LXXVI. I come now unto that function which undertaketh the public ministry of holy things according to the laws of Christian religion. And because the nature of things consisting, as this doth, in action is known by the object whereabout they are conversant, and by the end or scope whereunto they are referred, we must know that the object of this function is both God and men; God in that he is publicly worshipped of his Church, and men in that they are capable of happiness by means which Christian discipline appointeth. So that the sum of our whole labour in this kind is to honour God and to save men.
For whether we severally take and consider men one by one, or else gather them into one society and body, as it hath been before declared1 that every man’s religion is in him the well-spring of all other sound and sincere virtues, from whence both here in some sort and hereafter more abundantly their full joy and felicity ariseth, because while they live they are blessed of God and when they die their works follow them: so at this present we must again call to mind how the very worldly peace and prosperity, the secular happiness, the temporal and natural good estate both of all men and of all dominions hangeth chiefly upon religion, and doth evermore give plain testimony that as well in this as in other considerations the priest is a pillar of that commonwealth wherein he faithfully serveth God. For if these assertions be true, first that nothing can be enjoyed in this present world against his will which hath made all things; secondly that albeit God doth sometime permit the impious to have, yet impiety permitteth them not to enjoy no not temporal blessings on earth; thirdly that God hath appointed those blessings to attend as handmaids upon religion; and fourthly that without the work of the ministry religion by no means can possibly continue, the use and benefit of that sacred function even towards all men’s worldly happiness must needs be granted.
Now the first being a theorem both understood and confessed of all2, to labour in proof thereof were superfluous.
The second perhaps may be called in question except it be perfectly understood. By good things temporal therefore we mean length of days, health of body, store of friends and well-willers, quietness, prosperous success of those things we take in hand, riches with fit opportunities to use them during life, reputation following us both alive and dead, children or such as instead of children we wish to leave successors and partakers of our happiness. These things are naturally every man’s desire, because they are good. And on whom God bestoweth the same3, them we confess he graciously blesseth.
Of earthly blessings the meanest is wealth, reputation the chiefest. For which cause we esteem the gain of honour an ample recompense for the loss of all other worldly benefits.
But forasmuch as in all this there is no certain perpetuity of goodness, nature hath taught to affect these things not for their own sake but with reference and relation to somewhat independently good, as is the exercise of virtue and speculation of truth. None whose desires are rightly ordered would wish to live, to breathe and move, without performance of those actions which are beseeming man’s excellency. Wherefore having not how to employ it we wax weary even of life itself. Health is precious because sickness doth breed that pain which disableth action. Again why do men delight so much in the multitude of friends, but for that the actions of life being many do need many helping hands to further them? Between troublesome and quiet days we should make no difference if the one did not hinder and interrupt, the other uphold, our liberty of action. Furthermore if those things we do, succeed, it rejoiceth us not so much for the benefit we thereby reap as in that it probably argueth our actions to have been orderly and well guided4. As for riches, to him which hath and doth nothing with them they are a contumely. Honour is commonly presumed a sign of more than ordinary virtue and merit, by means whereof when ambitious minds thirst after it, their endeavours are testimonies how much it is in the eye of nature to possess that body the very shadow whereof is set at so high a rate. Finally such is the pleasure and comfort which we take in doing, that when life forsaketh us, still our desires to continue action and to work though not by ourselves yet by them whom we leave behind us, causeth us providently to resign into other men’s hands the helps we have gathered for that purpose, devising also the best we can to make them perpetual. It appeareth therefore how all the parts of temporal felicity are only good in relation to that which useth them as instruments, and that they are no such good as wherein a right desire doth ever stay or rest itself.