in the proposal of a right end, and the choice of the most proper means to attain it. Which end doth not refer to any one part of a man's life, but to the whole as taken together. He therefore only deserves the name of a wise man, not that considers how to be rich and great when he is poor and mean, nor how to be well when he is sick, nor how to escape a present danger, nor how to compass a particular design; but he that considers the whole course of his life together, and what is fit for him to make the end of it, and by what means he may best enjoy the happiness of it. I confess it is one great part of a wise man never to propose too much happiness to himself here; for whoever doth so is sure to find himself deceived, and consequently is so much more miserable as he fails in his greatest expectations. But since God did not make men on purpose to be miserable, since there is a great difference as to men's conditions, since that difference depends very much on their own choice, there is a great deal of reason to place true wisdom in the choice of those things which tend most to the comfort and happiness of life.

That which gives a man the greatest satisfaction in what he doth, and either prevents or lessens or makes him more easily bear the troubles of life, doth the most conduce to the happiness of it. It was a bold saying of Epicurus, That it is more desirable to be miserable by acting according to reason than to be happy in going against it; and I cannot tell how it can well agree with his notion of felicity: but it is a certain truth that in the consideration of happiness the satisfaction of a man's own mind doth weigh down all the external accidents of life. For suppose a man to have riches and honours as great as Ahashuerus bestowed on his highest favourite Haman; yet by his sad instance we find that a small discontent when the mind suffers it to encrease and to spread its venom, doth so weaken the power of reason, disorder the passions, make a man's life so uneasy to him as to precipitate him from the height of his fortune into the depth of ruin. But on the other side, if we suppose a man to be always pleased with his condition, to enjoy an even and quiet mind in every state, being neither lifted up with prosperity, nor cast down with adversity, he is really happy in comparison with the other. It is a mere speculation to discourse of any complete happiness in this world; but that which doth either lessen the number, or abate the weight, or take off the malignity of the troubles of life, doth contribute very much to that degree of happiness which may be expected here.

The integrity and simplicity of a man's mind doth all this. Firstly, it gives the greatest satisfaction to a man's own mind. For although it be impossible for a man not to be liable to error and mistake, yet if he doth mistake with an innocent mind, he hath the comfort of his innocency when he thinks himself bound to correct his error. But if a man prevaricates with himself and acts against the sense of his own mind, tho' his conscience did not judge aright at that time, yet the goodness of the bare act with respect to the rule will not prevent the sting that follows the want of inward integrity in doing it. The back-slider in heart, saith Solomon, shall be filled with his own ways, but a good man shall be satisfied from himself. The doing just and worthy and generous