A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics

II. But the too ordinary course of young gentlemen's travels out of England now practised, I take to be but a most dangerous hazarding, if not a plain betraying them to utter undoing, and to make them afterwards the plagues of their country, and the instruments of the common calamity. For, 1. They are ordinarily sent into countries far worse and more dangerous than their own, where the temptations are stronger than they are fit to deal with; into some countries where they are tempted to sensuality, and into some where they are tempted to popery or infidelity. In some countries they learn to drink wine instead of beer; and arising from the smaller sort to the stronger, if they turn not drunkards, they contract that appetite to wine and strong drink, which shall prove (as Clemens Alexandrinus calleth gluttony and tippling) a throat-madness, and a belly-devil, and keep them in the sin of gulosity all their days. And in some countries they shall learn the art of gluttony, to pamper their guts in curious, costly, uncouth fashions, and to dress themselves in novel, fantastical garbs, and to make a business of adorning themselves, and setting themselves forth with proud and procacious fancies and affections, to be looked upon as comely persons to the eyes of others. In some countries they shall learn to waste their precious hours in stage-plays, and vain spectacles, and ceremonies, attendances, and visits, and to equalize their life with death, and to live to less use and benefit to the world than the horse that carrieth them. In most countries they shall learn either to prate against godliness, as the humour of a few melancholy fools, and be wiser than to believe God, or obey him, or be saved; or at least to grow indifferent and cold in holy affections and practices: for when they shall see papists and protestants, Lutherans and Calvinists, of contrary minds, and hear them reproaching and condemning one another, this cooleth their zeal to all religion, as seeming but a matter of uncertainty and contention. And when they also see how the wise and holy are made a scorn in one country, as bigots and Hugonots, and how the protestants are drunkards and worldlings in another country, and how few in the world have any true sense and savour of sound and practical religion, and of a truly holy and heavenly life, (as those few they are seldom so happy as to converse with,) this first accustometh them to a neglect of holiness, and then draweth their minds to a more low, indifferent opinion of it, and to think it unnecessary to salvation. For they will not believe that so few shall be saved as they find to be holy in the world; and then they grow to think it but a fancy and a troubler of the world.

And it addeth to their temptation, that they are obliged by the carnal ends which drew them out, to be in the worst and most dangerous company and places, that is, at princes' courts, and among the splendid gallantry of the world; for it is the fashions of the great ones which they must see, and of which when they come home they must be able to discourse: so that they must travel to the pest-houses of pomp, and lust, of idleness, gluttony, drunkenness, and pride, of atheism, irreligiousness, and impiety, that they may be able to glory what acquaintance they have got of the grandeur and gallantry of the suburbs of hell, that they may represent the way to damnation delectable and honourable to others, as well as to themselves.161

But the greatest danger is of corrupting their intellectuals, by converse with deceivers where they come; either infidels, or juggling Jesuits and friars: for when those are purposely trained up to deceive, how easy is it for them to silence raw and unfurnished novices, (yea, even when all their five senses must be captivated, in the doctrine of transubstantiation)! And when they are silenced they must yield: or at least they have deluding stories enough of the antiquity, universality, infallibility, unity of their church, with a multitude of lies of Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, and other reformers, to turn their hearts and make them yield. But yet that they may be capable of doing them the more service, they are instructed for a time to dissemble their perversion, and to serve the Roman pride and faction in a protestant garb and name.

Especially when they come to Rome, and see its glory, and the monuments of antiquity, and are allured with their splendour and civilities, and made to believe that all the reports of their inquisitions and cruelties are false, this furthereth the fascination of unexperienced youths.

2. And usually all this while the most of them lay by all serious studies, and all constant employment, and make idleness and converse with the idle or with tempters, to be their daily work. And what a mind is like to come to, which is but one half year or twelve months accustomed to idleness, and to vain spectacles, and to a pleasing converse with idle and luxurious persons, it is easy for a man of any acquaintance with the world or with human nature to conjecture.

