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always in their chambers, and are never seen. Tell not men that you cannot bear the light: it is he that doth evil that hateth the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

9. Solitude is too like death to be desirable. He liveth that doth good; and he is dead that is useless. Vivit is qui multis usui est: vivit is qui sentitur; qui vero latitant et torpent, mortem suam antecesserint,' inquit Sen. 'He liveth that is profitable to many: he liveth that is observed or perceived; but they that lie hid and drowsy, do anticipate their death.' And it is the most culpable death, and therefore the worst, to have life and not to use it.

10. And a life of holy communion is most like unto heaven, where none shall be solitary, but all as members of the heavenly Jerusalem, shall in harmony love and praise their Maker.

These reasons seem sufficient to me to satisfy you that no man should choose solitude without a special necessity or call; nor yet should it be taken for a life of greater perfection, than a faithful serving of God in public, and doing good to more.

I shall now come to the affirmative, and tell you for all this, that If God call us into solitude, or men forsake us, we may rejoice in this, that we are not alone, but the Father is with us. Fear not such solitude, but be ready to improve it if you be cast upon it. If God be your God, reconciled to you in Christ, and his Spirit be in you, you are provided for solitude, and need not fear if all the world should cast you off. If you be banished, imprisoned or left alone, it is but a relaxation from your greatest labours; which though you may not cast off yourselves, you may lawfully be sensible of your ease, if God take off your burden. It is but a cessation from your sharpest conflicts, and removal from a multitude of great temptations. And though you may not cowardly retreat or shift yourselves from the fight and danger, yet if God will dispense with you, and let you live in greater peace and safety, you have no cause to murmur at his dealing. A fruit tree that groweth by the highway side, doth seldom keep its fruit to ripeness, while so many passengers have each his stone or cudgel to cast at it. Seneca could say, 'Nunquam a turba mores quos extuli refero. Aliquid ex eo quod composui turbatur; aliquid ex his quæ fugavi redit: inimica est multorum conversatio.' 'I never

bring home well from a crowd the manners which I took out with me: something is disordered of that which I had set in order; something of that which I had banished doth return; the conversation of many I find an enemy to me.' O how many vain and foolish words corrupt the minds of those that converse with an ungodly world, when your ears and minds who live in solitude are free from such temptations! You live not in so corrupt an air as they. You hear not the filthy, ribald speeches, which fight against modesty and chastity, and are the bellows of lust. You hear not the discontented, complaining words of the impatient; nor the passionate, provoking words of the offended; nor the wrangling, quarrelsome words of the contentious; nor the censorious, or slanderous, or reproachful words of the malicious, who think it their interest to have their brethren taken to be bad, and to have others hate them, because they themselves hate them; and who are as zealous to quench the charity of others, when it is destroyed in themselves, as holy persons are zealous to provoke others to love, which dwelleth and ruleth in themselves. In your solitude with God, you shall not hear the lies and malicious revilings of the ungodly against the generation of the just: nor the subtle, cheating words of heretics, who being themselves deceived, would deceive others of their faith, and corrupt their lives. You shall not there be distracted with the noise and clamours of contending, uncharitable professors of religion, endeavouring to make odious first the opinions, and then the persons of one another one saying, Here is the church, and another, There is the church: one saying, This is the true churchgovernment, and another saying, Nay, but that is it: one saying, God will be worshipped thus, another, Not so, but thus, or thus. You shall not there be drawn to side with one against another, nor to join with any faction, or be guilty of divisions. You shall not be troubled with the oaths and blasphemies of the wicked, nor with the imprudent miscarriages of the weak; with the persecutions of enemies, or the falling out of friends. You shall not see the cruelty of proud oppressors, that set up lies by armed violence, and care not what they say or do, nor how much other men are injured and suffer, so that themselves may tyrannize, and their wills and words may rule the world, when they do so unhappily rule themselves. In your solitude with God, you

