stared at; and so encourages it by making it popular and common. Plutarchy tells of one that divorced himself from his wife because his friend did so, that the other might be hardened in the mischief; and when Plato saw his scholars stoop in the shoulders, and Aristotle observed his to stammer, they began to be less troubled with those imperfections which they thought common to themselves and others. 3. Some pretend a rusticity and downright plainness, and upon the confidence of that, humour their friend's vice and flatter his ruin. Seneca observed it of some of his time; Alius adulatione clam utetur, parce; alius ex aperto, palam, rusticitate simulata, quasi simplicitas illa, non ars sit; they pretend they love not to dissemble, and therefore they cannot hide their thoughts; let their friend take it how he will, they must commend that which is commendable; and so man, that is willing to die quietly, is content with the honest-heartiness and downright simplicity of him that with an artificial rudeness dressed the flattery. 4. Some will dispraise themselves, that their friend may think better of himself, or less severely of his fault. 5. Others will reprove their friend for a trifle, but with a purpose to let him understand that this is all; for the honest man would have told his friend if it had been worse. 6. Some will laugh and make a sport of a vice, and can hear their friend tell the cursed narrative of his adultery, of his drunkenness, of his craft and unjust purchases; and all this shall prove but a merry scene; as if damnation were a thing to be laughed at, and the everlasting ruin of his friend were a very good jest. But thus the poor sinner shall not be affrighted from his danger nor chastised by severe language; but the villain that eats his meat shall take him by the hand, and dance about the pit till he falls in and dies with shame and folly. Thus the evil spirit puts on shapes enough; none to affright the man, but all to destroy him; and yet it is filthy enough when it is invested with its own character; γαστὴρ ὅλον τὸ σῶμα, πανταχῆ βλέπων 'the parasite or flatterer is a beast that is all belly, looking round with his eye, watchful, ugly, and deceitful, and creeping on his teeth; they feed him, and he kills them that reach him bread; for that's the nature of all vipers. I have this one thing only to insert, and then the caution will be sufficient, viz., that we do not think all praise given to our friend to be flattery, though it be in his presence. For sometimes praise is the best conveyance for a precept, and it may nourish up an infant virtue, and make it grow up towards perfection, and its proper [De adulat. et amic. discr., tom. vi. p. 197.] [Ibid., p. 195.] a [Nat. quæst. lib. iv. præfat., tom. ii. p. 741.] [Plut. ubi supr., p. 198.] measures and rewards. Friendship does better please our friend than flattery, and though it was made also for virtue, yet it mingles pleasures in the chalice: Ἐς ὄμματ ̓ εἴνου φωτὸς ἐμβλέψαι γλυκύς 'it is delicious to behold the face of a friendly and a sweet person:" and it is not the office of a friend always to be sour, or at any time morose; but free, open, and ingenuous, candid and humane, not denying to please, but ever refusing to abuse or corrupt. For as adulterine metals retain the lustre and colour of gold, but not the value; so flattery, in imitation of friendship, takes the face and outside of it, the delicious part; but the flatterer uses it to the interests of vice, and a friend by it serves virtue; and therefore Plutarch well compared friendship to medicinal ointments, which however delicious they be, yet they are also useful and minister to healing; but flattery is sweet and adulterate, pleasant but without health. He therefore that justly commends his friend to promote and encourage his virtue, reconciles virtue with his friend's affection, and makes it pleasant to be good; and he that does so shall also better be suffered when he reproves, because the needing person shall find that then is the opportunity and season of it, since he denied not to please so long as he could also profit. I only add this advice; that since self-love is the serpent's milk that feeds this viper, flattery, we should do well to choke it with its mother's milk; I mean, learn to love ourselves more, for then we should never endure to be flattered. For he that because he loves himself loves to be flattered, does because he loves himself love to entertain a man to abuse him, to mock him, and to destroy him finally. But he that loves himself truly, will suffer fire, will endure to be burnt, so he may be purified; put to pain, so he may be restored to health; for, of all sauces,' said Evenus, sharpness, severity, and 'fire, is the best.' [Ubi supr., p. 200.] [Eurip. Ion. 732.] e [Apud Plut. ibid., p. 181.] SERMON XXV. THE DUTIES OF THE TONGUE. EPHES. iv. latter part of verse 29. But that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. II. Loquendi magistros habemus homines, tacendi Deos, said oneb, 'Men teach us to speak, and God teaches us to hold our tongue;' the first we are taught by the lectures of our schools, the latter by the mysteries of the temple. But now in the new institution we have also a great master of speaking; and though silence is one of the great paths of innocence, yet holy speaking is the instrument of spiritual charity, and is a glorification of God; and therefore this kind of speaking is a degree of perfection beyond the wisdom and severity of silence. For although garrulity and foolish inordinate talking is a conjunction of folly and sin, and the prating man while he desires to get the love of them he converses with incurs their hatred; while he would be admired is laughed at; he spends much and gets nothing: he wrongs his friends, and makes sport to his enemies, and injures himself; he is derided when he tells what others know, he is endangered if he tells a secret and what they know not; he is not believed when he tells good news, and when he tells ill news he is odious; and therefore that silence which is a cure of all this evil is an excellent portion of safety and religion yet it is with holy speaking and innocent silence as it is with a hermit and a bishop; the first goes to a good school, but the second is proceeded towards greater perfection; and therefore the practical life of ecclesiastical governors, being found in the way of holiness and zeal, is called status perfectionis; a more excellent and perfect condition of