xii. 13. 23. and what he doth shall be heartily done to God, and not to men.  “Be pitiful and courteous,” 1 Pet. iii.  “Seek peace and follow it.”  He will love his brother, not in word and tongue, but in deed and truth, John iii. 18. “and he that loves God, Christ will love him that is begotten of him,” John v. 1, &c.  Thus should we willingly do, if we had a true touch of this charity, of this divine love, if we could perform this which we are enjoined, forget and forgive, and compose ourselves to those Christian laws of love.

[4608] “O felix hominum genus,
        Si vestros animos amor
        Quo coelum regitur regat!”

“Angelical souls, how blessed, how happy should we be, so loving, how might we triumph over the devil, and have another heaven upon earth!”

But this we cannot do; and which is the cause of all our woes, miseries, discontent, melancholy, [4609]want of this charity.  We do invicem angariare, contemn, consult, vex, torture, molest, and hold one another’s noses to the grindstone hard, provoke, rail, scoff, calumniate, challenge, hate, abuse (hard-hearted, implacable, malicious, peevish, inexorable as we are), to satisfy our lust or private spleen, for [4610]toys, trifles, and impertinent occasions, spend ourselves, goods, friends, fortunes, to be revenged on our adversary, to ruin him and his.  ’Tis all our study, practice, and business how to plot mischief, mine, countermine, defend and offend, ward ourselves, injure others, hurt all; as if we were born to do mischief, and that with such eagerness and bitterness, with such rancour, malice, rage, and fury, we prosecute our intended designs, that neither affinity or consanguinity, love or fear of God or men can contain us:  no satisfaction, no composition will be accepted, no offices will serve, no submission; though he shall upon his knees, as Sarpedon did to Glaucus in Homer, acknowledging his error, yield himself with tears in his eyes, beg his pardon, we will not relent, forgive, or forget, till we have confounded him and his, “made dice of his bones,” as they say, see him rot in prison, banish his friends, followers, et omne invisum genus, rooted him out and all his posterity.  Monsters of men as we are, dogs, wolves, [4611]tigers, fiends, incarnate devils, we do not only contend, oppress, and tyrannise ourselves, but as so many firebrands, we set on, and animate others:  our whole life is a perpetual combat, a conflict, a set battle, a snarling fit. Eris dea is settled in our tents, [4612]_Omnia de lite_, opposing wit to wit, wealth to wealth, strength to strength, fortunes to fortunes, friends to friends, as at a sea-fight, we turn our broadsides, or two millstones with continual attrition, we fire ourselves, or break another’s backs, and both are ruined and consumed in the end.  Miserable wretches, to fat and enrich ourselves, we care not how we get it, Quocunque modo rem; how many thousands we undo, whom we oppress, by whose