own practice before nie ; many a time when I have sinned against the Lord, have they stood over me, with a rod in their hands, and tears in their eyes, using all means to reclaim me ; but like an ungracious wretch, I have slighted all their counsel, grieved their hearts, and imbittered their lives to them by my sinful courses. Ah, my soul ! thou art a degenerate plant ; better will it be vvith the ofF-spring of infidels than with thee, if repentance prevent not : ngw I live in one family with them, but shortly I shall be separated from them, as far as hell is from heaven ; they now tenderly pity my misery, but then they shall approve and applaud the righteous sentence of Christ up- on me : so little privilege shall I then have from my relation to them, that they shall be produced as witnesses against me, and all their re- jected counsels, reproofs and examples, charged home upon me, as the aggravations of my wickedness ; and better it will be, when it shajl come to that, that I had been brought forth by a beast, than sprung from the loins of such parents.
X OUR cattle in fat pastures thrive and grov/, There"'s nothing wanting that should make them so. The pamperd horse commends his master's care, Who neither pains nor cost doth grudge or spare. But art not thou mean while the vilest fool, That pamper st beasts, and starves thy precious soul ? 'Twere well if thou couldst die as well as live Like beasts, and had no more account to give. O that these lines your folly might detect ! Who both your own and children's souls neglect To care for beasts. O man ! prepare to hear The dolefufst language that e'er pierc'd thine ear : When you your children once in hell shall meet. And with such language their damnVl parents greet
" O cursed father ! wretched mother ! why
" Was I your off-spring ? Would to God that I
" Had sprung from tygers, who more tender be
*' Unto their young than you have been to me.
*' How did you spend your thoughs, time, care, and cost
'• About my body, whilst my soul was lost ?
" Did you not know I had a soul, that must
" Live, when this body was dissolvVl to dust ?
" You could not chuse but understand if I,
" Without an interest in Christ did die,
" It needs must come to this. O how could you
" Prove so remorseless, and no pity shew ?
" O cruel parents ! I may curse the day
" That I was bom of such as did betray
THE nEA\T:NLY TSE OF KAKTinA* THINGS. 16'J
** Tlieir child to endless torments. Now must I " With, and through you, in flames for ever lie.''
Let this make every parent tremble, lest
He lose his child, whilst caring for his beast :
(,>r lest his o\^ti poor soul do starve and pine,
Whilst he takes thought for horses, sheep and kine.
Upon the hard Labour, and cruel Usage of Beast-;.
Wh€n wider loads your beasts do groan^ tliiiik then Hoic great a mercy 'tis that you are meji.
X HOUGH some men be excessively careful and tender over their beasts, as was noted in the former chapter ; yet others are cruel and merciless towards them, not regarding how they ride or burden them. How often have I seen them fainting under their loads, wrought off their legs, and turned out with galled backs into the fields or high- ways to shift for a little grass ; manv times have I heard and pitied them groaning under unreasonable burden?, and beaten on by mer- ciless drivers, till at last, by such cruel usage, they have been de- stroyed, and then cast into a ditch for dog's meat.
^UCH sights as these should make men thankful for the mercy of their creation, and bless their bountiful Creator, that they were not made such creatures themselves. Some beasts are made ad estim, only for food, being no otherwise useful to men, as sicine, he. These are only fed for slaughter ; we kill and eat them, and regard not their cries and strugglings when the knife is thrust to their very hearts ! others are only ad usum, for service whilst living, but un- profitable when dead, as horses ; these we make to drudge and toil for us from day to day, but kill them not ; others are both ad esum^ et usum, fcr food when dead, and service whilst alive, as the ox ; these v/e make to plow our fields, draw our cariiages, and afterwards prepare them for the slaughter.
But man was made for nobler ends, created lord of the lower world ; not to serve, but to be served bv other creatures, a mercy able to melt the hardest heart into thankfulness. I remember, Luther* pressing men to be thankful, that they are not brought into
• Luther in 5 Prcsept.
IGI HUbBAXDliY SriRlTUALIZED; OR,
the lowest condition of creatures, and to bless God that tliey can sec any creature below themselves, give us a famous instance in the fol- lowing' story : Two cardinals (saith he) riding in a great deal of pomp to the council of Constance, by the way they heard a man in the fields, weeping and wailing bitterly; they rode to him, and asked him what he ailed ? Perceiving his eye intently fixed upon an ugly toad, he told them tliat his heart melted with the consideration of this mercy, that God had not made him such a deformed and loath- some creature, though he were formed out of the same clay with it: Hoc est quod ainare jleo^ said he, this is that which makes me weep bitterly. Whereupon one of the cardinals cried out, Well, said the father, the unlearned will rise and take heaven, when we with all our learning shall be thrusti nto hell. That which melted the heart of this poor man, snould melt every heart when we behold the misery to which these poor creatures are subjected. And this will appear a mercy of no slight consideration, if we but draw a compa- rison betwixt ourselves and these irrational creatures, in these three particulars.
1. Though they and we were made of the same mould and clay, yet how much better hath God dealt with us. even as to the outward man ? The structure of our bodies is much more excellent; God made other good creatures bv a word of command, but man by counsel ; it was not, Be thou, but, Lt't us nialce man. We might have been made stone.s without sense, or beasts witliout reason, but we were made men. The noble structure and symmetry of our bodies invite our souls not only to thankfulness but admiration. David, speaking of the curious frame of the body, saith, *' I am wonder- " fully made," Psal. cxxxix. 14. or, as the vulgar reads it, painted as with a needle, like some rich piece of needle-work curiously em- broidered with nerves and veins. AVas any part of the* common hmip of clay thus fashioned ? Galen gave Epicurus an hundred years time to imagine a more commodious situation, configuration, or com- position of any one part of a human body: and (as one saith) if all the angels in heaven had studied to this day, they could not have cast the body of man into a more curious mould.