3. And they go forth in notable peril of their health or lives. Some fall into fevers, and die by change of air and drinks: some fall into quarrels in taverns, or about their whores, and are murdered. Some few prove so stedfast against all the temptations of the papists, that it is thought conducible to the holy cause that they should be killed in pretence of some quarrel, or be poisoned. Some by drinking wine do contract such sickness, as makes their lives uncomfortable to the last. And the brains of many are so heated by it, that they fall mad.

4. And all this danger is principally founded in the quality of the person sent to travel; which are ordinarily empty lads, between eighteen and twenty-four years of age, which is the time of the devil's chief advantage; when naturally they are prone to those vices which prove the ruin of the most, though you take the greatest care of them that you can.162 1. Their lust is then in the highest and most untamed rage. 2. Their appetites to pleasing meats and drinks are then strongest. 3. Their frolicsome inclinations to sports and recreations are then greatest. 4. And ignorant and procacious pride beginneth then to stir. 5. All things that are most vile and vain, are then apt to seem excellent to them, by reason of the novelty of the matter as to them, who never saw such things before, and by reason of the false esteem of those carnal persons, to whose pomp, and consequently to whose judgment, they would be conformed. 6. And they are at that age exceedingly inclined to think all their own apprehensions to be right, and to be very confident of their own conceptions, and wise in their own eyes; because their juvenile intellect being then in the most affecting activity, it seemeth still clear and sure to them, because it so much affects themselves. 7. But above all, they are yet unfurnished of almost all that solid wisdom, and settled holiness, and large experience, which is most necessary to their improvement of their travels, and to their resistance of all these temptations. Alas! how few of them are able to deal with a Jesuit, or hold fast their religion against deceivers! If the very vices, the ambition, the carnal policies and pomps, the filthiness and worldliness of the Roman clergy, did not become a preservative to men's minds against the temptations which would draw them to their way, and if the atheism, infidelity, whoredoms, and profaneness of papists did not become antidotes, how few were like to return uninfected! And because the Jesuits know that they can never take this stumblingblock out of the way, therefore too many of them have thought best to debauch those first whom they would proselyte, and reconcile them first to plays, and drunkenness, and whoredoms, that so the dislike of these may not hinder their reconciliation with the kingdom of Rome; yea, that a seeming necessity of a priest's pardon, may make it seem necessary to become their subjects.

And as unfurnished are these young travellers usually to resist the temptations to this sensuality, lust, and pomp, as those of popery; so that they are perfidiously sent into a pest-house, when they are in the greatest disposition to be infected. And if they come not home drunkards, gluttons, gamesters, idle, prodigal, proud, infidels, irreligious, or papists, it is little thanks to those perfidious parents, who thus perform their promise for them in baptism, by sending them to Satan's schools and university to be educated.

Whereas if they were but kept to their due studies, and under a holy government at home, till they were furnished with sound religious knowledge, and till they were rooted in holiness, and in love to a pious, sober life, and till they had got a settled hatred of intemperance and all sin, and till they had a map of the places, persons, and affairs of the world well imprinted on their minds by study and due information, then necessary travel would be more safe; and then they would be in a capacity to learn wisdom from other men's folly, and virtue from other men's vice, and piety from other men's impiety; which novices are rather apt to imitate.

5. And in the mean time the loss of all the helps which they should have at home, doth greatly tend to their destruction. For they oft travel into countries, where they shall have no public worship of God which is lawful, or which they understand; or if they have, it is usually cold preaching and dull praying, when they have need of the best, and all too little. And they have seldom such pious society to edify and quicken them by private converse, as they have, or might have, here at home; and seldom come into such well ordered, religious families. And if human nature be prone to infection by temptations, and so averse to holiness, that all means is too little, and even in the best families folly and sensuality, and a distaste of godliness, often thrive; (as unsown weeds overspread the garden, where with great cost and labour only better things were sowed;) what then but sin and misery can be expected from those that by their own parents are banished from their native country (not so well as into a wilderness, but) into the pestilent, infected countries of the world.

