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           Title: Christian Morals
      Creator(s): Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682)
     Print Basis: London: Rivingtons (1863)
          Rights: Public Domain
   CCEL Subjects: All
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CHRISTIAN MORALS.

BY

SIR THOMAS Browne, Kt. M.D.

  LONDON:
  RIVINGTONS, WATERLOO PLACE.

  1863.

  CHRISTIAN

                                    MORALS:

    BY

Sir THOMAS Browne,

  Of NORWICH, M. D.

AND AUTHOR OF

RELIGIO MEDICI.

THE SECOND EDITION.

WITH

A LIFE OF THE AUTHOR,

BY

SAMUEL J0HNS0N;

AND
EXPLANATORY NOTES.

   L0ND0N:

   Printed by Richard Hett,
   For J. PAYNE, at Pope's Head, in
   Pater-Noster row.

   M DCC LVI.
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THE LIFE OF SIR THOMAS Browne.

   THOUGH the writer of the following Essays seems to have had the fortune
   common among men of letters, of raising little curiosity after his
   private life, and has, therefore, few memorials preserved of his
   felicities or misfortunes; yet, because an edition of a posthumous work
   appears imperfect and neglected, without some account of the author, it
   was thought necessary to attempt the gratification of that curiosity
   which naturally inquires, by what peculiarities of nature or fortune
   eminent men have been distinguished, how uncommon attainments have been
   gained, and what influence learning has had on its possessors, or
   virtue on its teachers.

   Sir Thomas Browne was born at London, in the parish of St. Michael in
   Cheapside, on the 19th of 0ctober, MDCV. [1] His father was a merchant
   of an antient family at Upton in Cheshire. Of the name or family of his
   mother, I find no account.

   Of his childhood or youth, there is little known; except that he lost
   his father very early; that he was, according to the common fate of
   orphans, [2] defrauded by one of his guardians; and that he was placed
   for his education at the school of Winchester.

   His mother, having taken three thousand pounds, [3] as the third part
   of her husband's property, left her son, by consequence, six thousand;
   a large fortune for a man destined to learning, at that time when
   commerce had not yet filled the nation with nominal riches. But it
   happened to him as to many others, to be made poorer by opulence; for
   his mother soon married Sir Thomas Dutton, probably by the inducement
   of her fortune; and he was left to the rapacity of his guardian,
   deprived now of both his parents and therefore helpless and
   unprotected.

   He was removed in the beginning of the year MDCXXIII from Winchester to
   Oxford; and entered a gentleman-commoner of Broadgate-Hall, [4] which
   was soon afterwards endowed, and took the name of Pembroke-College,
   from the Earl of Pembroke, then chancellor of the University. He was
   admitted to the degree of bachelor of arts, January 31, MDCXXVI-VII;
   being, as Wood remarks, the first man of eminence graduated from the
   new college, to which the zeal or gratitude of those that love it most,
   can with little better, than that it may long proceed as it began.

   Having afterwards taken his degree of master of arts, he turned his
   studies to physick, and practised it for some time in Oxfordshire; [5]
   but soon afterwards, either induced by curiosity, or invited by
   promises, he quitted his settlement, and accompanied his father-in-law,
   [6] who had some employment in Ireland, in a visitation of the forts
   and castles, which the state of Ireland then made necessary.

   He that has once prevailed on himself to break his connexions of
   acquaintance, and begin a wandering life, very easily continues it.
   Ireland had, at that time, very little to offer to the observation of a
   man of letters: he, therefore, passed into France and Italy; [7] made
   some stay at Montpellier and Padua, which were then the celebrated
   schools of physick; and returning home through Holland, procured
   himself to be created Doctor of Physick at Leyden.

   When he began his travels, or when he concluded them, there is no
   certain account; nor do there remain any observations made by him in
   his passage through those countries which he visited. To consider,
   therefore, what pleasure or instruction might have been received from
   the remarks of a man so curious and diligent, would be voluntarily to
   indulge a painful reflection, and load the imagination with a wish,
   which, while it is formed, is known to be vain. It is, however, to be
   lamented, that those who are most capable of improving mankind, very
   frequently neglect to communicate their knowledge; either because it is
   more pleasing to gather ideas than to impart them, or because to minds
   naturally great, few things appear of so much importance as to deserve
   the notice of the publick.

