Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambulous Track, and narrow Path of Goodness: pursue Virtue virtuously; be sober and temperate, not to preserve your Body in a sufficiency to wanton Ends; not to spare your Purse; not to be free from the Infamy of common Transgressors that way, and thereby to ballance or palliate obscure and closer Vices; nor simply to enjoy Health: By all which you may leaven good Actions, and render Virtues disputable: but in one Word, that you may truly serve God; which every Sickness will tell you, you cannot well do without health. The sick Man's Sacrifice is but a lame Oblation. Pious Treasures laid up in healthful Days, excuse the Defect of sick Non-performances; without which we must needs look back with Anxiety upon the lost Opportunities of Health; and may have cause rather to envy than pity the Ends of penitent Malefactors, who go with clear Parts unto the last Act of their Lives; and in the Integrity of their Faculties return their Spirit unto God that gave it.
Consider whereabout thou art in Cebes his Table, or that old philosophical Pinax of the Life of Man; whether thou art still in the Road of Uncertainties; whether thou hast yet entred the narrow Gate, got up the Hill and asperous Way which leadeth unto the House of Sanity, or taken that purifying Potion from the Hand of sincere Erudition, which may send the clear and pure away unto a virtuous and happy Life.
In this virtuous voyage let not Disappointment cause Despondency, nor Difficulty Despair: Think not that you are sailing from Lima[313] to Manillia, wherein thou may'st tye up the Rudder, and sleep before the Wind; but expect rough Seas, Flaws, and contrary Blasts; and ’tis well if by many cross Tacks and Veerings thou arrivest at thy Port. Sit not down in the popular Seats, and common Level of Virtues, but endeavour to make them Heroical. Offer not only Peace-Offerings but Holocausts unto God. To serve him singly to serve our selves, were too partial a Piece of Piety, nor likely to place us in the highest Mansions of Glory.
He that is chaste and continent, not to impair his Strength, or terrified by Contagion, will hardly be heroically virtuous. Adjourn not that Virtue unto those Years when Cato could lend out his Wife, and impotent Satyrs write Satyrs against Lust: but be chaste in thy flaming Days, when Alexander dared not trust his Eyes upon the fair Daughters of Darius, and when so many Men think there is no other Way but Origen’s.[314]
Be charitable before Wealth makes thee covetous, and lose not the Glory of the Mitre. If Riches increase, let thy Mind hold Pace with them; and think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent. Tho' a Cup of cold Water from some hand may not be without its Reward; yet stick not thou for Wine and Oyl for the Wounds of the distressed: and treat the poor as our Saviour did the Multitude, to the Relicks of some Baskets.
Trust not to the Omnipotency of Gold, or say unto it, Thou art my Confidence: kiss not thy Hand when thou beholdest that terrestrial Sun, nor bore thy Ear unto its Servitude. A Slave unto Mammon makes no Servant unto God: Covetousness cracks the Sinews of Faith, numbs the Apprehension of any thing above Sense, and only affected with the Certainty of Things present, makes a Peradventure of things to come; lives but unto one World, nor hopes but fears another; makes our own Death sweet unto others, bitter unto our selves; gives a dry Funeral, Scenical Mourning, and no wet Eyes at the Grave.
If Avarice be thy Vice, yet make it not thy Punishment: Miserable Men commiserate not themselves, bowelless unto themselves, and merciless unto their own Bowels. Let the Fruition of things bless the Possession of them, and take no Satisfaction in dying but living rich: for since thy good Works, not thy Goods, will follow thee; since Riches are an Appurtenance of Life, and no dead Man is rich, to famish in Plenty, and live poorly to die rich, were a multiplying Improvement in Madness, and Use upon Use in Folly.
Persons lightly dip’d, not grain’d in generous Honesty, are but pale in Goodness, and faint hued in Sincerity: but be thou what thou virtuously art, and let not the Ocean wash away thy Tincture: stand magnetically upon that Axis where prudent Simplicity hath fix’d thee, and let no Temptation invert the Poles of thy Honesty: and that Vice may be uneasie, and even monstrous unto thee, let iterated good Acts, and long confirm’d Habits make Vertue natural, or a second Nature in thee. And since few or none prove eminently vertuous but from some advantageous Foundations in their Temper, and natural Inclinations; study thy self betimes, and early find what Nature bids thee to be, or tells thee what thou may'st be. They who thus timely descend into themselves, cultivating the good Seeds which Nature hath set in them, and improving their prevalent Inclinations to Perfection, become not Shrubs, but Cedars in their Generation; and to be in the form of the best of the Bad, or the worst of the Good, will be no Satisfaction unto them.
Let not the Law of thy Country be the non ultra of thy Honesty, nor think that always good enough which the Law will make good. Narrow not the Law of Charity, Equity, Mercy; joyn Gospel Righteousness with Legal Right; be not a meer Gamaliel in the Faith; but let the Sermon in the Mount be thy Targum unto the Law of Sinai.