refusing to mingle in his unnecessary or vicious quarrels; especially while I study to do him good, by conducting him in the narrow way to heaven, without intricating him in the labyrinths and wild turnings of questions and uncertain talkings. I have told what men ought to do, and by what means they may be assisted; and in most cases I have also told them why; and yet with as much quickness as I could think necessary to establish a rule, and not to engage in homily or discourse. In the use of which rules (although they are plain, useful, and fitted for the best and worst understandings, and for the needs of all men, yet) I shall desire the reader to proceed with the following advices.

1. They that will with profit make use of the proper instruments of virtue, must so live as if they were always under the physician's hand. For the counsels of religion are not to be applied to the distempers of the soul as men use to take hellebore; but they must dwell together with the spirit of a man, and be twisted about his understanding for ever: they must be used like nourishment, that is, by a daily care and meditation; not like a single medicine, and upon the actual pressure of a present necessity. For counsels and wise discourses applied to an actual distemper, at the best are but like strong smells to an epileptic person; sometimes they may raise him, but they never cure him. The following rules if they be made familiar to our natures, and the thoughts of every day, may make virtue and religion become easy and habitual: but when the temptation is present, and hath already seized upon some portions of our consent, we are not so apt to be counselled, and we find no gust or relish in the precept; the lessons are the same, but the instrument is unstrung, or out of tune.

2. In using the instruments of virtue we must be curious to distinguish instruments from duties, and prudent advices from necessary injunctions; and if

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by any other means the duty can be secured, let there be no scruples stirred concerning any other helps only, if they can in that case strengthen and secure the duty, or help towards perseverance, let them serve in that station in which they can be placed. For there are some persons in whom the Spirit of God hath breathed so bright a flame of love, that they do all their acts of virtue by perfect choice and without objection, and their zeal is warmer than that it will be allayed by temptation: and to such persons mortification by philosophical instruments, as fasting, sackcloth, and other rudenesses to the body, is wholly useless; it is always a more uncertain means to acquire any virtue, or secure any duty ; and if love hath filled all the corners of our soul, it alone is able to do all the work of God.

3. Be not nice in stating the obligations of religion; but where the duty is necessary, and the means very reasonable in itself, dispute not too busily whether in all circumstances it can fit thy particular; but super totam materiam, upon the whole, make use of it. For it is a good sign of a great religion, and no imprudence, when we have sufficiently considered the substance of affairs, then to be easy, humble,obedient, apt and credulous in the circumstances which are appointed to us in particular by our spiritual guides, or in general by all wise men in cases not unlike. He that gives alms does best, not always to consider the minutes and strict measures of his ability, but to give freely, incuriously, and abundantly. A man must not weigh grains in the accounts of his repentance; but for a great sin have a great sorrow, and a great severity, and in this take the ordinary advices; though it may be a less rigour might not be insufficient: dкpißočíkalov, or arithmetical measures, especially of our own proportioning, are but arguments of want of love and of forwardness in religion; or else are instruments of scruple, and then become dangerous. Use the rule heartily and

enough, and there will be no harm in thy error, if any should happen.

4. If thou intendest heartily to serve God, and to avoid sin in any one instance, refuse not the hardest and most severe advice that is prescribed in order to it, though possibly it be a stranger to thee; for whatsoever it be, custom will make it easy.

5. When any instruments for the obtaining any virtue or restraining any vice are propounded, observe which of them fits thy person, or the circumstances of thy need, and use it rather than the other; that by this means thou mayest be engaged to watch and use spiritual arts and observation about thy soul. Concerning the managing of which as the interest is greater, so the necessities are more, and the cases more intricate, and the accidents and dangers greater and more importunate; and there is greater skill required than in the securing an estate, or restoring health to an infirm body. I wish all men in the world did heartily believe so much of this as is true ; it would very much help to do the work of God.

Thus (my Lord) I have made bold by your hand to reach out this little scroll of cautions to all those who, by seeing your honoured name set before my book, shall by the fairness of such a frontispiece be invited to look into it. I must confess it cannot but look like a design in me, to borrow your name and beg your patronage to my book, that if there be no other worth in it, yet at least it may have the splendour and warmth of a burning-glass, which, borrowing a flame from the eye of heaven, shines and burns by the rays of the sun its patron. I will not quit myself from the suspicion: for I cannot pretend it to be a present either of itself fit to be offered to such a personage, or any part of a just return, (but I humbly desire you would own it for an acknowledgment) of those great endearments and noblest usages you have past upon me. But so, men in their religion give a piece of gum, or the fat of a cheap lamb, in sacrifice

to him that gives them all that they have or need : and unless He who was pleased to employ your Lordship as a great minister of his Providence in making a promise of his good to me, the meanest of his servants, "that he would never leave me nor forsake me,' shall enable me by greater services of religion to pay my great debt to your Honour, I must still increase my score, since I shall now spend as much in my needs of pardon for this boldness, as in the reception of those favours by which I stand accountable to your Lordship in all the bands of service and gratitude; though I am in the deepest sense of duty and affection,

My most Honoured Lord,

Your Honour's most obliged and

most humble Servant,

JER. TAYLOR.

THE

RULE AND EXERCISES

OF

HOLY LIVING,

&.c.

CHAP. I.

CONSIDERATION OF THE GENERAL INSTRUMENTS AND MEANS SERVING TO A HOLY LIFE, BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.

It is necessary that every man should consider, that since God hath given him an excellent nature, wisdom and choice, an understanding soul, and an immortal spirit, having made him lord over the beasts, and but a little lower than the angels; he hath also appointed for him a work and a service great enough to employ those abilities, and hath also designed him to a state of life after this, to which he can only arrive by that service and obedience. And therefore as every man is wholly God's own portion by the title of Creation so all our labours and care, all our powers and faculties must be wholly employed in the service of God, even all the days of our life, that this life being ended, we may live with him for ever.

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Neither is it sufficient, that we think of the service of God as a work of the least necessity, or of small employment, but that it be done by us as God intended it; that it be done with great earnestness and

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