Use the rule heartily and enough, and there will be no harm in thy error, if any should happen.

4. If thou intendest heartily to serve God, and avoid sin in any one instance, refuse not the hardest and most severe advice that is prescribed in order to it, though possibly it be a stranger to thee; for whatsoever it be, custom will make it easy.

5. When any instruments for the obtaining any virtue or restraining any vice are propounded, observe which of them fits thy person, or the circumstances of thy need, and use it rather than the other; that by this means thou mayest be engaged to watch and use spiritual arts and observation about thy soul. Concerning the management of which, as the interest is greater so the necessities are more, and the cases more intricate, and the accidents and dangers greater and more importunate; and there is greater skill required than in the securing an estate, or restoring health to an infirm body; I wish all men in the world did heartily believe so much of this as is true; it would much help to do the work of God.

very

Thus (my Lord) I have made bold by your hand to reach out this little scroll of cautions to all those, who, by seeing your honoured name set before my book, shall, by the fairness of such a frontispiece, be invited to look into it. I must confess it cannot but look like a design in me, to borrow your name and beg your patronage to my book, that if there be no other worth in it, yet at least it may have the splendor and warmth of a burning glass, which, borrowing a flame from the eye of heaven, shines and burns by the rays of the sun, its patron. I will not quit myself

from the suspicion; for I cannot pretend it to be a present either of itself fit to be offered to such a personage, or any part of a just return (but I humbly desire you would own it for an acknowledgment) of those great endearments and noblest usages you have past upon me. But so, men in their religion give a piece of gum, or the fat of a cheap lamb, in sacrifice to him that gives them all that they have or need: and unless he who was pleased to employ your Lordship as a great minister of his providence in making a promise of his good to me, the meanest of his servants, [That he would never leave me nor forsake me] shall enable me by greater services of religion to pay my great debt to your honour, I must still increase my score, since I shall now spend as much in my needs of pardon for this boldness, as in the reception of those favours by which I stand accountable to your Lordship in all the bands of service and gratitude; though I am in the deepest sense of duty and affection,

My most Honoured Lord,

Your Honour's most obliged,

And most humble Servant,

JER. TAYLOR.