I would ask those parents that plead for this crime and cruelty as a kindness; are you no wiser or better yourselves than the company into which you send your children? Can you teach them and educate them no better, nor give them better examples, than they are like to have abroad? Can you set them on no better work, for the improvement of their time? If not, why do you not repent of this your shame and misery, and reform yourselves? If you can, why will you then betray your children? Or if you cannot, are there no schools, no learned and pious men, no religious families and company at home, in your own land, where you might place them to better advantage, than thus to expose them to the tempter? Undoubtedly there are; and such as may be had at cheaper rates.163

6. And it is not the smallest part of the guilt and danger, that they are sent abroad without due oversight and conduct. They that do but get them some sober or honest servant to attend them, or some sober companion, think they have done well; whenas they had need of some divine or tutor of great learning, piety, prudence, and experience, whom they will reverence and obey, that may take the oversight of them, and be ready to answer any sophist that would seduce them. But the charge of this is thought too great for the safety of their own children, whom they themselves expose to a necessity of it.

I know that carnal minds will distaste all this, and have objections enough against it, and reasons of their own, to make it seem a duty to betray and undo their children's souls, and to break their promise made for them in baptism: "All this is but our preciseness: they must have experience and know the world, or else they will be contemptible tenebriones or owls! Whenever they go it will be a temptation, and such they must have at home. There is no other part of their age so fit, or that can be spared, and we must trust God with them wherever they are; and they that will be bad, will be bad in one place as well as another; and many are as bad that stay at home." And thus quos perdere vult Jupiter hos dementat; yea, the poor children and commonwealth must suffer for such parents' sottish folly. And well saith Solomon, "The rich man is wise in his own conceit," Prov. xxviii. 11. And because it is not reason indeed but pride, and the rich disease and carnality which is here to be confuted, I shall not honour them with a distinct, particular answer; but only tell them, If all companies be alike, send them to Bedlam or to a whorehouse. If all means be alike, let them be janizaries, and bred up where Christ is scorned: if you think they need but little helps, and little watching, it seems you never gave them more. And it is a pity you should have children, before you know what a man is, and how much nature is corrupted, and how much is needful to its recovery. And it is a pity that you dedicated them to God in baptism, before you believed Christ, and knew what you did, and engaged them to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, under a crucified Christ, while you purposed like hypocrites to train them in the school and service of the world, the flesh, and the devil, and in the contempt of the cross of Christ, or of a holy, mortified life. And if all ages be alike, and novices be equal to experienced persons, let the scholars rule their master, and let boys be parliament men and judges, and let them be your guides at home! And if acquaintance with courtship and the customs of the world, and the reputation of such acquaintance, be worth the hazarding of their souls, renounce God, and give up your names to Mammon, and be not such paltry hypocrites, as to profess that you believe the Scriptures, and stand to your baptismal vows, and place your hopes in a crucified Christ, and your happiness in God's favour and the life to come. And if the preaching of the gospel, and all such religious helps, be unnecessary to your unsettled children, dissemble not by going to church, as if you took them to be necessary to yourselves. In a word, I say as Elias to the Israelites, "Why halt ye between two opinions? If God be God, follow him." If the world be God, and pride and sensuality and the world's applause be your felicity, follow it, and let it be your children's portion. Do you not see more wise, and learned, and holy, and serviceable persons among us, proportionably, in church and state, that were never sent for an education among the papists and profane, than of such as were?

But I will proceed to the directions which are necessary to those that must or will needs go abroad, either as merchants, factors, or as travellers.