   About the year MDCXXXIV, he is supposed to have returned to London; [8]
   and the next year to have written his celebrated treatise, called
   Religio Medici, "The Religion of a Physician," which he declares
   himself never to have intended for the press, having composed it only
   for his own exercise and entertainment. [9] It, indeed, contains many
   passages, which, relating merely to his own person, can be of no great
   importance to the publick: but when it was written, it happened to him
   as to others, he was too much pleased with his performance, not to
   think that it might please others as much; he, therefore, communicated
   it to his friends, and receiving, I suppose, that exuberant applause
   with which every man repays the grant of perusing a manuscript, he was
   not very diligent to obstruct his own praise by recalling his papers,
   but suffered them to wander from hand to hand, till at last, without
   his own consent, they were in MDCXLII given to a printer.

   This has, perhaps, sometimes befallen others; and this, I am willing to
   believe, did really happen to Dr. Browne: but there is, surely, some
   reason to doubt the truth of the complaint so frequently made of
   surreptitious editions. A song, or an epigram, may be easily printed
   without the author's knowledge; because it may be learned when it is
   repeated, or may be written out with very little trouble: but a long
   treatise, however elegant, is not often copied by mere zeal or
   curiosity, but may be worn out in passing from hand to hand, before it
   is multiplied by a transcript. It is easy to convey an imperfect book,
   by a distant hand, to the press, and plead the circulation of a false
   copy as an excuse for publishing the true, or to correct what is found
   faulty or offensive, and charge the errors on the transcriber's
   depravations.

   This is a stratagem, by which an author panting for fame, and yet
   afraid of seeming, to challenge it, may at once gratify his vanity, and
   preserve the appearance of modesty; may enter the lists, and secure a
   retreat: and this, candour might fuller to pass undetected as an
   innocent fraud, but that indeed no fraud is innocent; for the
   confidence which makes the happiness of society, is in some degree
   diminished by every man whose practice is at variance with his words.

   The Religio Medici was no sooner published than it excited the
   attention of the publick, by the novelty of paradoxes, the dignity of
   sentiment, the quick succession of images, the multitude of abstruse
   allusions, the subtlety of disquisition, and the strength of language.

   What is much read, will be much criticised. The Earl of Dorset
   recommended this book to the perusal of Sir Kenelm Digby, who returned
   his judgment upon it, not in a letter, but a book; in which, though
   mingled with some positions fabulous and uncertain, there are acute
   remarks, just censures, and profound speculations; yet its principal
   claim to admiration is, that it was written in twenty-four hours, [10]
   of which part was spent in procuring Browne's book, and part in reading
   it.

   Of these animadversions, when they were not yet all printed, either
   officiousness or malice informed Dr. Browne; who wrote to Sir Kenelm
   with much softness and ceremony, declaring the unworthiness of his work
   to engage such notice, the intended privacy of the composition, and the
   corruptions of the impression; and received an answer equally gentle
   and respectful, containing high commendations of the piece, pompous
   professions of reverence, meek acknowledgments of inability, and
   anxious apologies for the hastiness of his remarks.

   The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in
   the farce of life. Who would not have thought, that these two
   luminaries of their age had ceased to endeavour to grow bright by the
   obscuration of each other: yet the animadversions thus weak, thus
   precipitate, upon a book thus injured in the transcription, quickly
   passed the press; and Religio Medici was more accurately published,
   with an admonition prefixed "to those who have, or shall peruse the
   observations upon a former corrupt copy;" in which there is a severe
   censure, not upon Digby, who was to be used with ceremony, but upon the
   Observator who had usurped his name: nor was this invective written by
   Dr. Browne, who was supposed to be satisfied with his opponent's
   apology; but by some officious friend zealous for his honour, without
   his consent.

   Browne has, indeed, in his own preface, endeavoured to secure himself
   from rigorous examination, by alleging, that "many things are delivered
   rhetorically, many expressions merely tropical, and therefore many
   things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called
   unto the rigid test of reason." The first glance upon his book will
   indeed discover examples of this liberty of thought and expression: "I
   could be content (says he) to be nothing almost to eternity, if I might
   enjoy my Saviour at the last." He has little acquaintance with the
   acuteness of Browne, who suspects him of a serious opinion, that any
   thing can be "almost eternal," or that any time beginning and ending is
   not infinitely less than infinite duration.

   In this book, he speaks much, and, in the opinion of Digby, too much of
   himself; but with such generality and conciseness as affords very
   little light to his biographer: he declares, that, besides the dialects
   of different provinces, he understood six languages; that he was no
   stranger to astronomy; and that he had seen several countries: but what
   most awakens curiosity, is his solemn assertion, that "His life has
   been a miracle of thirty years; which to relate, were not history but a
   piece of poetry, and would sound like a fable."

