may perform them in acceptable degrees if he have but a ready ear, and a willing mind, and an honest heart.

There men shall meet the partners of their sins, and them that drank the round when they crowned their heads with folly and forgetfulness, and their cups with wine and noises. There shall ye see that poor perishing soul, whom thou didst tempt to adultery and wantonness, to drunkenness or perjury, to rebellion or an evil interest, by power or craft, by witty discourses or deep dissembling, by scandal or a snare, by evil example or pernicious counsel, by malice or unwariness.

That soul that cries to those rocks to cover her, if it had not been for thy perpetual temptations, might have followed the lamb in a white robe; and that poor man, that is clothed with shame and flames of fire, would have shined in glory, but that thou didst force him to be partner of the baseness.

The majesty of the judge, and the terrors of the judgment shall be spoken aloud by the immediate forerunning accidents, which shall be so great violences to the old constitutions of nature that it shall break her very bones, and disorder her till she be destroyed.

The sea (they say) shall rise fifteen cubits above the highest mountains, and thence descend into hollowness and a prodigious drought; and when they are reduced again to their usual pro

portions, then all the beasts and creeping things, the monsters and the usual inhabitants of the sea shall be gathered together, and make fearful noises to distract mankind: the birds shall mourn and change their songs into threnes and sad accents rivers of fire shall rise from the east to west, and the stars shall be rent into threads of light, and scatter like the beards of comets; then shall be fearful earthquakes, and the rocks shall rend in pieces, the trees shall distil blood, and the mountains and fairest structures shall return into their primitive dust; the wild beasts shall leave their dens, and come into the companies of men, so that you shall hardly tell how to call them, herds of men, or congregations of beasts; then shall the graves open, and give up their dead, and those which are alive in nature and dead in fear, shall be forced from the rocks whither they went to hide them, and from caverns of the earth, where they would fain have been concealed; because their retirements are dismantled, and their rocks are broken into wider ruptures, and admit a strange light into their secret bowels; and the men being forced abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors, shall run up and down distracted, and at their wits end.

"The earth shall tremble, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken, the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, the rocks shall rend, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat. The heavens shall be rolled

up like a parchment, the earth shall be burned with fire, the hills shall be like wax, for there shall go a fire before him, and a mighty tempest shall be stirred round about him."*

ON FRIENDSHIP AND GENERAL BENEVOLENCE.

In a Discourse of the Nature, Offices, and Measures of Friendship, with Rules of conducting it in a Letter to the most ingenious and excellent Mrs. Catharine Philips, inquiring, how far a dear and perfect friendship is authorised by the principles of Christianity.'

THE word friend is of a large signification; and means all relations and societies, and whatsoever

is not enemy. But by friendships, I suppose you mean the greatest love, and the greatest usefulness, and the most open communication, and the noblest sufferings, and the most exemplar faithfulness, and the severest truth, and the heartiest counsel, and the greatest union of minds, of which brave men and women are capable.

Christian charity is friendship to all the world; and when friendships were the noblest things in the world, charity was little, like the sun drawn in at a chink, or his beams drawn into the centre of a burning-glass; but christian charity is friendship expanded like the face of the sun when it mounts above the eastern hills: and I was

*From Sermon entitled "Christ's Advent to Judgment:" which is the first in his Collection of Sermons

strangely pleased when I saw something of this in Cicero; for I have been so pushed at by herds and flocks of people that follow any body that whistles to them, or drives them to pasture, that I am grown afraid of any truth that seems chargeable with singularity; but therefore I say, glad I was when I saw Lælius in Cicero discourse, thus: "Amicitia ex infinitate generis humani quam conciliavit ipsa natura, contracta res est, et adducta in angustum; ut omnis charitas, aut inter duos, aut inter paucos jungeretur." Nature hath made friendships and societies, relations and endearments; and by something or other we relate to all the world; there is enough in every man that is willing to make him become our friend; but when men contract friendships, they inclose the commons; and what nature intended should be every man's, we make proper to two or three. Friendship is like rivers, and the strand of seas, and the air,-common to all the world; but tyrants, and evil customs, wars and want of love have made them proper and peculiar. But when christianity came to renew our nature, and to restore our laws, and to increase her privileges, and to make her aptness to become religion, then it was declared that our friendships were to be as universal as our conversation; that is, actual to all with whom we converse, and potentially extended unto those with whom we did not. For he who was to treat his enemies with forgiveness and prayers, and love and beneficence, was indeed to have no enemies, and to have all friends.

F

So that to your question, how far a dear and perfect friendship is authorised by the principles of christianity,' the answer is ready and easy: It is warranted to extend to all mankind; and the more we love, the better we are; and the greater our friendships are, the dearer we are to God. Let them be as dear, and let them be as perfect, and let them be as many as you can; there is no danger in it; only where the restraint begins, there begins our imperfection. It is not ill that you entertain brave friendships and worthy societies it were well if you could love and if you could benefit all mankind; for I conceive that is the sum of all friendship.

I confess this is not to be expected of us in this world; but, as all our graces here are but imperfect, that is, at the best they are but tendencies to glory, so our friendships are imperfect too, and but beginnings of a celestial friendship by which we shall love every one as much as they can be loved. But then so we must here in our proportion; and indeed that is it that can make the difference; we must be friends to all, that is, apt to do good, loving them really, and doing to them all the benefits which we can, and which they are capable of. The friendship is equal to all the world, and of itself hath no difference; but is differenced only by accidents, and by the capacity or incapacity of them that receive it.

For thus the sun is the eye of the world; and he is indifferent to the Negro, or the cold Russian,