charity shows the nature of grace.  She is beloved of the highest and embraced of the wisest, honoured with the worthiest and graced with the best.  She makes imprisonment liberty when the mind goeth through the world, and in sickness finds health where death is the way to life.  She is an enemy to passion, and knows no purgatory; thinks fortune a fiction, and builds only upon providence.  She is the sick man’s salve and the whole man’s preserver, the wise man’s staff and the good man’s guide.  In sum, not to wade too far in her worthiness, lest I be drowned in the depth of wonder, I will thus end in her endless honour:—­She is the grace of Christ and the virtue of Christianity, the praise of goodness and the preserver of the world.

LOVE.

Love is the life of Nature and the joy of reason in the spirit of grace; where virtue drawing affection, the concord of sense makes an union inseparable in the divine apprehension of the joy of election.  It is a ravishment of the soul in the delight of the spirit, which, being carried above itself into inexplicable comfort, feels that heavenly sickness that is better than the world’s health, when the wisest of men in the swounding delight of his sacred inspiration could thus utter the sweetness of his passion, “My soul is sick of love.”  It is a healthful sickness in the soul, a pleasing passion in the heart, a contentive labour in the mind, and a peaceful trouble of the senses.  It alters natures in contrarieties, when difficulty is made easy; pain made a pleasure; poverty, riches; and imprisonment, liberty; for the content of conceit, which regards not to be an abject, in being subject but to an object.  It rejoiceth in truth, and knows no inconstancy:  it is free from jealousy, and feareth no fortune:  it breaks the rule of arithmetic by confounding of number, where the conjunction of thoughts makes one mind in two bodies, where neither figure nor cipher can make division of union.  It sympathises with life, and participates with light, when the eye of the mind sees the joy of the heart.  It is a predominant power which endures no equality, and yet communicates with reason in the rules of concord:  it breeds safety in a king and peace in a kingdom, nation’s unity, and Nature’s gladness.  It sings in labour, in the joy of hope; and makes a paradise in reward of desert.  It pleads but mercy in the justice of the Almighty, and but mutual amity in the nature of humanity.  In sum, having no eagle’s eye to look upon the sun, and fearing to look too high, for fear of a chip in mine eye, I will in these few words speak in praise of this peerless virtue:—­Love is the grace of Nature and the glory of reason, the blessing of God and the comfort of the world.

PEACE.