   There is, undoubtedly, a sense, in which all life is miraculous; as it
   is an union of powers of which we can image no connexion, a succession
   of motions of which the first cause must be supernatural: but life,
   thus explained, whatever it may have of miracle, will have nothing of
   fable; and, therefore, the author undoubtedly had regard to something,
   by which he imagined himself distinguished from the rest of mankind.

   Of these wonders, however, the view that can be now taken of his life
   offers no appearance. The course of his education was like that of
   others, such as put him little in the way of extraordinary casualties.
   A scholastick and academical life is very uniform; and has, indeed,
   more safety than pleasure. A traveller has greater opportunities of
   adventure; but: Browne traversed no unknown seas, or Arabian deserts:
   and, surely, a man may visit France and Italy, reside at Montpellier
   and Padua, and at last take his degree at Leyden, without anything
   miraculous. What it was, that would, if it was related, found so
   poetical and fabulous, we are left to guess; I believe, without hope of
   guessing rightly. The wonders probably were transacted in his own mind:
   self-love, co-operating with an imagination vigorous and fertile as
   that of Browne, will find or make objects of astonishment in every
   man's life: and, perhaps, there is no human being, however hid in the
   crowd from the observation of his fellow-mortals, who, if he has
   leisure and disposition to recollect his own thoughts and actions, will
   not conclude his life in some sort a miracle, and imagine himself
   distinguished from all the rest of his species by many discriminations
   of nature or of fortune.

   The success of this performance was such, as might naturally encourage
   the author to new undertakings. A gentleman of Cambridge, whose name
   was Merryweather, [11] turned it not inelegantly into Latin; and from
   his version it was again translated into Italian, German, Dutch, and
   French; and at Strasburg the Latin translation was published with large
   notes, by Lennus Nicolaus Moltfarius. Of the English annotations, which
   in all the editions from. MDCXLIV accompany the book, the author is
   unknown.

   Of Merryweather, to whose zeal Browne was so much indebted for the
   sudden extension of his renown, I know nothing, but that he published a
   small treatise for the instruction of young persons in the attainment
   of a Latin stile. He printed his translation in Holland with some
   difficulty. [12] The first printer to whom he offered it, carried it to
   Salmasius, "who laid it by (says he) in state for three months," and
   then discouraged its publication: it was afterwards rejected by two
   other printers, and at last was received by Hackius.

   The peculiarities of this book raised the author, as is usual, many
   admirers and many enemies; but we know not of more than one professed
   answer, written under the title of "Medicus medicatus," [13] by
   Alexander Ross, which was universally neglected by the world.

   At the time when this book was published, Dr. Browne resided at
   Norwich, where he had settled in MDCXXXVI, by the persuasion of Dr.
   Lushington his tutor, [14] who was then rector of Barnham Westgate in
   the neighbourhood. It is recorded by Wood, that his pratice was very
   extensive, and that many patients resorted to him. In MDCXXXVII he was
   incorporated Doctor of physick in Oxford. [15]

   He married in MDCXLI Mrs. Mileham, of a good family in Norfolk; [16] "a
   lady" (says Whitefoot) of such symmetrical proportion to her worthy
   husband, both in the graces of her body and mind, that they seemed to
   come together by a kind of natural magnetism."

   This marriage could not but draw the raillery of contemporary wits upon
   a man, [17] who had just been wishing in his new book, "that we might
   procreate, like trees, without conjunction;" and had lately declared,
   that "the whole world was made for man, but only the twelfth part of
   man for woman;" [18] and that "man is the whole world, but woman only
   the rib or crooked part of man."

   Whether the lady had been yet informed of these contemptuous positions,
   or whether she was pleased with the conquest of so formidable a rebel,
   and considered it as a double triumph, to attract so much merit, and
   overcome so powerful prejudices; or whether, like most others, she
   married upon mingled motives, between convenience and inclination; she
   had, however, no reason to repent: for she lived happily with him one
   and forty years; and bore him ten children, of whom one son and three
   daughters outlived their parents: she survived him two years, and
   passed her widowhood in plenty, if not in opulence.

