ir conditions are without dissembling, and he
loves actions above words. Finally, he hates falsehood worse than death:
he is a faithful client of truth, no man's enemy, and it is a question
whether more another man's friend or his own; and if there were no
heaven, yet he would be virtuous.

OF THE FAITHFUL MAN.

His eyes have no other objects but absent and invisible, which they see
so clearly as that to them sense is blind. That which is present they
see not; if I may not rather say, that what is past or future is present
to them. Herein he exceeds all others, that to him nothing is
impossible, nothing difficult, whether to bear or undertake. He walks
every day with his Maker, and talks with Him familiarly, and lives ever
in heaven, and sees all earthly things beneath him. When he goes in to
converse with God, he wears not his own clothes, but takes them still
out of the rich wardrobe of his Redeemer, and then dares boldly press in
and challenge a blessing. The celestial spirits do not scorn his
company; yea, his service. He deals in these worldly affairs as a
stranger, and hath his heart ever at home. Without a written warrant he
dare do nothing, and with it anything. His war is perpetual, without
truce, without intermission, and his victory certain; he meets with the
infernal powers, and tramples them under feet. The shield that he ever
bears before him can neither be missed nor pierced; if his hand be
wounded, yet his heart is safe. He is often tripped, seldom foiled, and,
if sometimes foiled, never vanquished. He hath white hands, and a clean
soul fit to lodge God in, all the rooms whereof are set apart for His
holiness. Iniquity hath oft called at the door and craved entertainment,
but with a repulse; or, if sin of force will be his tenant, his Lord he
cannot. His faults are few, and those he hath God will not see. He is
allied so high, that he dare call God father, his Saviour brother,
heaven his patrimony, and thinks it no presumption to trust to the
attendance of angels. His understanding is enlightened with the beams of
divine truth. God hath acquainted him with His will; and what he knows
he dare confess: there is not more love in his heart than liberty in his
tongue. If torments stand betwixt him and Christ, if death, he contemns
them; and if his own parents lie in his way to God, his holy
carelessness makes them his footsteps. His experiments have drawn forth
rules of confidence, which he dares oppose