the world again cannot afford so much matter of madness, so many stupendous symptoms, as superstition, heresy, schism have brought out:  that this species alone may be paralleled to all the former, has a greater latitude, and more miraculous effects; that it more besots and infatuates men, than any other above named whatsoever, does more harm, works more disquietness to mankind, and has more crucified the souls of mortal men (such hath been the devil’s craft) than wars, plagues, sicknesses, dearth, famine, and all the rest.

Give me but a little leave, and I will set before your eyes in brief a stupendous, vast, infinite ocean of incredible madness and folly:  a sea full of shelves and rocks, sands, gulfs, euripes and contrary tides, full of fearful monsters, uncouth shapes, roaring waves, tempests, and siren calms, halcyonian seas, unspeakable misery, such comedies and tragedies, such absurd and ridiculous, feral and lamentable fits, that I know not whether they are more to be pitied or derided, or may be believed, but that we daily see the same still practised in our days, fresh examples, nova novitia, fresh objects of misery and madness, in this kind that are still represented unto us, abroad, at home, in the midst of us, in our bosoms.

But before I can come to treat of these several errors and obliquities, their causes, symptoms, affections, &c., I must say something necessarily of the object of this love, God himself, what this love is, how it allureth, whence it proceeds, and (which is the cause of all our miseries) how we mistake, wander and swerve from it.

Amongst all those divine attributes that God doth vindicate to himself, eternity, omnipotency, immutability, wisdom, majesty, justice, mercy, &c., his [6312]beauty is not the least, one thing, saith David, have I desired of the Lord, and that I will still desire, to behold the beauty of the Lord, Psal. xxvii. 4.  And out of Sion, which is the perfection of beauty, hath God shined, Psal. 1. 2.  All other creatures are fair, I confess, and many other objects do much enamour us, a fair house, a fair horse, a comely person. [6313]"I am amazed,” saith Austin, “when 1 look up to heaven and behold the beauty of the stars, the beauty of angels, principalities, powers, who can express it? who can sufficiently commend, or set out this beauty which appears in us? so fair a body, so fair a face, eyes, nose, cheeks, chin, brows, all fair and lovely to behold; besides the beauty of the soul which cannot be discerned.  If we so labour and be so much affected with the comeliness of creatures, how should we be ravished with that admirable lustre of God himself?” If ordinary beauty have such a prerogative and power, and what is amiable and fair, to draw the eyes and ears, hearts and affections of all spectators unto it, to move, win, entice, allure:  how shall this divine form ravish our souls, which is the fountain and quintessence of all beauty? Coelum pulchrum, sed pulchrior coeli fabricator; if heaven