   Browne having now entered the world as an author, and experienced the
   delights of praise and molestations of censure, probably found his
   dread of the publick eye diminished; and, therefore, was not long
   before he trusted his name to the criticks a second time: for in
   MDCXLVI he printed Enquiries into vulgar and common errors; [19] a
   work, which as it arose not from fancy and invention, but from
   observation and books, and contained not a single discourse of one
   continued tenor, of which the latter part rose from the former, but an
   enumeration of many unconnected particulars, must have been the
   collection of years, and the effect of a design early formed and long
   pursued, to which his remarks had been continually referred, and which
   arose gradually to its present bulk by the daily aggregation of new
   particles of knowledge. It is, indeed, to be wished, that he had longer
   delayed the publication, and added what the remaining part of his life
   might have furnished: the thirty-six years which he spent afterwards in
   study and experience, would doubtless have made large additions to an
   "Enquiry into vulgar errors." He published in MDCLXXIII the sixth
   edition, with some improvements; but I think rather with explications
   of what he had already written, than any new heads of disquisition. But
   with the work, such as the author, whether hindered from continuing it
   by eagerness of praise, or weariness of labour, thought fit to give, we
   must be content; and remember, that in all sublunary things, there is
   something to be wished, which we must wish in vain.

   This book, like his former, was received with great applause, was
   answered by Alexander Ross, and translated into Dutch and German, and
   not many years ago into French. It might now be proper, had not the
   favour with which it was at first received filled the kingdom with
   copies, to reprint it with notes partly supplemental and partly
   emendatory, to subjoin those discoveries which the industry of the last
   age has made, and correct those mistakes which the author has committed
   not by idleness or negligence, but for want of Boyle's and Newton's
   philosophy.

   He appears, indeed, to have been willing to pay labour for truth.
   Having heard a flying rumour of sympathetick needles, by which,
   suspended over a circular alphabet, distant friends or lovers might
   correspond, he procured two such alphabets to be made, touched his
   needles with the same magnet, and placed them upon proper spindles: the
   result was, that when he moved one of his needles, the other, instead
   of taking by sympathy the same direction, "stood like the pillars of
   Hercules." That it continued motionless, will be easily believed; and
   most men would have been content to believe it, without the labour of
   so hopeless an experiment. Browne might himself have obtained the same
   conviction by a method less operose, if he had thrust his needles
   through corks, and then set them afloat in two basons of water.

   Notwithstanding his zeal to detect old errors, he seems not very easy
   to admit new positions; for he never mentions the motion of the earth
   but with contempt and ridicule, though the opinion, which admits it,
   was then growing popular, and was, surely, plausible, even before it
   was confirmed by later observations.

   The reputation of Browne encouraged some low writer to publish, under
   his name, a book called "Nature's cabinet unlocked," [20] translated,
   according to Wood, from the physicks of Magirus; of which Browne took
   care to clear himself, by modestly advertising, that "if any man had
   been benefited by it, he was not so ambitious as to challenge the
   honour thereof, as having no hand in that work." [21]

   In MDCLVIII the discovery of some antient urns in Norfolk gave him
   occasion to write Hydriotaphia, Urn-burial, or a discourse of
   sepulchral urns, in which he treats with his usual learning on the
   funeral rites of the antient nations; exhibits their various treatment
   of the dead; and examines the substances found in his Norfolcian urns.
   There is, perhaps, none of his works which better exemplifies his
   reading or memory. It is scarcely to be imagined, how many particulars
   he has amassed together, in a treatise which seems to have been
   occasionally written; and for which, therefore, no materials could have
   been previously collected. It is, indeed, like other treatises of
   antiquity, rather for curiosity than use; for it is of small importance
   to know which nation buried their dead in the ground, which threw them
   into the sea, or which gave them to birds and beasts; when the practice
   of cremation began, or when it was disused; whether the bones of
   different persons were mingled in the same urn; what oblations were
   thrown into the pyre; or how the ashes of the body were distinguished
   from those of other substances. Of the uselessness of all these
   enquiries, Browne seems not to have been ignorant; and, therefore,
   concludes them with an observation which can never be too frequently
   recollected.

   "All or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future being,
   which ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted conceptions,
   ceremonies, sayings, which christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they,
   which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little
   for futurity, but from reason; whereby the noblest mind fell often upon
   doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions: with these hopes Socrates
   warmed his doubtful spirits, against the cold potion; and Cato, before
   he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the
   Immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the
   animosity of that attempt.

   "It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at man, to tell him
   he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to
   come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain:
   without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such
   a state, were but a fallacy in nature; unsatisfied considerators would
   quarrel the justice of their constitution, and rest content that Adam
   had fallen lower, whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper
   ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of
   inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as
   having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures; and being
   framed below the circumference of these hopes or cognition of better
   things, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment. But the
   superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present
   felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able to tell us we
   are more than our present selves; and evacuate such hopes in the
   fruition of their own accomplishments."

   To his treatise on Urnburial was added The Garden of Cyrus, or the
   Quincunxial lozenge, or network plantation of the antients,
   artificially, naturally, mystically considered.

