extreme indecency and indignity depressed beneath themselves, when
they become the subjects of flashy wit, or the entertainments of
frothy merriment: to sacrifice their honour to our vain pleasure,
being like the ridiculous fondness of that people which, as AElian
reporteth, worshipping a fly, did offer up an ox thereto. These
things were by God instituted, and proposed to us for purposes quite
different; to compose our hearts, and settle our fancies in a most
serious frame; to breed inward satisfaction, and joy purely
spiritual; to exercise our most solemn thoughts, and employ our
gravest discourses: all our speech therefore about them should be
wholesome, apt to afford good instruction, or to excite good
affections; "good," as St. Paul speaketh, "for the use of edifying,
that it may minister grace unto the hearers."

If we must be facetious and merry, the field is wide and spacious;
there are matters enough in the world besides these most august and
dreadful things, to try our faculties and please our humour with;
everywhere light and ludicrous things occur; it therefore doth argue
a marvellous poverty of wit, and barrenness of invention (no less
than a strange defect of goodness, and want of discretion), in those
who can devise no other subjects to frolic upon besides these, of
all most improper and perilous; who cannot seem ingenious under the
charge of so highly trespassing upon decency, disclaiming wisdom,
wounding the ears of others, and their own consciences. Seem
ingenious, I say; for seldom those persons really are such, or are
capable to discover any wit in a wise and manly way. 'Tis not the
excellency of their fancies, which in themselves are usually sorry
and insipid enough, but the uncouthness of their presumption; not
their extraordinary wit, but their prodigious rashness, which is to
be admired. They are gazed on, as the doers of bold tricks, who