The mischiefs of self-ignorance and the benefits of self-acquaintance opened in divers sermons at…

Having showed you so much Reason for this duty, let me now take leave to invite you all, to the serious study of your selves. It is a duty past all controversy agreed on by heathens as well as Christians, and urged by them in the general, though many of the particulars to be known are beyond their light: It brutifyeth man to be ignorant of himself. Man that is in honour and understandeth not (himself especially) is as the beasts that perish. Psal. 49.20. saith Boethius, [Humana natura infra bestias redigitur, size nose desierit: Nam caeteris animantibus sese ignorare natura est; hominibus vitio venit] Its worse then beastly to be ignorant of our selves, it being a vice in us, which is nature in them.

Having shewed you so much Reason for this duty, let me now take leave to invite you all, to the serious study of your selves. It is a duty past all controversie agreed on by heathens as well as Christians, and urged by them in the generall, though many of the particulars to be knowne are beyond their light: It brutifyeth man to be ignorant of himself. Man that is in honour and understandeth not (himself especially) is as the beasts that perish. Psal. 49.20. saith Boetius, [Humana natura infra bestias redigitur, si se nosse desierit: Nam caeteris animantibus sese ignorare natura est; hominibus vitio venit] Its worse then beastly to be ignorant of our selves, it being a vice in us, which is nature in them.

Come home you wandering self-neglecting souls; Lose not your selves in a wilderness or tumult of impertinent, vain, distracting things; your work is nearer you; The country that you should first survey and travail, is within you; from which you must pass to that above you: when by losing your selves in this without you, you will find your selves before you are aware, in that below you. And then ⟨p. 151⟩(as Gregory speaks) he that was stultus in culpa, a fool in sinning, will be sapiens in poena, wise in suffering! you shall then have time enough to review your lives, and such constraining help to know your selves, as you cannot resist. O that you would know but a little of that now, that then you must else know in that overwhelming evidence which will everlastingly confound you! And that you would now think of that for a timely cure, which else must be thought of endlessly in despair. Come home then, and see what work is there. Let the eyes of fools be in the corners of the earth! Leave it to men besides themselves, to live as without themselves, and to be still from home, and waste that time in other business, that was given them to prepare for life eternall. [Laudabilior est animus, cui nota est infirmitas propria, quam qui ea non perspecta, mania mundi, vias syderum, fundamenta terrarum, & fastigia caelorum scrutatur] inquit August. [The soul is more laudable that knows its own infirmity, then he that without discerning this doth search after the compass of the world, the courses of the stars, the foundations of the earth, and the heights of the heavens.] Dost thou delight in the mysteries of nature? consider well