   This discourse he begins with the Sacred garden, in which the first man
   was placed; and deduces the practice of horticulture from the earliest
   accounts of antiquity to the time of the Persian Cyrus, the first man
   whom we actually know to have planted a Quincunx; which, however, our
   author is inclined to believe of longer date, and not only discovers it
   in the description of the hanging gardens of Babylon, but seems willing
   to believe, and to persuade his reader, that it was practised by the
   feeders on vegetables before the flood.

   Some of the most pleasing performances have been produced by learning
   and genius exercised upon subjects of little importance. It seems to
   have been, in all ages, the pride of wit, to shew how it could exalt
   the low, and amplify the little. To speak not inadequately of things
   really and naturally great, is a talk not only difficult but
   disagreeable; because the writer is degraded in his own eyes by
   standing in comparison with his subject, to which he can hope to add
   nothing from his imagination: but it is a perpetual triumph of fancy to
   expand a scanty theme, to raise glittering ideas from obscure
   properties, and to produce to the world an object of wonder to which
   nature had contributed little. To this ambition, perhaps, we owe the
   Frogs of Homer, the Gnat and the Bees of Virgil, the Butterfly of
   Spenser, the Shadow of Wowerus, and the Quincunx of Browne.

   In the prosecution of this sport of fancy, he considers every
   production of art and nature, in which he could find any decussation or
   approaches to the form of a Quincunx; and as a man once resolved upon
   ideal discoveries, seldom searches long in vain, he finds his favourite
   figure in almost every thing, whether natural or invented, antient or
   modern, rude or artificial, sacred and civil; so that a reader, not
   watchful against the power of his infusions, would imagine that
   decussation was the great business of the world, and that nature and
   art had no other purpose than to exemplify and imitate a Quincunx.

   To shew the excellence of this figure, he enumerates all its
   properties; and finds in it almost every thing of use or pleasure: and
   to shew how readily he supplies what he cannot find, one instance may
   be sufficient; "though therein (says he) we meet not with right angles,
   yet every rhombus containing four angles equal unto two right, it
   virtually contains two right in every one."

   The fanciful sports of great minds are never without some advantage to
   knowledge. Browne has interspersed many curious observations on the
   form of plants, and the laws of vegetation; and appears to have been a
   very accurate observer of the modes of germination, and to have watched
   with great nicety the evolution of the parts of plants from their
   seminal principles.

   He is then naturally led to treat of the number five; and finds, that
   by this number many things are circumscribed; that there are five kinds
   of vegetable productions, five sections of a cone, five orders of
   architecture, and five acts of a play. And observing that five was the
   antient conjugal or wedding number, he proceeds to a speculation which
   I shall give in his own words; "The antient numerists made out the
   conjugal number by two and three, the first parity and imparity, the
   active and passive digits, the material and formal principles in
   generative societies."

   These are all the tracts which he published: but many papers were found
   in his closet, "Some of them, (says Whitefoot) designed for the press,
   were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand, after the fashion
   of great and curious writers."

   Of these, two collections have been published; one by Dr. Tennison, the
   other in MDCCXXII by a nameless editor. Whether the one or the other
   selected those pieces which the author would have preferred, cannot now
   be known: but they have both the merit of giving to mankind what was
   too valuable to be suppressed; and what might, without their
   interposition, have, perhaps, perished among other innumerable labours
   of learned men, or have been burnt in a scarcity of fuel like the
   papers of Pereskius.

   The first of these posthumous treatises contains "Observations upon
   several plants mentioned in Scripture." These remarks, though they do
   not immediately either rectify the faith, or refine the morals of the
   reader, yet are by no means to be censured as superfluous niceties or
   useless speculations; for they often shew some propriety of
   description, or elegance of allusion, utterly undiscoverable to readers
   not skilled in oriental botany; and are often of more important use, as
   they remove some difficulty from narratives, or some obscurity from
   precepts.

   The next is "Of garlands, or coronary and garland plants;" a subject
   merely of learned curiosity, without any other end than the pleasure of
   reflecting on antient customs, or on the industry with which studious
   men have endeavoured to recover them.

   The next is a letter "on the fishes eaten" by our Saviour with his
   disciples, after "his resurrection from the dead;" which contains no
   determinate resolution of the question, what they were, for indeed it
   cannot be determined. All the information that diligence or learning
   could supply, consists in an enumeration of the fishes produced in the
   waters of Judea.

