THE PARSON.

(Blackstone.)

He is called parson (persona) because by his person, the Church, which is an invisible body, is represented; and he is in himself a body corporate, in order to protect and defend the rights of the Church, which he personates, by a perpetual succession. He is sometimes called the rector or governor of the Church, but the appellation of parsons (however it may be depreciated by familiar, clownish, and indiscriminate use) is the most legal, most beneficial, and most honourable title a parish priest can enjoy, because such an one (Sir Edward Coke observes), and he alone, is said to personate or represent the Church.

SELECTIONS.

HUMILITY.

(Whole Duty of Man, Sunday 2.)

Humility is such a sense of our own meanness and God's excellency, as may work in us lowly and unfeigned submission to Him-submission to his will and to his wisdom.

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Submission to God's will is of two sorts; submission either of obedience or patience: the submission of obedience is our ready yielding ourselves up to do his will; so that when God hath by his command made known to us what his pleasure is, cheerfully and readily to set about it. To enable us to do this, humility is exceeding necessary for a proud person is of all others the unaptest to obey; and we see men never pay an obedience, but when they acknowledge the person commanding to be some way above them, and so it is here if we be not thoroughly persuaded that

God is infinitely above us, that we are vileness and nothing in comparison of Him, we shall never pay our due obedience.

A second sort of submission to God's will is that of patience: this stands in suffering his will, as that of obedience did in doing it, and is nothing else but a willing and quiet yielding to whatever afflictions it pleases Him to lay upon us. This humility will make easy to us; for when our hearts are thoroughly possessed with that reverence and esteem of God, it will be impossible for us to grudge or murmur at whatever He does. We see an instance of it in old Eli, who after he had heard the sad threatenings of God against him, of the destruction of his family, and afflictions of the heaviest kind; yet this one consideration, that it was the Lord, enabled him calmly and quietly to yield to them, saying, “Let Him do what seemeth him good;" and so it must be with us, in all our afflictions, if we will, indeed, approve our humility to God.

PATIENCE.

Concerning this duty of patience, we are as much bound to it in one sort of sufferings as

another; whether our sufferings be so immediately from God's hand, that no creature hath any thing to do in it, as sickness, and the like; or whether it be such, wherein men are the instruments of afflicting us. For it is most sure, when any man doth us hurt, he could not do it without God's permission and sufferance; and God may as well make them the instruments of punishing us, as do it more directly Himself: and it is but a counterfeit patience that pretends to submit to God, and yet can bear nothing from men. We see holy Job, who is set forth to us as a pattern of true patience, made no such difference in his afflictions: he took the loss of his cattle, which the Chaldeans and Sabeans robbed him of, with the same meekness with which he did that which was consumed by fire from heaven. When, therefore, we suffer any thing from men, be it never so unjustly in respect to them, we are yet to confess that it is most just in respect of God: and therefore, instead of looking upon them with rage and revenge, as the common custom of the world is, we are to look up to God: acknowledging his justice in the affliction, begging his pardon most earnestly for those sins which have provoked Him to send it, and patiently and thankfully bear it,

till He shall see fit to remove it; still saying with Job, "blessed be the name of the Lord."

Humility contains in it a submission, not only to God's will, but also to his wisdom; to acknowledge He disposes all things most wisely; and that not only in what concerns this world in general, but also in what concerns every one of us in particular; so that, in what condition soever He puts us, we are to assure ourselves it is that which is best for us, since He chooses it for us who cannot err. And, therefore, never to have impatient desires of any thing in this world, but to leave it to God to fit us with such an estate and condition, as He sees best for us, and there let us quietly and contentedly rest: yea, though it be such as of all others we should have least wished. for ourselves. And this, surely, cannot but appear very reasonable to any that hath humility: for that having taught him, that God is infinitely wise, and he very foolish, he can never doubt but that it is much more for his good, that God should choose for him, than he for himself: thus many times we wish for wealth, and honour, and beauty, and the like; when, if we had them, they would only prove snares to us, we should be