2 BEN JONSON.
The old Lexicographer answers his own question thus: “Why, yes; I do think 'tis the conscience of a man which examines the man, and every part of him, both spiritual and carnal, as well regenerate as unregenerate, and itself and all. For hence it was called conscientia, as being that faculty by which a man becomes conscious to himself, and is made knowing together with himself of all that good and evil that lies working in his nature, and has been brought forth in his actions. And this is not only the Register, and Witness and Judge of all parts of man, and of all that they do, but is so impartial an officer also, that it will give a strict account of all itself at any time does, accusing or excusing even itself in every motion of its own.”
Reader I would proceed with this extract, were it not for its length. The application which immediately follows it, is eloquently and forcibly made, and I exhort thee if ever thou comest into a library where Adam Littleton's Sermons are upon the shelf,
look
Not on, but in this Thee-concerning book!3
Take down the goodly tome, and turn to the sermon of Self-Examination, preached before the (Royal) Family at Whitehall, March 3, 1677-8. You will find this passage in the eighty-sixth page of the second paging, and I advice you to proceed with it to the end of the Discourse.
3 SIR WILLIAM DENNY.
I will tell the reader for what reason I purchased that goodly tome. It was because of my grateful liking for the author, from the end of whose dictionary I, like Daniel in his boyhood, derived more entertainment and information to boot, than from any other book which, in those days, came within the walls of a school. That he was a truly learned man no one who ever used that dictionary could doubt, and if there had not been oddity enough in him to give his learning a zest, he never could have compounded an appellation for the Monument, commemorating in what he calls an heptastic vocable,—which may be interpreted a seven-leagued word,—the seven Lord Mayors of London under whose mayoralities the construction of that lying pillar went on from its commencement to its completion. He called it, the Fordo-Watermanno-Hansono-Hookero-Vinero-Sheldono-Davisian pillar.
I bought the book for the author's sake,—which in the case of a living author is a proper and meritorious motive, and in the case of one who is dead, may generally be presumed to be a wise one. It proved so in this instance. For though there is nothing that bears the stamp of oddity in his sermons, there is much that is sterling. They have a merit of their own, and it is of no mean degree. Their manner is neither Latimerist nor Andrewesian, nor Fullerish, nor Cotton-Matherish, nor Jeremy Taylorish, nor Barrowish, nor Southish, but Littletonian. They are full of learning, of wisdom, of sound doctrine, and of benevolence, and of earnest and persuasive piety. No one who had ears to hear could have slept under them, and few could have listened to them without improvement.