   Then follow "Answers to certain queries about fishes, birds, and
   insects;" and "A letter of hawks and falconry antient and modern:" in
   the first of which he gives the proper interpretation of some antient
   names of animals, commonly mistaken; and in the other has some curious
   observations on the art of hawking, which he considers as a practice
   unknown to the antients. I believe all our sports of the field are of
   Gothick original; the antients neither hunted by the scent, nor seem
   much to have practised horsemanship as an exercise; and though, in
   their works, there is mention of "aucupium" and "piscatio," they seem
   no more to have been considered as diversions, than agriculture or any
   other manual labour.

   In two more letters he speaks of "the cymbals of the Hebrews," but
   without any satisfactory determination; and of "repalick or gradual
   verses," that is, of verses beginning with a word of one syllable, and
   proceeding by words of which each has a syllable more than the former;
   as,

   "O Deus, æternæ stationis conciliator." Ausonius.

   and, after his manner, pursuing the hint, he mentions many other
   restrained methods of versifying, to which industrious ignorance has
   sometimes voluntarily subjected itself.

   His next attempt is "On languages, and particularly the Saxon tongue."
   He discourses with great learning, and generally with great justness,
   of the derivation and changes of languages; but, like other men of
   multifarious learning, he receives some notions without examination.
   Thus he observes, according to the popular opinion, that the Spaniards
   have retained so much Latin, as to be able to compose sentences that
   shall be at once gramatically Latin and Castilian: this will appear
   very unlikely to a man that considers the Spanish terminations; and
   Howel, who was eminently skilful in the three provincial languages,
   declares, that after many essays he never could effect it.

   The principal design of this letter, is to shew the affinity between
   the modern English and the antient Saxon; and he observes, very
   rightly, that "though we have borrowed many substantives, adjectives,
   and some verbs, from the French; yet the great body of numerals,
   auxiliary verbs, articles, pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, and
   prepositions, which are the distinguishing and lasting parts of a
   language, remain with us from the Saxon."

   To prove this position more evidently, he has drawn up a short
   discourse of six paragraphs, in Saxon and English; of which every word
   is the same in both languages, excepting the terminations and
   orthography. The words are, indeed, Saxon, but the phraseology is
   English; and, I think, would not have been understood by Bede or
   Ælfric, notwithstanding the confidence of our author. He has, however,
   sufficiently proved his position, that the English resembles its
   parental language, more than any modern European dialect.

   There remain five tracts of this collection yet unmentioned; one "Of
   artificial hills, mounts, or burrows, in England;" in reply to an
   interrogatory letter of E. D. whom the writers of Biographia Britannica
   suppose to be, if rightly printed, W. D. or Sir William Dugdale, one of
   Browne's correspondents. These are declared by Browne, in concurrence,
   I think, with all other antiquarians, to be for the most part funeral
   monuments. He proves, that both the Danes and Saxons buried their men
   of eminence under piles of earth, "which admitting (says he) neither
   ornament, epitaph, nor inscription, may, if earthquakes spare them,
   outlast other monuments: obelisks have their term, and pyramids will
   tumble; but these mountainous monuments may stand, and are like to have
   the same period with the earth."

   In the next, he answers two geographical questions; one concerning
   Troas, mentioned in the Acts and Epistles of St. Paul, which he
   determines to be the city built near the antient Ilium; and the other
   concerning the dead sea, of which he gives the same account with other
   writers.

   Another letter treats "Of the answers" of the oracle of Apollo at
   Delphos, to "Croesus king of Lydia." In this tract nothing deserves
   notice, more than that Browne considers the oracles as evidently and
   indubitably supernatural, and founds all his disquisition upon that
   postulate. He wonders why the physiologists of old, having such means
   of instruction, did not inquire into the secrets of nature: but
   judiciously concludes, that such questions would probably have been
   vain; "for, in matters cognoscible, and formed for our disquisition,
   our industry must be our oracle, and reason our Apollo."

   The pieces that remain are, "A prophecy concerning the future state of
   several nations;" in which Browne plainly discovers his expedition to
   be the same with that entertained lately with more confidence by Dr.
   Berkley, "that America will be the seat of the fifth empire:" and
   "Museum clausum, sive Bibliotheca abscondita;" in which the author
   amuses himself with imagining the existence of books and curiosities,
   either never in being, or irrecoverably lost.

   These pieces I have recounted as they are ranged in Tennison's
   collection, because the editor has given no account of the time at
   which any of them were written. Some of them are of little value, more
   than as they gratify the mind with the picture of a great scholar,
   turning his learning into amusement; or shew, upon how great a variety
   of enquiries the same mind has been successfully employed.

   The other collection of his posthumous pieces, published in otavo,
   London MDCCXXII, contains "Repertorium; or "some account of the tombs
   and monuments in the cathedral of Norwich; where, as Tennison observes,
   there is not matter proportionate to the skill of the Antiquary.

