But if, by the strictness of discipline and wholesome education, we begin at first in our duty, and the practice of virtuous principles, we shall find virtue made as natural to us, while it is customary and habitual, as we pretend infirmity to be, and propensity to vicious practices. And this we are taught by that excellent Hebrew who said, "Wisdom is easily seen of them that love her, and found of such as seek her: she preventeth them that desire her, in making herself first known unto them. Whoso seeketh her early shall have no great travel; for he shall find her sitting at his doors." 4. Secondly: In the strict observances of the law of Christianity there is less trouble than in the habitual courses of sin. For if we consider the general design of Christianity, it propounds to us in this world nothing that is of difficult purchase, nothing beyond what God allots us, by the ordinary and common providence, such things which we are to receive without care and solicitous vexation: so that the ends are not big, and the way is easy; and this walked over with much simplicity and sweetness, and those obtained without difficulty. He that propounds to himself to live low, pious, humble, and retired, his main employment is nothing but sitting quiet, and undisturbed with variety of impertinent affairs but he that loves the world, and its acquisitions, entertains a thousand businesses, and every business hath a world of employment, and every employment is multiplied, and made intricate by circumstances, and every circumstance is to be disputed, and he that disputes ever hath two sides in enmity and opposition; and by this time there is a genealogy, a long descent, and cognation of troubles, branched into so many particulars, that it is troublesome to understand them, and much more to run through them. The ways of virtue are very much upon the defensive, and the work one,uniform and little; they are like war within a strong castle, if they stand upon their guard, they seldom need to strike a stroke. e Wisd. vi. 12, 13, 14. Multò difficilius est facere ista quæ facitis. Quid nam quiete otiosius est animi? Quid irâ laboriosius? Quid clementiâ remissius? Quid crudelitate negotiosius? Vacat pudicitia, libido occupatissima est. Omnium denique virtutum tutela facilior est; vitia magno coluntur. - Seneca. In vitiis abit voluptas, manet turpitudo ; cùm in rectè factis abeat labor, maneat honestas.— Muson. But a vice is like storming of a fort, full of noise, trouble, labour, danger, and disease. How easy a thing is it to restore the pledge! But if a man means to defeat him that trusted him, what a world of arts must he use to make pretences? To delay first, then to excuse, then to object, then to intricate the business, next to quarrel, then to forswear it, and all the way to palliate his crime, and represent himself honest. And if an oppressing and greedy person have a design to cozen a young heir, or to get his neighbour's land, the cares of every day, and the interruptions of every night's sleep, are more than the purchase is worth; since he might buy virtue at half that watching, and the less painful care of a fewer number of days. A plain story is soonest told, and best confutes an intricate lie; and when a person is examined in judgment, one false answer asks more wit for its support and maintenance than a history of truths. And such persons are put to so many shameful retreats, false colours, fucuses, and daubings with untempered mortar, to avoid contradiction or discovery, that the labour of a false story seems, in the order of things, to be designed the beginning of its punishment. And if we consider how great a part of our religion consists in prayer, and how easy a thing God requires of us, when he commands us to pray for blessings, the duty of a Christian cannot seem very troublesome. 5. And, indeed, I can hardly instance in any vice, but there is visibly more pain in the order of acting and observing it, than in the acquist or promotion of virtue. I have seen drunken persons, in their seas of drink and talk, dread every cup as a blow, and they have used devices and private arts, to escape the punishment of a full draught; and the poor wretch, being condemned, by the laws of drinking, to his measure, was forced and haled to execution; and he suffered it, and thought himself engaged to that person, who, with Nam statum cujusque ad securitatem melius innocentiâ tueor, quàm eloquentiâ. Quintil. Dial. de Orat. h Quid namque à nobis exigit (religio), quid præstari sibi à nobis jubet, nisi solam tantummodo fidem, castitatem, humilitatem, sobrietatem, misericordiam, sanctitatem, quæ utique omnia non onerant nos, sed ornant. Salvian. Ἡ ἀρετὴ φαντασίᾳ μὲν ἐπὶ τὴν πρόχειρον ἔντευξιν ἀργαλέον είναι δοκεῖ, μελέτῃ δὲ ἥδιστον, καὶ ἐξ ἐπιλογισμοῦ σύμφερον. Δυσκολώτερον ἡ κακία τῆς ἀρετῆς.— S. Chrysost. Ο πολλὰ πίνων κ' ἐξαμαρτάνει. much kindness and importunity, invited him to a fever. But, certainly, there was more pain in it, than in the strictness of holy and severe temperance. And he that shall compare the troubles and dangers of an ambitious war, with the gentleness and easiness of peace, will soon perceive, that every tyrant and usurping prince, that snatches at his neighbour's rights, hath two armies, one of men, and the other of cares. Peace sheds no blood, but of the pruned vine; and hath no business, but modest and quiet entertainments of the time, opportune for piety, and circled with reward. But God often punishes ambition and pride with lust; and he sent a " thorn in the flesh," as a corrective to the elevations and grandezza of St. Paul, growing up from the multitude of his revelations : and it is not likely the punishment should have less trouble than the crime, whose pleasures and obliquity this was designed to punish. And, indeed, every experience can verify, that an adulterer hath in him the impatience of desires, the burnings of lust, the fear of shame, the apprehensions of a jealous, abused, and an enraged husbandi. He endures affronts, mistimings, tedious