[7.] Seventhly, The sharpest and severest course you can take, can- not separate between a fool and Ms folly. Notwithstanding all your frowns, threats, checks, knocks, &c., a fool will not leave his folly; nay, you shall sooner beat a fool to death than you shall beat him off from his folly: Prov. xxvii. 22, 'Though thou shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him.' 2 The husk doth not stick so close to the grain of corn, as folly doth to the heart of a fool. There is a possibility of severing the husk from the flour by beating, but there is no possibility of severing a fool from his folly. You see it in Pharaoh, who, though he was often in God's mortar, yet he could not be severed from his folly; nay, he did choose rather to be beaten to death,'and to see his friends, rela- tions, favourites, followers, subjects, and soldiers, with their first-born, beaten to death before his eyes, rather than he would leave his folly. And such a fool was king Ahaz, who, when God had him in the mortar, and threatened to beat him and his people to death, yet then in his distress he sinned more against the Lord, 2 Chron. xxviii. 22, and therefore for his obstinacy, obdurateness, and irreclaimableness, he is branded and marked with a black coal by the Lord to all posterity,
^ Plato seeing one over-indulgent to his body, asked him what he meant, to make his prison so strong.
^ Solomon in this place alludeth to one kind of grinding, which in old time the people were accustomed to, which was to put their parched corn into a mortar, and to beat it unto powder.
HeB. XII. 14.] AND BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. 61
'This is that king Ahaz.'i And such spiritual fools are all ungodly- persons ; let God frown, chide, strike, reprove, correct, yet they will not turn from the evil of their doings : they will rather be consumed and destroyed, than they will be amended or reformed : Jer. v. 3, ' O Lord, are not thine eyes upon the truth? thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved ; thou hast consumed them, but they have re- fused to receive correction : they have made their faces harder than a rock ; they have refused to return.' No smart nor grief, no calamities nor miseries, can turn obstinate fools from their impieties : Jer, vi. 29, ' The bellows are burnt, the lead is consumed of the fire ; the founder melteth in vain' (or in vain melting melteth he, trying trieth he): * for the wicked are not plucked away.' ^ All the cost and charge that God hath been at, all the pains and labour that he hath taken to sever these wicked ones from their wickedness was lost ; they would not be refined nor reformed. After God's greatest severity, a spiritual fool will return to his iniquity: Pro v. xxvi. 11, ' As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly,' or iterateth his folly. It is true, the comparison is homely, but good enough for those fools to whom it is applied. Spiritual fools sometimes vomit up their sins when they are under terrors of conscience, or under the affiicting hand of God, or upon a dying bed ; but still retain a disposition and purpose to return to them again : as some say, the serpent vomits up his poison when he goes to drink, and then takes it in again. Foolish souls say to their lusts, as Abraham to his servants. Gen. xxii. 5, ' Abide you here, and I will go yonder and come again to you.' Whatever becomes of their souls, they are resolved to keep close to their sins, Isa. i. 5. And as ^sop's foolish fishes leaped out of the warm water into the burning fire for ease ; 3 so these poor fools will rather adventure a burning in hell, than they will attempt a turning from their folly.
[8.] Eighthly, Natural fools make the simplest and unJiappiest ex- changes: they will exchange a pearl for a pippin, things of greatest worth and value for a feather, a ribbon, a toy, a trifle ; a house to live in, for a house of clay or a house of cards; and, like Glaucus, a foolish captain, who changed with Diomedes his armour of gold for Diomedes his armour of brass. ^ All unholy persons are spiritual fools ; they will exchange spirituals for carnals, and eternals for temporals ; they wiU exchange God, Christ, the gospel, heaven, and their souls for a lust, for the world, nay, for a little of the world's smiles, pleasures, or profits, Mat. xvi. 26 ; and well may he lay claim to a boatswain's place in Barclay's ' Ship of Fools,' 5 that will exchange his soul and his soul- concernments for the toys and trifles of this world.
Now do you think that God, who hath within himself all the wis- dom of angels, of men, and universal nature — that he who hath all glory, all dignity, all riches, all treasures, all pleasures, all comforts,
^ They were like those bears in Pliny, that could not be stirred with the sharpest prickles. [As before. — G.]
^ See Ezra xxii. 18; Jer. ii. 30, 31, and xix. 15; Amos iv. 4, 13; Isa. xxvi. 10, 11 ; 2 Pet. ii. 22.
' The well-known fable of Babrius : I take this opportunitj' of correcting a misprint of this name in Vol. ii., page 59, footnote 1, where read, not Balarius, but Babrius. — 6.
* The foolish Indians prefer every toy and trifle above their mines of gold.
= Spelled ' Barkley's' : the well-known ' Shyp of Folys of the Worlde,' (1509,) by Alexander Barclay or Barklay, based on the original of Brandt. — G.
62 THE NECESSITY, EXCELLENCY, RARITY, [HeB. XII. 14.
all delights, all joys, all beatitudes in himself — that that God who is a super-substantial substance, and understanding not to be understood, a word never to be spoken, that he will have everlasting fellowship and communion with fools ? i — that a God whose wisdom is infinite and unsearchable, will ever debase himself so as to have his royal palace filled with fools, as to make those his companions in heaven, that he can take no pleasure in on earth? Eccles. v. 4, ' He hath no plea- sure in fools.' The wise God would not have his children keep com- pany with fools : Prov. xiv. 7, ' Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge ; ' and will he keep company with them himself ? Surely no. God hath given it under his own hand, that such shall not tarry in his sight : Ps. v. 5, ' The foolish shall not stand in thy sight ' [or, as the Hebrew hath it, before thine eyes] : ' thou hatest aU workers of iniquity.' God will never admit fools to be his favourites : he will at last shut the door of glory against them. Mat. xxv. 4-13.