   The other pieces are, "Answers to Sir William Dugdale's enquiries about
   the fens; A letter concerning Ireland; Another relating to urns newly
   discovered; Some short strictures on different subjects; and A letter
   to a friend on the death of his intimate friend," published singly by
   the author's son in MDCXC.

   There is inserted, in the Biographia Britannica, "A letter containing
   instructions for the study of physick;" which, with the Essays here
   offered to the public, completes the works of Dr. Browne.

   To the life of this learned man, there remains little to be added, but
   that in MDCLXV he was chosen honorary fellow of the college of
   physicians, as a man, "Virtute et literis ornatissimus,--eminently
   embellished with literature and virtue:" and, in MDCLXXI, received, at
   Norwich, the honour of knighthood from Charles II; a prince who, with
   many frailties and vices, had yet skill to discover excellence, and
   virtue to reward it, with such honorary distinctions at least as cost
   him nothing, yet conferred by a king so judicious and so much beloved,
   had the power of giving merit new lustre and greater popularity.

   Thus he lived in high reputation; till in his seventy-sixth year he was
   seized with a colick, which, after having tortured him about a week,
   put an end to his life at Norwich, on his birthday, October 19,
   MDCLXXXII. [22] Some of his last words were expressions of submission
   to the will of God, and fearlessness of death.

   He lies buried in the church of St. Peter, Mancroft, in Norwich, with
   this inscription on a mural monument, placed on the south pillar of the
   altar:

   M. S.

   Hic situs est Thomas Browne, M.D.

   Et Miles.

   A^o 1605. Londini natus

   Generosa Familia apud Upton

   In agro Cestriensi oriundus.

   Scholâ primum Wintoniensi, postea

   In Coll. Pembr.

   Apud Oxonienses bonis literis

   Haud leviter imbutus

   In urbe hâc Nordovicensi medicinam

   Arte egregia, & fælici successu professus,

   Scriptis quibus tituli, Religio Medici

   Et Pseudodoxia Epidemica aliisque

   Per Orbem notissimus.

   Vir Prudentissimus, Integerrimus, Doctissimus;

   Obiit Octob^r. 19. 1682.

   Pie posuit mæstissima Conjux

   D^a. Doroth. Br.

   Near the Foot of this Pillar

   Lies Sir Thomas Browne, Kt. and Doctor in Physick,

   Author of Religio Medici, and other Learned Books,

   Who practic'd Physick in the City 46 Years,

   And died Oct^r. 1682, in the 77 Year of his Age.

   In Memory of whom

   Dame Dorothy Browne, who had bin his Affectionate Wife

   47 Years, caused this Monument to be Erected.

   Besides his lady, who died in MDCLXXXV, he left a son and three
   daughters. Of the daughters nothing very remarkable is known; but his
   son, Edward Browne, requires a particular mention.

   He was born about the year MDCXLII; and after having passed through the
   classes of the school at Norwich, became bachelor of physick at
   Cambridge; and afterwards removing to Merton-College in Oxford, was
   admitted there to the same degree, and afterwards made a doctor. In
   MDCLXVIII he visited part of Germany; and in the year following made a
   wider excursion into Austria, Hungary, and Thessaly; where the Turkish
   Sultan then kept his court at Larissa. He afterwards passed through
   Italy. His skill in natural history made him particularly attentive to
   mines and metallurgy. Upon his return he published an account of the
   countries thro' which he had passed; which I have heard commended by a
   learned traveller, who has visited many places after him, as written
   with scrupulous and exalt veracity, such as is scarcely to be found in
   any other book of the same kind. But whatever it may contribute to the
   instruction of a naturalist, I cannot recommend it as likely to give
   much pleasure to common readers: for whether it be, that the world is
   very uniform, and therefore he who is resolved to adhere to truth, will
   have few novelties to relate; or that Dr. Browne was, by the train of
   his studies, led to enquire most after those things, by which the
   greatest part of mankind is little affected; a great part of his book
   seems to contain very unimportant accounts of his passage from one
   place where he saw little, to another where he saw no more.

   Upon his return, he practised physick in London; was made physician
   first to Charles II, and afterwards in MDCLXXXII to St. Bartholomew's
   hospital. About the same time he joined his name to those of many other
   eminent men, in "A translation of Plutarch's lives." He was first
   censor, then elect, and treasurer of the college of physicians; of
   which in MDCCV he was chosen president, and held his office, till in
   MDCCVIII he died in a degree of estimation suitable to a man so
   variously accomplished, that King Charles had honoured him with this
   panegyrick, that "He was as learned as any of the college, and as well
   bred as any of the court."

