he hath promised heaven to us; he hath given us his Son; and we are taught from Scripture to make this inference from hence, "How should not he with him give us all things else?"

:

The charge of many Children.

We have a title to be provided for as we are God's creatures, another title as we are his children, another because God hath promised; and every of our children hath the same title: and therefore it is a huge folly and infidelity to be troubled and full of care, because we have many children. Every child we have to feed is a new revenue, a new title to God's care and providence; so that many children are a great wealth and if it be said they are chargeable, it is no more than all wealth and great revenues are. For what difference is it? Titius keeps ten ploughs, Cornelia hath ten children. He hath land enough to employ, and to feed all his hinds': she blessings, and promises, and the provisions, and the truth of God to maintain all her chidren. His hinds and horses eat up all his corn, and her children are sufficiently maintained with her little. They bring in and eat up; and she indeed eats up, but they also bring in from the store-houses of heaven, and the granaries of God: and my children are not so much mine as they are God's he feeds them in the womb by ways secret and insensible; and would not work a perpetual miracle to bring them forth, and then to starve them.

Violent Necessities.

But some men are highly tempted, and are brought to a strait, that without a miracle they cannot be relieved; what shall they do? It may be their pride or vanity hath brought the necessity upon them, and

1 i. e. Servants.

it is not a need of God's making: and if it be not, they must cure it themselves by lessening their desires, and moderating their appetites: and yet if it be innocent, though unnecessary, God does usually relieve such necessities; and he does not only upon our prayers grant us more than he promised of temporal things, but also he gives many times more than we ask. This is no object for our faith, but ground enough for a temporal and prudent hope: and if we fail in the particular, God will turn it to a bigger mercy, if we submit to his dispensation, and adore him in the denial. But if it be a matter of necessity, let not any man by way of impatience cry out, that God will not work a miracle; for God by miracle did give meat and drink to his people in the wilderness, of which he had made no particular promise in any covenant and if all natural means fail, it is certain that God will rather work a miracle than break his word; he can do that, he cannot do this. Only we must remember that our portion of temporal things is but food and raiment : God hath not promised us coaches and horses, rich houses and jewels, Tyrian silks and Persian carpets; neither hath he promised to minister to our needs in such circumstances as we shall appoint, but such as himself shall choose. God will enable either thee to pay thy debt, (if thou beggest it of him) or else he will pay it for thee, that is, take thy desire as a discharge of thy duty, and pay it to thy creditor in blessings, or in some secret of his providence. It may be, he hath laid up the corn that shall feed thee in the granary of thy brother; or will clothe thee with his wool. He enabled St. Peter to pay his gabel' by the ministry of a fish; and Elias to be waited on by a crow, who was both his minister and his steward for provisions and his holy Son rode in triumph upon an ass that grazed in another man's pastures: And if God gives to him the dominion, and reserves the use

1 i. e. Tribute.

to thee, thou hast the better half of the two: but the charitable man serves God and serves thy need: and both join to provide for thee, and God blesses both. But if he takes away the flesh-pots from thee, he can also alter the appetite, and he hath given thee power and commandment to restrain it: and if he lessens the revenue, he will also shrink the necessity; or if he gives but a very little, he will make it go a great way; or if he sends thee but a coarse diet, he will bless it and make it healthful, and can cure all the anguish of thy poverty by giving thee patience, and the grace of contentedness. For the grace of God secures you of provisions, and yet the grace of God feeds and supports the spirit in the want of provisions: and if a thin table be apt to enfeeble the spirits of one used to feed better; yet the cheerfulness of a spirit that is blessed will make a thin table become a delicacy, if the man was as well taught, as he was fed, and learned his duty, when he received the blessing. Poverty therefore is in some senses eligible and to be preferred before riches, but in all senses it is very tolerable.

Death of Children, or nearest Relatives and

Friends.

There are some persons who have been noted for excellence in their lives and passions, rarely innocent, and yet hugely penitent for indiscretions and harmless infirmities. And the more tender our spirits are made by religion, the more easy we are to let in grief, if the cause be innocent, and be but in any sense twisted with piety and due affections. To cure which we may consider, that all the world must die, and therefore to be impatient at the death of a person, concerning whom it was certain and known that he must die, is to mourn because thy friend or child was not born an angel; and when thou hast a while made thyself miserable by an importunate and useless grief, it may be thou

shalt die thyself, and leave others to their choice whether they will mourn for thee or no : but by that time it will appear how impertinent that grief was, which served no end of life, and ended in thy own funeral. But what great matter is it, if sparks fly upward, or a stone falls into a pit; if that which was combustible be burned, or that which was liquid be melted, or that which is mortal do die? It is no more than a man does every day for every night death hath gotten possession of that day, and we shall never live that day over again; and when the last day is come, there are no more days left for us to die. And what is sleeping and awaking, but living and dying? what is Spring and Autumn, youth and old age, morning and evening, but real images of life and death, and really the same to many considerable effects and changes?

Untimely Death.

But it is not mere dying that is pretended by some as the cause of their impatient mourning, but that the child died young, before he knew good and evil, his right hand from his left, and so lost all his portion of this world, and they know not of what excellency his portion in the next shall be. If he died young, he lost but little, for he understood but little, and had not capacities of great pleasures or great cares: but yet he died innocent, and before the sweetness of his soul was defloured and ravished from him by the flames and follies of a froward age: he went out from the dining-room, before he had fallen into error by the intemperance of his meat, or the deluge of drink and he hath obtained this favour of God, that his soul hath suffered a less imprisonment, and her load was sooner taken off, that he might with lesser delays go and converse with immortal spirits: and the babe is taken into Paradise before he knows good and evil. For that knowledge threw our great father out, and this ignorance returns the child thither. But, as concerning

thy own particular, remove thy thoughts back to those days in which thy child was not born, and you are now, but as then you were, and there is no difference, but that you had a son born: and if you reckon that for evil, you are unthankful for the blessing; if it be good, it is better that you had the blessing for a while than not at all: and yet if he had never been born, this sorrow had not been at all. But be no more dis

pleased at God, for giving you a blessing for a while, than you would have been, if he had not given it at all; and reckon that intervening blessing for a gain, but account it not an evil: and if it be a good, turn it not into sorrow and sadness. But if we have great reason to complain of the calamities and evils of our life, then we have the less reason to grieve, that those whom we loved, have so small a portion of evil assigned to them. And it is no small advantage that our children dying young receive: For their condition of a blessed immortality is rendered to them secure by being snatched from the dangers of an evil choice, and carried to their little cells of felicity, where they can weep no more. And this the wisest of the Gentiles understood well, when they forbade any offerings or libations to be made for dead infants, as was usual for their other dead; as believing they were entered into a secure possession, to which they went with no other condition, but that they passed into it through the way of mortality, and for a few months wore an uneasy garment. And let weeping parents say, if they do not think that the evils their little babes have suffered are sufficient. If they be, why are they troubled that they were taken from those many and greater, which in succeeding years are great enough to try all the reason and religion, which art and nature and the grace of God hath produced in us, to enable us for such sad contentions? And possibly we may doubt concerning men and women, but we cannot suspect, that infants' death can be such an