Direct. I. Be sure that you go not without a clear warrant from God; which must be (all things laid together) a great probability, in the judgment of impartial, experienced, wise men, that you may get or do more good than you were like to have done at home. For if you go sinfully without a call or warrant, you put yourself out of God's protection, as much as in you is; that is, you forfeit it: and whatever plague befalls you, it will arm your accusing consciences to make it double.

Direct. II. Send with your children that travel, some such pious, prudent tutor or overseer as is afore described: and get them or your apprentices into as good company as possibly you can.

Direct. III. Send them as the last part of all their education, when they are settled in knowledge, sound doctrine, and godliness, and have first got such acquaintance with the state of the world, as reading, maps, and conversation and discourse can help them to: and not while they are young, and raw, and uncapable of self-defence, or of due improving what they see. And those that are thus prepared, will have no great lust or fancy to wander, and lose their time, without necessity; for they will know, that there is nothing better (considerably) to be seen abroad, than is at home; that in all countries, houses are houses, and cities are cities, and trees are trees, and beasts are beasts, and men are men, and fools are fools, and wise men are wise, and learned men are learned, and sin is sin, and virtue is virtue; and these things are but the same abroad as at home: and that a grave is every where a grave, and you are travelling towards it, which way ever you go. And happy is he that spendeth his little time so, as may do God best service, and best prepare him for the state of immortality.

Direct. IV. If experience of their youthful lust and pride, and vicious folly, or unsettled dangerous state, doth tell you plainly, that your child or apprentice is unfit for travel, venture them not upon it, either for the carnal ornaments of education, or for your worldly gain. For souls that cost the blood of Christ, are more precious than to be sold at so low a rate; and especially by those parents and masters that are doubly obliged to love them, and to guide them in the way to heaven, and must be answerable for them.

Direct. V. Choose those countries for your children to travel in, which are soundest in doctrine and of best example, and where they may get more good than hurt; and venture them not needlessly into the places and company of greatest danger; especially among the Jesuits and friars, or subtle heretics, or enemies of Christ.

Direct. VI. Study before you go, what particular temptations you are like to meet with, and study well for particular preservatives against them all: as you will not go into a place infected with the plague, without an antidote. It is no small task, to get a mind prepared for travel.

Direct. VII. Carry with you such books as are fittest for your use, both for preservation and edification: as to preserve you from popery, Drelincourt's and Mr. Pool's small Manual: for which use my "Key for Catholics," and "Safe Religion," and "Sheet against Popery" may not be useless. And Dr. Challoner's "Credo Ecclesiam Catholicam" is short and very strong. To preserve you against infidelity, "Vander Meulin," in Latin, and Grotius; and in English my "Reasons of the Christian Religion" may not be unfit. For your practice, the Bible and the "Practice of Piety," and Mr. Scudder's "Daily Walk," and Mr. Reyner's "Directions," and Dr. Ames's "Cases of Conscience."

Direct. VIII. Get acquaintance with the most able reformed divines, in the places where you travel; and make use of their frequent converse, for your edification and defence. For it is the wisest and best men in all countries where you come, that must be profitable to you, if any.

Direct. IX. Set yourselves in a way of regular study if you are travellers, as if you were at home, and on a course of regular employment if you are tradesmen, and make not mere wandering and gazing upon novelties your trade and business; but redeem your time as laboriously as you would do in the most settled life. For time is precious, wherever you be; and it must be diligence every where that must cause your proficiency; for place and company will not do it without your labour. It is not a university that will make a sluggish person wise, nor a foreign land that will furnish a sensual sot with wisdom: Cœlum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt. There is more ado necessary to make you wise, or bring you to heaven, than to go long journeys, or see many people.

Direct. X. Avoid temptations: if you acquaint yourselves with the humours, and sinful opinions, and fashions of the time and places where you are, let it be but as the Lacedemonians called out their children to see a drunkard, to hate the sin; therefore see them, but taste them not, as you would do by poison or loathsome things. Once or twice seeing a folly and sin is enough. If you do it frequently, custom will abate your detestation, and do much to reconcile you to it.

