in which it is placed by God, whether of the single or of the married life. Concerning which our duty is thus described by St. Paul, "For this is the will of God, even our sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication; that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour : not in the lust of concupiscence, even as the Gentiles which know not God 1."

Chastity is either abstinence or continence. Abstinence is that of virgins or widows: continence of married persons. Chaste marriages are honourable and pleasing to God: widowhood is pitiable in its solitariness and loss, but amiable and comely when it is adorned with gravity and purity. But virginity is the huge advantage of religion, the great opportunity for the retirements of devotion: being empty of cares it is full of prayers; and being unmingled with the world, it is apt to converse with God.

Natural virginity of itself is not a state more acceptable to God: but that which is chosen and voluntary, in order to the conveniences of religion and separation from worldly incumbrances, is therefore better than the married life, not that it is more holy, but that it is a freedom from cares, an opportunity to spend more time in spiritual employments; it is not allayed with businesses and attendances upon lower affairs and if it be a chosen condition to these ends, it containeth in it a victory over lusts, and greater desires of religion, and self-denial, and therefore is more excellent than the married life, in that degree in which it hath greater religion, and a greater mortification, a less satisfaction of natural desires, and a greater fulness of the spiritual.

But some married persons even in their marriage do better please God than some virgins in their state of virginity: they by giving great example of con

11 Thess. 4. 3-5.

jugal affection, by preserving their faith unbroken, by educating children in the fear of God, by patience and contentedness, and holy thoughts and the exercise of virtues proper to that state, do not only please God, but do in a higher degree than those virgins whose piety is not answerable to their great opportunities and advantages.

However, married persons and widows and virgins are all servants of God and coheirs in the inheritance of Jesus, if they live within the restraints and laws of their particular estate, chastely, temperately, justly and religiously.

The evil consequents of Uncleanness,

THE blessings and proper effects of chastity we shall best understand by reckoning the evils of uncleanness and carnality.

1. Uncleanness, of all vices, is the most shameful. "The eye of the adulterer waiteth for the twilight, saying, No eye shall see me, and disguiseth his face. In the dark they dig through houses which they had marked for themselves in the day-time; they know not the light for the morning is to them as the shadow of death'." Shame is the eldest daughter of uncleanness.

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2. The appetites of uncleanness are full of cares and trouble, and its fruition is sorrow and repentance. "The way of the adulterer is hedged with thorns":" full of fears and jealousies, burning desires and impatient waitings, tediousness of delay, and sufferance of affronts, and amazements of discovery.

3. Most of its kinds are of that condition, that they involve the ruin of two souls; and he that is a fornicator or adulterous, steals the soul as well as dishonours the body of his neighbour.

4. Uncleanness with all its kinds is a vice which hath a professed enmity against the body. "Every

sin which a man doth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body'."

5. Uncleanness is hugely contrary to the spirit of government, by embasing the spirit of a man, making it effeminate, sneaking, soft, and foolish, without courage, without confidence. David felt this after his folly with Bathsheba, he fell to unkingly arts and stratagems to hide the crime; and he did nothing but increase it, and remained timorous and poorspirited, till he prayed to God once more to establish him with a free and a princely spirit. And no superior dare strictly observe discipline upon his charge, if he hath let himself loose to the shame of inconti

nence.

6. The gospel hath added two arguments against uncleanness which were never before used, nor indeed could be: since God hath given the Holy Spirit to them that are baptized, and rightly confirmed, and entered into covenant with him, our bodies are made temples of the Holy Ghost in which he dwells; and therefore uncleanness is sacrilege and defiles a temple. It is St. Paul's argument, "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost"?" and "he that defiles a temple, him will God destroy. Therefore, glorify God in your bodies "," that is, "flee fornication." To which for the likeness of the argument add, "that our bodies are members of Christ," and therefore "God forbid that we should take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot." So that uncleanness dishonours Christ, and dishonours the Holy Spirit: it is a sin against God, and in this sense a sin against the Holy Ghost.

7. The next special argument which the gospel ministers especially against adultery, and for the preservation of the purity of marriage, is that marriage is by Christ hallowed into a mystery to signify the

11 Cor. 6. 18. 21 Cor. 6. 19. 31 Cor. 3. 17.

sacramental and mystical union of Christ and his church'. He therefore that breaks this knot which the church and their mutual faith hath tied, and Christ hath knit up into a mystery, dishonours a great rite of Christianity, of high, spiritual, and excellent signification.

8. St. Gregory reckons uncleanness to be the parent of these monsters; blindness of mind, inconsideration, precipitancy or giddiness in actions, self-love, hatred of God, love of the present pleasures, a despite or despair of the joys of religion here and of heaven hereafter. Whereas a pure mind in a chaste body is the mother of wisdom and deliberation, sober counsels and ingenuous actions, open deportment and sweet carriage, sincere principles and unprejudicate understanding, love of God and self-denial, peace and confidence, holy prayers and spiritual comfort, and a pleasure of spirit infinitely greater than the sottish and beastly pleasures of unchastity. For to overcome pleasure is the greatest pleasure, and no victory is greater than that which is gotten over our lusts and filthy inclinations.

Acts of Chastity in general.

THE actions and proper offices of the grace of chastity in general are these.

1. To resist all unchaste thoughts.

2. At no hand to entertain any desire, or any phantastic, imaginative loves.

3. To have a chaste eye and hand.

4. To have a heart and mind chaste and pure. 5. To discourse chastely and purely.

They that have performed these duties and parts of chastity, will certainly abstain from all exterior actions of uncleanness, those noon-day and midnight devils, those lawless and ungodly worshippings of shame and uncleanness, whose birth is in trouble, whose growth is in folly, and whose end is in shame.

But because of all the dangers of a Christian none more pressing and troublesome than the temptations to lust, no enemy more dangerous than that of the flesh, no accounts greater than what we have to reckon for at the audit of concupiscence, therefore it concerns all that would be safe from this death to arm themselves by the following rules to prevent, or to cure all the wounds of our flesh made by the poisoned arrows of lust.

Remedies against Uncleanness.

1. WHEN a temptation of lust assaults thee, do not resist it by heaping up arguments against it, and disputing with it, considering its offers and its danger, but fly from it, that is, think not at all of it; lay aside all consideration concerning it, and turn away from it by any severe and laudable thought of business. If you hear it speak, though but to dispute with it, it ruins you; and the very arguments you go about to answer leave a relish upon the tongue. A man may be burned if he goes near the fire, though but to quench his house; and by handling pitch though but to draw it from your clothes, you defile your fingers.

2. Avoid idleness and fill up all the spaces of thy time with severe and useful employment: for lust usually creeps in at those emptinesses, where the soul is unemployed, and the body is at ease. For no easy, healthful, and idle person was ever chaste, if he could be tempted. But of all employments, bodily labour is most useful and of greatest benefit for the driving away the devil.

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3. Give no entertainment to the beginnings, the first motions, and secret whispers of the spirit of impurity. For if you totally suppress it, it dies if you permit the furnace to breath its smoke and flame out at any vent, it will rage to the consumption of the whole. This cockatrice is soonest crushed in the shell, but if it grows, it turns to a serpent, and a dragon, and a devil.