shall not see the prosperity of the wicked, to move you to envy; nor the adversity of the just, to be your grief. You shall see no worldly pomp and splendor to befool you, nor adorned beauty to entice you, nor wasting calamities to afflict you. You shall not hear the laughter of fools, nor the sick man's groans, nor the wronged man's complaints, nor the poor man's murmurings, nor the proud man's boastings, or the angry man's abusive ragings. As you lose the help of your gracious friends, so you are freed from the fruits of their peevishness and passions; of their differing opinions, and ways, and tempers; of their inequality, unsuitableness, and contrariety of minds or interests; of their levity and inconstancy, and the powerful temptations of their friendship, to draw you to the errors or other sins which they are tainted with themselves. In a word, you are there half delivered from the VANITY and VEXATION of the world; and were it not that you are yet undelivered from yourselves, and that you take distempered, corrupted hearts with you, Oh what a felicity would your solitude be! But, alas! we cannot overrun our own diseases, we must carry with us the remnants of our corrupted nature; our deadness and dulness, our selfishness and earthly minds, our impatience and discontents; and worst of all, our lamentable weakness of faith, and love, and heavenly-mindedness, and our strangeness to God, and backwardness to the matters of eternal life. O that I could escape these, though I were in the hands of the most cruel enemies! O that such a heart could be left behind! how gladly would I overrun both house and land, and honour, and all sensual delights, that I might but overrun it! O where is the place where there is none of this darkness, nor disaffection, nor distance, nor estrangedness from God! O that I knew it! O that I could find it! O that I might there dwell! though I should never more see the face of mortals; nor ever hear a human voice, nor ever taste of the delights of flesh! Alas! foolish soul! such a place there is, that hath all this, and more than this; but it is not in a wilderness, but in a Paradise, not here on earth, but above with Christ! and yet am I so loath to die? yet am I no more desirous of the blessed day, when I shall be unclothed of flesh and sin? O death, what an enemy art thou even to my soul! by affrighting me from the presence of my Lord, and hindering my desires and willingness to be

gone, thou wrongest me much more, than by laying my flesh to rot in darkness. Fain I would know God, and fain I would more love him and enjoy him; but O this hurtful love of life! O this unreasonable fear of dying, detaineth my desires from pressing on to the happy place where all this may be had! “ O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death!" this carnal believing heart, that sometimes can think more delightfully of a wilderness than of heaven; that can go seek after God in desert solitude, among the birds, and beasts, and trees, and yet so backward to be loosed from flesh that I may find him and enjoy him in the world of glory! Can I expect that heaven should come down to earth! and that the Lord of glory should remove his court, and either leave the retinue of his celestial courtiers, or bring them all down into this drossy world of flesh and sin, and this to satisfy my fleshly, foolish mind! or can I expect the translation of Enoch, or the chariot of Elias? Is it not enough that my Lord hath conquered death, and sanctified the passage, and prepared the place of my perpetual abode ?

Well! for all this, though a wilderness is not heaven, it shall be sweet and welcome, for the sake of heaven, if thence I may have a clearer prospect of it; and if by retiring from the crowd and noise of folly, I may but be more composed and better disposed to converse above, and to use my faith (alas! my too weak, languid faith) until the beautiful vision and fruition come. If there may be but more of God, or readier access to him, or more heart-quickening flames of love, or more heart-comforting intimations of his favour, in a wilderness than in a city, in a prison than in a palace, let that wilderness be my city, and let that prison be my palace, while I must abide on earth. If in solitude I may have Enoch's walk with God, I shall in due season have such a translation as shall bring me to the same felicity which he enjoyeth; and in the mean time, as well as after, it is no disadvantage, if by mortal eyes I be seen no more. If the chariot of contemplation will in solitude raise me to more believing, affectionate converse with heaven, than I could expect in tumults and temptations, it shall reconcile me unto solitude, and make it my Paradise on earth, till angels, instead of the chariot of Elias, shall convey me to the presence of my glorified Head, in the celestial Paradise.

Object. But it is grievous to one that hath been used to much company, to be alone.'

Answ. Company may so use you, that it may be more grievous to you not to be alone. The society of wasps and serpents may be spared; and bees themselves have such stings as make some that have felt them think they bought the honey dear.

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But can you say you are alone while you are with God? Is his presence nothing to you? doth it not signify more than the company of all men in the world? Saith Hierom, Sapiens nunquam solus esse potest; habet enim secum omnes qui sunt, et qui fuerunt boni · et si hominum sit inopia, liquitur cum Deo:' viz. A wise man cannot be alone; for he hath with him the good men that are or have been and if there be a want of men, he speaketh with God.' He should rather have said, There can be no want of man, when we may speak with God; and were it not that God is here revealed to us as in a glass, and that we do converse with God in man, we should think human converse little worth.

Object. O but solitude is disconsolate to a sociable mind.'

Answ. But the most desirable society is no solitude. Saith Hierom, 'Infinita erimi vastitas te terret? sed tu Paradisum mente deambula; quotiescunque cogitatione ac mente illuc conscenderis, toties in erema non eris:' that is, 'Doth the infinite vastness of the wilderness terrify thee? but do thou (ascend) in mind and walk in Paradise; as oft as thou ascendest thither in thought and mind, so oft thou shalt not be in the wilderness.' If God be nothing to thee, thou art not a Christian but an atheist. If God be God to thee, he is all in all to thee; and then should not his presence be instead of all? O that I might get one step nearer unto God, though I receded many from all the world! O that I could find that place on earth, where a soul may have nearest access unto him, and fullest knowledge and enjoyment of him, though I never more saw the face of friends! I should cheerfully say with my blessed Saviour, "I am not alone, for the Father is with me.' And should say so for these reasons following.

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1. If God be with me, the Maker, and Ruler, and Disposer of all is with me; so that all things are virtually with

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