Page:Devotions - Donne - 1840.djvu/138

 saints, which makes the militant, and triumphant church, one parish; so that Christ was not out of his diocess, when he was upon the earth, nor out of his temple, when he was in our flesh. God, who saw that all that he made was good, came not so near seeing a defect in any of his works, as when he saw that it was not good for man to be alone, therefore he made him a helper; and one that should help him so, as to increase the number, and give him her own, and more society. Angels, who do not propagate nor multiply, were made at first in an abundant number, and so were stars; but for the things of this world, their blessing was, Increase; for I think, I need not ask leave to think, that there is no pheenix; nothing singular, nothing alone. Men that inhere upon nature only, are so far from thinking that there is any thing singular in this world, as that they will scarce think that this world itself is singular, but that every planet, and every star, is another world like this; they find reason to conceive, not only a plurality in every species in the world, but a plurality of worlds; so that the abhorrers of solitude are not solitary, for God, and Nature, and Reason concur against it. Now, a man may counterfeit the plague in a vow, and mistake a disease for religion, by such a vetiring and recluding of himself from all men, as to do good to no man, to converse with no man. God hath two Testaments, two wills; but this 1s a schedule, and not of his, a codicil, and net of his, not in the body of his Testaments, but interlined and postscribed by others, that the way to the communion of saints should be by such a solitude as excludes all doing of good here. That is a disease of the mind, astheheight of an infectious disease of the body is solitude, to be left alone: for this makes an infectious bed equal, nay, worse than a grave, that though in both I be equally alone,