4. God hath sufficiently excited men to the hasty seizure of unnatural distempers, and what is said; for in the case of the brazen the remaining days of such spent upon a rack serpent, which was an heavenly institution procured by their vices, and so made slaves and type of Christ, he with great displeasure to the unmerciful but necessary effects of their enjoined that it should be broken to pieces, own inordinate pleasures? in which agony because they were too fond and doting upon they vow the greatest temperance, but are it. Yes, the very groves themselves, how- no sooner out of it, than in their vice again. ever pleasant for situation, beautiful for their 7. That these things are so, and almost walks and trees, must be cut down; and innumerably more, I am persuaded no ingenuwhy only because they had been abused to idolatrous uses. And what is an idol, but that which the mind puts an over-estimate or value upon? None can benefit themselves so much by an indifferent thing, as others by not using that abused liberty. ous person of any experience will deny: how then, upon a serious reflection, any that pretend conscience, or the fear of God Almighty, can longer continue in the garb, livery, and conversation of those whose life tends to little else than what I have repeated, much less 5. If those things were convenient in them- join with them in their abominable excess, I selves, which is a step nearer necessity than leave to the spirit of Truth in themselves to mere indifferency, yet when by circumstances judge. No, surely! this is not to obey the they become prejudicial, such conveniency voice of God, who in all ages did loudly cry itself ought to be given up; much more what to all, “ Come out (of what ?) of the ways, is but indifferent should be denied. People fashions, converse and spirit of Babylon?" ought not to weigh their private satisfactions What is that? the great city of all these vain, more than public good; nor please themselves foolish, wanton, superfluous, and wicked pracin too free an use of indifferent things, at the tices, against which the Scriptures denounce cost of being really prejudicial to the public, most dreadful judgments; ascribing all the inas they certainly are, when the use of them temperance of men and women to the cup of (if no worse) becomes exemplary to others, wickedness she hath given them to drink; and begets an impatience in their minds to whose are the things indifferent, if they must have the like. Wherefore it is both reasona- be so. And for witness, hear what the Reveble and incumbent on all, to make only such lations say in her description: "How much things necessary, as tend to life and godliness, she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, and to employ their freedom with most advan- so much torment and sorrow give her. And tage to their neighbours. So that here is a the kings of the earth, who have lived delitwo-fold obligation; the one not to be ex- ciously with her, shall bewail and lament for emplary in the use of such things; which, her; and the merchants of the earth shall weep though they may use them, yet not without over her; for no man buyeth their merchandize giving too much countenance to the abuse any more; the merchandize of gold and silver, and excessive vanity of their neighbours. and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine The other obligation is, that they ought so linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and far to condescend to such religious people all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manwho are offended at these fashions, and that ner of vessels of most precious wood; and kind of conversation, as to reject them. cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and beasts, and slaves, and souls of men. Behold the character and judgment of luxury; and though I know it hath a farther signification than what is literal, yet there is enough to show the pomp, plenty, fulness, idleness, ease, wantonness, vanity, lust, and excess of luxury that reign in her. But at the terrible day who will go to her exchange any more? For, after a serious consideration, what who to her plays? who will follow her fashvanity, pride, idleness, expense of time and ions then? and who shall traffic in her delicate estates, have been, and yet are ? How many inventions ? Not one; for she shall be judged. persons debauched from their first sobriety, No plea shall excuse, or rescue her from the and women from their natural sweetness and wrath of the Judge; for strong is the Lord innocency, to loose, airy, wanton, and many who will perform it. If yet these reasonable times more enormous practices? How many pleas will not prevail, I shall caution such, by plentiful estates have been over-run by nume- the repetition of part of Babylon's miserable rous debts, chastity ensnared by accursed doom. Mind, my friends, more heavenly lustful intrigues, youthful health overtaken by things; hasten to obey that righteous Spirit, 6. Those, who, notwithstanding what 1 have urged, will yet proceed; why is it, but that they have so involved themselves and their affections in them, that it is hardly possible to reform them; and that, for all their many protestations against their fondness to such fopperies, they really love them more than Christ and his cross? Such cannot seek the good of others, who so little respect their own. which would exercise and delight you in that which is eternal; or else with Babylon, the mother of lust and vanity, the fruits which your souls lust after shall depart from you, and all things which are dainty