waitings, the dulness of delay, the regret of interruption, the confusion and amazements of discovery, the scorn of a reproached vice, the debasings of contempt upon it; unless the man grows impudent, and then he is more miserable upon another stock. But David was so put to it, to attempt, to obtain, to enjoy Bathsheba, and to prevent the shame of it, that the difficulty was greater than all his wit and power; and it drove him into base and unworthy arts, which discovered him the more, and multiplied his crime. But while he enjoyed the innocent pleasures of his lawful bed, he had no more trouble in it, than there was in inclining his head upon his pillow. The ways of sin are crooked, desert, rocky, and uneven*: they are broad, indeed; and there is variety of ruins, and allurements, to entice fools, and a large theatre to act the bloody tragedies of souls upon; but they are nothing smooth, or safe, or delicate. The ways of virtue are strait, but not crooked; narrow, but not unpleasant. There are two vices for one virtue; and, therefore, i et Cecropiæ domus Æternum opprobrium, quòd malè barbaras * Διοδεύειν ἐρήμους ἀβάτους. — Wisd. v. 7. Hor. lib. iv. Od. 12. the way to hell must needs be of greater extent, latitude, and dissemination: but, because virtue is but one way, therefore it is easy, regular, and apt to walk in, without error or diversions. "Narrow is the gate, and strait is the way:" It is true, considering our evil customs and depraved natures, by which we have made it so to us. But God hath made it more passable, by his grace and present aids; and St. John the Baptist receiving his commission to preach repentance, it was expressed in these words: "Make plain the paths of the Lord." Indeed, repentance is a rough and a sharp virtue, and, like a mattock and spade, breaks away all the roughnesses of the passage, and hinderances of sin: but when we enter into the dispositions, which Christ hath designed to us, the way is more plain and easy than the ways of death and hell. Labour it hath in it, just as all things that are excellent; but no confusions, no distractions of thought, no amazements, no labyrinths, and intricacy of counsels: but it is like the labours of agriculture, full of health and simplicity, plain and profitable; requiring diligence, but such in which crafts and painful stratagems are useless and impertinent. But vice hath oftentimes so troublesome a retinue, and so many objections in the event of things, is so entangled in difficult and contradictory circumstances, hath in it parts so opposite to each other, and so inconsistent with the present condition of the man, or some secret design of his, that those little pleasures, which are its fucus and pretence, are less perceived and least enjoyed, while they begin in fantastic semblances, and rise up in smoke, vain and hurtful, and end in dissatisfaction. 6. But it is considerable, that God, and the sinner, and the devil, all join in increasing the difficulty and trouble of sin; upon contrary designs, indeed, but all co-operate to the verification of this discourse. For God, by his restraining grace, and the checks of a tender conscience, and the bands of public honesty, and the sense of honour and reputation, and the customs of nations, and the severities of laws, makes that, in most men, the choice of vice is imperfect, dubious, and troublesome, and the pleasures abated, and the apprehensions various, and in differing degrees; and men act their crimes, while they are disputing against them, and the balance is cast by a few grains, and scruples vex and disquiet the possession; and the difference is perceived to be so little, that inconsideration and inadvertency is the greatest means to determine many men to the entertainment of a sin. And this God does, with a design to lessen our choice, and to disabuse our persuasions from arguments and weak pretences of vice, and to invite us to the trials of virtue, when we see its enemy giving us so ill conditions. And yet the sinner himself makes the business of sin greater; for its nature is so loathsome, and its pleasure so little, and its promises so unperformed, that when it lies open, easy and apt to be discerned, there is no argument in it ready to invite us; and men hate a vice, which is every day offered and prostitute; and when they seek for pleasure, unless difficulty presents it, as there is nothing in it really to persuade a choice, so there is nothing strong or witty enough to abuse a man. And to this purpose, (amongst some others, which are malicious and crafty,) the devil gives assistance, knowing that men despise what is cheap and common, and suspect a latent excellency to be in difficult and forbidden objects: and, therefore, the devil sometimes crosses an opportunity of sin, knowing that the desire is the iniquity, and does his work sufficiently; and yet the crossing the desire, by impeding the act, heightens the appetite, and makes it more violent and impatient. But by all these means, sin is made more troublesome than the pleasures of the temptation can account for: and it will be a strange imprudence to leave virtue, upon pretence of its difficulty, when, for that very reason, we the rather entertain the instances of sin, despising a cheap sin and a costly virtue; choosing to walk through the brambles of a desert, rather than to climb the fruit-trees of paradise. 7. Thirdly: Virtue conduces infinitely to the content of our lives, to secure felicities, and political satisfactions'; and vice does the quite contrary. For the blessings of this life are these, that make it happy; peace and quietness; content and satisfaction of desires; riches; love of friends and neighbours; honour and reputation abroad; a healthful body, and a long life. This last is a distinct consideration, but the other are proper to this title. For the first, it is certain, peace was so designed by the holy Jesus, that he framed all his laws in Γ Ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ ἐστιν ἐυσεβὲς καὶ σύμφερον. -- Arrian. |