Direct. XI. Set yourselves to do all the good you can to the miserable people in the places where you come. Furnish yourselves with the aforesaid books and arguments, not only to preserve yourselves, but also to convince poor infidels and papists. And pity their souls, as those that believe that there is indeed a life to come, where happiness and misery will show the difference between the godly and the wicked. Especially merchants and factors, who live constantly among the poor ignorant christians, Armenians, Greeks, papists, who will hear them; and among heathens (in Indostan and elsewhere) and Mahometans (especially the Persians, who allow a liberty of discourse). But above all, the chaplains of the several embassies and factories. Oh what an opportunity have they to sow the seeds of christianity among the heathen nations! and to make known Christ to the infidel people where they come! And how heavy a guilt will lie on them that shall neglect it! And how will the great industry of the Jesuits rise up in judgment against them and condemn them!

Direct. XII. The more you are deprived of the benefit of God's public worship, the more industrious must you be, in reading Scripture and good books, and in secret prayer and meditation, and in the improvement of any one godly friend that doth accompany you to make up your loss, and to be instead of public means. It will be a great comfort among infidels, or papists, or ignorant Greeks, or profane people, to read sound, and holy, and spiritual books, and to confer with some one godly friend, and to meditate on the sweet and glorious subjects, which from earth and heaven are set before us; and to solace ourselves in the praises of God, and to pour out our suits before him.

Direct. XIII. And that your work may be well done, be sure that you have right ends; and that it be not to please a ranging fancy, nor a proud, vain mind, nor a covetous desire of being rich or high, that you go abroad; but that you do it purposely and principally to serve God abroad, and to be able to serve him the better when you come home, with your wit, and experience, and estates. If sincerely you go for this end, and not for the love of money, you may expect the greater comfort.164

Direct. XIV. Stay abroad no longer than your lawful ends and work do require: and when you come home, let it be seen that you have seen sin that you might hate it; and that by the observation of the errors and evils of the world, you love sound doctrine, spiritual worship, and holy, sober, and righteous living, better than you did before; and that you are the better resolved and furnished for a godly, exemplary, fruitful life.

One thing more I will warn some parents of, who send their sons to travel, to keep them from untimely marrying, lest they have part of their estate too soon: that there are other means better than this, which prudence may find out: if they would keep them low, from fulness and idleness, and bad company, (which a wise, self-denying, diligent man may do, but another cannot,) and engage them to as much study and business (conjunct) as they can well perform, and when they must needs marry, let it be done with prudent, careful choice; and learn themselves to live somewhat lower, that they may spare that which their son must have: this course would be better than that hazardous one in question.

CHAPTER XX.

DIRECTIONS AGAINST OPPRESSION

Tit. 1. Motives and Directions against Oppression

Oppression is the injuring of inferiors, who are unable to resist, or to right themselves; when men use power to bear down right. Yet all is not oppression which is so called by the poor, or by inferiors that suffer; for they are apt to be partial in their own cause as well as others. There may be injustice in the expectations of the poor, as well as the actions of the rich. Some think they are oppressed, if they be justly punished for their crimes; and some say they are oppressed, if they have not their wills, and unjust desires, and may not be suffered to injure their superiors: and many of the poor do call all that oppression, which they suffer from any that are above them, as if it were enough to prove it an injury, because a rich man doth it: but yet oppression is a very common and a heinous sin.165

There are as many ways of oppressing others, as there are advantages to men of power against them. But the principal are these following.

1. The most common and heinous sort is the malignant injuries and cruelties of the ungodly against men that will not be as indifferent in the matters of God and salvation as themselves; and that will not be of their opinions in religion, and be as bold with sin, and as careless of their souls, as they. These are hated, reproached, slandered, abused, and some way or other persecuted commonly wherever they live throughout the world. But of this sort of oppression I have spoken before.