and goodly shall depart from you, and you shall find them no more! Lay your treasures therefore up in heaven, O ye inhabitants of the earth, where nothing can break through to harm them; but where time shall shortly be swallowed up of eternity. not charity, have deeply engaged their estates, may in a short space be enabled to clear them from those incumbrances, which otherwise, like moths, soon eat out plentiful revenues. It helps persons of mean substance to improve their small stocks, that they may not expend their dear earnings and hard-got wages upon superfluous apparel, foolish may-games, plays, dancing, shows, taverns, ale-houses, and the like folly and intemperance; with which this 8. But my arguments against these things land is more infested, and by which it is renend not here; for the contrary most of all dered more ridiculous, than any kingdom in conduces to good, namely, "temperance in the world. None that I know of is so infested food, plainness in apparel; with a meek, with cheating mountebanks, savage morriceshame-faced, and quiet spirit, and that con- dancers, pick-pockets, and profane players, versation which expresses the same in all and stagers; to the slight of religion, the godly honesty;" as the apostle saith, "Let shame of government, and the great idleness, no corrupt communication proceed out of your expense, and debauchery of the people: for mouth, but that which is good to the use of which the spirit of the Lord is grieved, and edifying, that it may administer grace to the the sentence ready to be pronounced, "Let hearers; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, him that is unjust, be unjust still." Wherefore nor jesting, but rather giving of thanks: for it is, that we cannot but loudly call upon the let no man deceive you with vain words, be- people, and testify, both by our life and doccause of these things cometh the wrath of trine, against the like vanities and abuses, if God upon the children of disobedience." And possibly any may be weaned from their folly, if men and women were but thus adorned, and choose the good old path of temperance, after this truly Christian manner, impudence wisdom, gravity, and holiness, the only way would soon receive a check, and lust, pride, to inherit the blessings of peace and plenty vanity, and wantonness, find a rebuke. They here, and eternal happiness hereafter. would not be able to attempt such universal chastity, or encounter such godly austerity: virtue would be in credit, and vice afraid and ashamed, and excess not dare to show its face. There would be an end of gluttony, and gaudiness of apparel, flattering titles, and a luxurious life; and then primitive innocency and plainness would come back again, and that plain-hearted, downright, harmless life would be restored, of not much caring what we should eat, drink, or put on, as Christ tells us the Gentiles did, and as we know this age daily does, under all its talk of religion: but as the ancients, who with moderate care for necessaries and conveniencies of life, devoted themselves to the concernments of a celestial kingdom, more minded their improvement in righteousness, than their increase in riches; for they laid their treasure up in heaven, and endured tribulation for an inheritance that cannot be taken away. 9. The temperance I plead for, is not only religiously, but politically good: it is the interest of good government to curb and rebuke excesses; for it prevents many mischiefs. Luxury brings effeminacy, laziness, poverty, and misery; but temperance preserves the land. It keeps out foreign vanities, and improves our own commodities: Now we are their debtors, then they would be debtors to us for our native manufactures. By this means, such persons, who by their excess, 10. Lastly, supposing we had none of these foregoing reasons justly to reprove the practice of the land in these particulars; let it be suffi cient for us to say, that when people have first learned to fear, worship and obey their Creator, to pay their numerous vicious debts, to alleviate and abate their oppressed tenants ; when the pale faces are more commiserated, the starved relieved, and naked clothed; when the famished poor, the distressed widow, and helpless orphan (God's works, and your fellow. creatures) are provided for! then, I say, it will be time enough for you to plead the indifferency of your pleasure. But that the sweat and tedious labour of the husbandmen, early and late, cold and hot, wet and dry, should be converted into the pleasure, ease, and pastime of a small number of men; that the cart, the plough, the thresh, should be in continual severity laid upon nineteen parts of the land to feed the inordinate lusts and delicious appetites of the twentieth, is so far from the appointment of the great Governor of the world, and God of the spirits of all flesh, that to imagine such horrible injustice as the effects of his determinations, and not the intemperance of men, were wretched and blasphemous. On the other side, it would be to deserve no pity, no help, no relief from God Almighty, for people to continue that expense in vanity and pleasure, whilst the great necessities of such objects go unanswered: especially, since God hath made the sons of men but stewards to each other's under a profession of the self-denying religion exigencies and relief. Yea, so strictly is it of Jesus, whose life and doctrine are a perenjoined, that on the omission of these things, petual reproach to the most of Christians. we find this dreadful sentence partly to be For he, blessed Man, was humble, but they grounded, "Depart