life, and far beyond the retirements and inoffensive life of those innocent persons, which do so much less of profit, by how much charity is better than meditation, and going to heaven by religion and charity, by serving God and converting souls, is better than going to heaven by prayers and secret thoughts: so it is with silence and religious communication. That does not [Plut. de garrul., tom. viii. p. 14.] offend God, this glorifies Him: that prevents sin, this sets forward. the interests of religion. And therefore Plutarch said well, Qui generose et regio more instituuntur primum tacere deinde loqui discunt; to be taught first to be silent, then to speak well and handsomely, is education fit for a prince; and that is St. Paul's method here: first we were taught how to restrain our tongues in the foregoing instances, and now we are called to employ them in religion. : We must speak that which is good,' ayaóv т, any thing that may serve the ends of our God and of our neighbour, in the measures of religion and usefulness. But it is here as in all other propositions of religion: God to us, who are in the body, and conducted by material phantasms, and understanding nothing but what we feel, or is conveyed to us by the proportions of what we do or have, hath given us a religion that is fitted to our condition and constitution and therefore when we are commanded to love God, by this love Christ understands obedience; when we are commanded to honour God, it is by singing and reciting His praises, and doing things which cause reputation and honour: and even here, when we are commanded to speak that which is good, it is instanced in such good things which are really profitable, practically useful. And here the measures of God are especially by the proportions of our neighbour and therefore though speaking honourable things of God be an employment that does honour to our tongues and voices, yet we must tune and compose even these notes so as may best profit our neighbour; for so it must be λóyos ayalòs, 'good speech,' such as is els olkodoμǹv τŷs xpeías, 'for the edification of necessity: the phrase is a hebraism, where the genitive case of a substantive is put for the adjective; and means that our speech be apted to necessary edification, or such edification as is needful to every man's particular case; that is, that we so order our communication that it be apt to instruct the ignorant, to strengthen the weak, to recall the wanderer, to restrain the vicious, to comfort the disconsolate, to speak a word in season to every man's necessity, va de xápur, that it may minister grace;' something that may please and profit them, according as they shall need. All which I shall reduce to these three heads;— 1. To instruct. 2. To comfort. 3. To reprove. First, our conversation must be didaкTIKòs, apt to teach.' For since all our hopes on-our part depend upon our obedience to God, and conformity to our Lord Jesus, by whom our endeavours are sanctified and accepted, and our weaknesses are pardoned; and all our obedience relies upon, and is encouraged and grounded in, faith, and faith is founded naturally and primarily in the understanding: we may observe that it is not only reasonably to be expected, but experimentally felt, that in weak and ignorant understandings there [Vid. de audit., tom. vi. p. 141.] are no sufficient supports for the vigorousness of a holy life; there being nothing, or not enough, to warrant and strengthen great resolutions, to reconcile our affections to difficulties, to make us patient of affronts, to receive deeper mortifications and ruder usages, unless where an extraordinary grace supplies the want of ordinary notices, as the apostles were enabled to their preachings; but he therefore that carries and imports into the understanding of his brother notices of faith, and incomes of spiritual propositions, and arguments of the Spirit, enables his brother towards the work and practices of a holy life. And though every argument which the Spirit of God hath made and recorded in holy scripture is of itself inducement great enough to endear obedience, yet it is not so in the event of things to every man's infirmity and need; but in the treasures of the Spirit, in the heaps and variety of institution, and wise discourses, there will not only be enough to make a man without excuse, but sufficient to do his work, and to cure his evil, and to fortify his weaker parts, and to comply with his necessities. For although God's sufficient grace is present to all that can use it, yet if there be no more than that, it is a sad consideration to remember that there are but few that will be saved if they be helped but with just so much as can possibly do the work. And this we may well be assured of if we consider, that God is never wanting to any man in what is simply necessary; but then if we add this also, that of the vast numbers of men who might possibly be saved so few really are so, we shall perceive that that grace which only is sufficient, is not sufficient; sufficient to the thing, is not sufficient for the person; and therefore that God does usually give us more, and we need more yet; and unless God "works in us to will and to dod," we shall neither 'will' nor 'do;' though to will be in the power of our hand, yet we will not will; it follows from hence, that all they who will comply with God's method of graciousness and the necessities of their brethren, must endeavour by all means and in all their own measures and capacities to lay up treasures of notices and instructions in their brother's soul, that by some argument or other they may be met withal, and taken in every corner of their conversation. Add to this that the duty of a man hath great variety, and the souls of men are infinitely abused, and the persuasions of men are strangely divided, and the interests of men are a violent and preternatural declination from the strictnesses of virtue, and the resolutions of men are quickly altered and very hardly to be secured, and the cases of conscience are numerous and intricate, and every state of life hath its proper prejudice, and our notices are abused by our affections, and we shall perceive that men generally need knowledge enough to overpower all their passions, to root out their vicious inclinations, to master their prejudice, to answer objections, to resist temptations, to refresh their weariness, to fix their resolutions, and to determine d [Phil. ii. 13.] e [Life that hath,' in first two edd.] |