from me, ye cursed, into proud; he forgiving, they revengeful; he everlasting fire," &c. On the contrary, to meek, they fierce; he plain, they gaudy; he visit the sick, see the imprisoned, relieve the abstemious, they luxurious; he chaste, they needy, &c. are such excellent properties in lascivious; he a pilgrim on earth, they citizens Christ's account, that thereupon he will pro- of the world: in fine, he was meanly born, nounce such blessed, saying, "Come ye poorly attended, and obscurely brought up: blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom he lived despised, and died hated of the men prepared for you," &c. So that the great are not, with the leviathan in the deep, to prey upon the small, much less to make sport of the lives and labours of the lesser ones, to gratify their inordinate senses. of his own nation. O you pretended followers of this crucified Jesus! examine yourselves, try yourselves; know you not your own selves, if he dwell not, if he rule not, in you, that you are reprobates? be ye not de11. I therefore humbly offer an address to ceived, for God will not be mocked, at last the serious consideration of the civil magis- with forced repentances, such as you sow, trate, That if the money which is expended in such you must reap in God's day. I beseech every parish in such vain fashions, as wearing you, hear me, and remember you were invited of laces, jewels, embroideries, unnecessary and entreated to the salvation of God. As ribbons, trimming, costly furniture and atten- you sow, you reap: if you are enemies to the dance, together with what is commonly con- cross of Christ, and you are so, if you will sumed in taverns, feasts, gaming, &c. could not bear it, but do as you list, and not as you be collected into a public stock, or something ought; if you are uncircumcised in heart and in lieu of this extravagant and fruitless ex-ear, and you are so, if you will not hear and pense, there might be reparation to the broken open to him that knocks at the door within, tenants, work-houses for the able, and alms- and if you resist and quench the spirit in houses for the aged and impotent. Then yourselves, that strives with you to bring you should we have no beggars in the land, the to God, and that you certainly do, who rebel cry of the widow and the orphan would cease, against its motions, reproofs, and instructions, and charitable reliefs might easily be afforded then " you sow to the flesh, to fulfil the lusts towards the redemption of poor captives, and thereof, and of the flesh will you reap the refreshment of such distressed Protestants as fruits of corruption, woe, anguish, and tribulabour under the miseries of persecution in lation, from God the judge of the quick and other countries: nay, the exchequer's needs, dead, by Jesus Christ." But if you will daily on just emergencies, might be supplied by bear the holy cross of Christ, and sow to the such a bank. This sacrifice and service would spirit; if you will listen to the light and grace please the just and merciful God; it would be that comes by Jesus, and which he has given a noble example of gravity and temperance to all people for salvation, and square your to foreign states, and an unspeakable benefit thoughts, words, and deeds thereby, which to ourselves at home. leads and teaches the lovers of it to deny all Alas! why should men need persuasion to ungodliness, and the world's lusts, and to live. what their own felicity so necessarily leads soberly, righteously, and godly in this present them to? Had those vitiosos of the times but evil world; then may you, with confidence, a sense of heathen Cato's generosity, they look for the "blessed hope, and joyful coming, would rather deny their carnal appetites, than and glorious appearance of the great God, and leave such noble enterprises unattempted. But our Saviour Jesus Christ!" Let it be so, O that they should eat, drink, play, game and you Christians, and escape the wrath to come! sport away their health, estates, and, above why will you die? let the time past suffice: all, their irrevocable precious time, which remember, that No Cross, No Crown. Reshould be dedicated to the Lord, as a neces-deem then the time, for the days are evil, sary introduction to a blessed eternity, and and yours but very few. Therefore gird up than which, did they but know it, no worldly the loins of your minds, be sober, fear, watch, solace could come in competition; I say, that pray, and endure to the end; calling to mind, they should be continually employed about for your encouragement and consolation, that these poor, low things, is to have the heathens all such, as "through patience and well-doing judge them in God's day, as well as Christian wait for immortality, shall reap glory, honour, precepts and examples condemn them. And and eternal life, in the kingdom of the Father; their final doom will prove the more astonish- whose is the kingdom, the power, and the glory ing, in that this vanity and excess are acted for ever." Amen. VOL. I.-No. 7. [END OF PART FIRST.] 35 NO CROSS, NO CROWN, THE SECOND PART. CONTAINING AN ACCOUNT OF THE LIVING AND DYING SAYINGS OF MEN EMINENT FOR THEIR GREATNESS, LEARNING, OR VIRTUE, AND OF DIVERS PERIODS OF TIME AND NATIONS OF THE WORLD. ALL CONCURRING IN THIS ONE TESTIMONY, THAT A LIFE OF STRICT VIRTUE, VIZ: TO DO WELL AND BEAR ILL, IS THE WAY TO EVERLASTING HAPPINESS. COLLECTED IN FAVOUR OF THE TRUTH DELIVERED IN THE FIRST part. BY WILLIAM PENN. THE design of William Penn in adducing in how much stronger relief does it place the the examples of the most virtuous heathen in responsibility of Christians who are blessed favour of the self-denial and temperance which with the pure morality and holy religion of he was recommending in the work, appears to Christ's Gospel. When we read the sentihave been to show that even with the light ments of some of the heathen characters which shone dimly upon them, some were given in this work, and observe how far they enabled to see the advantages of such a life exceed the morality of too many professed as he enforced. The period at which he Christians, we cannot but lament that they wrote his work, was one of great licentious- had not the preeminent advantages of Christiness of manners at court and among the anity to enlighten and adorn their examples, nobility; from whence it soon found its way and that those who have them, should so to the inferior classes of society. His aim shamefully misuse or neglect them. seems to be to check the evil at the fountain, and to convince the great of this world by the testimony of men and women of rank and dignity, equal with their own, how much more honourable, useful and happy they would be by pursuing the path of self-denial and virtue. Some might listen to the sentiments of a Socrates, Solon, Alexander, or Plato, on whom the precepts of Paul or Peter would be urged in vain. If men, who were surrounded with the darkness, and vice, and corruption of paganism, that sink of iniquity and degradation, were yet sufficiently enlightened to inculcate such degrees of moral rectitude as we find in some of the following quotations, Christian virtues. It is thus to magnify the Gospel and enforce on its professors the solemn obligation of obeying its pure and holy precepts, that the testimony of heathen and Christian examples is adduced-and surely if professing Christendom falls short in her morality, her self-denial, her holiness, after all the unspeakable privileges bestowed on her, such heathen will rise up in the day of judgment and condemn her: it will be more tolerable for them than for her, for judging from the evidence they here give, if the mighty works which have been done in her, had been done in their day and before their eyes, they had greatly exceeded her in EDITORS. PREFACE. cennius. 43. Alexander Severus. 44. Aure- 73. 76. No CROSS, NO CROWN, should have ended here; but that the power, which examples and authorities have upon the minds of people, above the most reasonable and pressing arguments, inclined me to present my readers with some of those many instances that might be given, in favour of the virtuous life recommended in our discourse. I chose to cast them into three sorts of testimonies, not after the threefold subject of the book, but suitable to the times, qualities, and circumstances of the persons that gave them forth; whose excellencies and stations have transmitted their names with reputation to our own times. The first testimony comes from those called heathens, the second from professed Christians, and the last from retired, aged, and dying men; being their last and serious reflections, to which no ostentation or worldly interest could induce them. Where it will be easy for the conside1. CYRUS, than whom a greater monarch rate reader to observe how much the pride, we hardly find in story, is more famous for avarice, and luxury of the world, stood his virtue, than his power; and indeed it was reprehended in the judgments of that which of persons great gave him power. God calls him credit amongt men; and what that life and his shepherd. Let us see the principles of his conduct was, that in their most retired medita- conduct and life. So temperate was he in his tions, when their sight was clearest, and judg-youth, that when Astyages urged him to drink ment most free and disabused, they thought would give peace here, and lay a foundation for eternal blessedness. CHAPTER XIX. THE TESTIMONIES OF SEVERAL GREAT, LEARNED, AND VIRTUOUS PERSONAGES AMONG THE GENTILES, URGED AGAINST THE EXCESSES OF THE AGE, AND IN FAVOUR OF THE SELF-DENIAL, TEMPERANCE, AND PIETY HEREIN RECOMMENDED. 1. Among the Greeks, viz. 1. Of Cyrus. 2. government of the Lacedæmonians in general. Aurelius Antoninus. 41. Pertinax. 42. Pes wine, he answered, I am afraid lest there should be poison in it; having seen thee reel and sottish after having drunk thereof. So careful was he to keep the Persians from corruption of manners, that he would not suffer them to leave their rude and mountainous country, for one more pleasant and fruitful, lest, through plenty and ease, luxury at last might debase their spirits. So very chaste was he, that having taken a lady of quality, a most beautiful woman, his prisoner, he refused to see her, saying, I have no mind to be a captive to my captive. It seems he shunned even the occasion of evil. The comptroller of his household have for his dinner? Bread, said he; for I asking him one day, what he would please to intend to encamp nigh the water: a short and easy bill of fare. This shows the power he had over his appetite, as well as his soldiers; and that he was fit to command others, who could command himself; according to another saying of his, No man is worthy to command, who is not better than those who are to obey. When he came to die, he gave this reason of his be lief of immortality, I cannot, said he, persuade myself to think that the soul of man, after having sustained itself in a mortal body, should perish when delivered out of it, for want of it: be advanced against atheism from more ena saying of perhaps as great weight, as may lightened times. 2. ARTAXERXES MNEMON, being, upon an |