   Of every great and eminent character, part breaks forth into publick
   view, and part lies hid in domestick privacy. Those qualities which
   have been exerted in any known and lasting performances, may, at any
   distance of time, be traced and estimated; but silent excellencies are
   soon forgotten; and those minute peculiarities which discriminate every
   man from all others, if they are not recorded by those whom personal
   knowledge enabled to observe them, are irrecoverably lost. This
   mutilation of character must have happened, among many others, to Sir
   Thomas Browne, had it not been delineated by his friend Mr. Whitefoot,
   who "esteemed it an especial favour of Providence, to have had a
   particular acquaintance with him for two thirds of his life." Part of
   his observations I shall, therefore, copy.

   "For a character of his person, his complexion and hair was answerable
   to his name; his stature was moderate, and habit of body neither fat
   nor lean, but eusarkos

   "In his habit of clothing, he had an aversion to all finery, and
   affected plainness, both in the fashion and ornaments. He ever wore a
   cloke, or boots, when few others did. He kept himself always very warm,
   and thought it most safe so to do, though he never loaded himself with
   such a multitude of garments, as Suetonius reports of Augustus, enough
   to clothe a good family.

   "The horizon of his understanding was much larger than the hemisphere
   of the world: All that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so
   well, that few that are under them knew so much: He could tell the
   number of the visible stars in his horizon, and call them all by their
   names that had any; and of the earth he had such a minute and exact
   geographical knowledge, as if he had been by Divine Providence ordained
   surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial orb, and its products,
   minerals, plants, and animals. He was so curious a botanist, that
   besides the specifical distinctions, he made nice and elaborate
   observations, equally useful as entertaining.

   "His memory, though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, was
   capacious and tenacious, insomuch as he remembred all that was
   remarkable in any book that he had read; and not only knew all persons
   again that he had ever seen at any distance of time, but remembred the
   circumstances of their bodies, and their particular discourses and
   speeches.

   "In the latin poets he remembred every thing that was acute and
   pungent; he had read most of the historians, antient and modern,
   wherein his observations were singular, not taken notice of by common
   readers; he was excellent company when he was at leisure, and expressed
   more light than heat in the temper of his brain.

   He had no despotical power over his affections and passions, (that was
   a privilege of original perfection, forfeited by the neglect of the use
   of it;) but as large a political power over them, as any Stoick, or man
   of his time, whereof he gave so great experiment, that he hath very
   rarely been known to have been overcome with any of them. The strongest
   that were found in him, both of the irascible and concupiscible, were
   under the controul of his reason. Of admiration, which is one of them,
   being the only product, either of ignorance, or uncommon knowledge, he
   had more, and less, than other men, upon the same account of his
   knowing more than others; so that tho' he met with many rarities, he
   admired them not so much as others do.

   "He was never seen to be transported with mirth, or dejected with
   sadness; always chearful, but rarely merry, at any sensible rate;
   seldom heard to break a jest; and when he did, he would be apt to blush
   at the levity of it: his gravity was natural without affectation.

   "His modesty was visible in a natural habitual blush, which was
   increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered without any
   observable cause.

   "They that knew no more of him than by the briskness of his writings,
   found themselves deceived in their expectation, when they came in his
   company, noting the gravity and sobriety of his aspect and
   conversation; so free from loquacity, or much talkativeness, that he
   was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse; though when he
   was so, it was always singular, and never trite or vulgar. Parsimonious
   in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as
   little loss as any man in it: when he had any to spare from his
   drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his
   study; so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, he could
   not do nothing.

   "Sir Thomas understood most of the European languages; viz. all that
   are in Hutter's bible, which he made use of. The Latin and Greek he
   understood critically; the Oriental languages, which never were
   vernacular in this part of the world, he thought the use of them would
   not answer the time and pains of learning them; yet had so great a
   veneration for the matrix of them, viz. the Hebrew, consecrated to the
   Oracles of God, that he was not content to be totally ignorant of it;
   tho' very little of his science is to be found in any books of that
   primitive language. And tho' much is said to be written in the
   derivative idioms of that tongue, especially the Arabick, yet he was
   satisfied with the translations, wherein he found nothing was
   admirable.

   "In his religion he continued in the same mind which he had declared in
   his first book, written when he was but thirty years old, his Religio
   Medici, wherein he fully assented to that of the Church of England,
   preferring it before any in the world, as did the learned Grotius. He
   attended the publick service very constantly, when he was not withheld
   by his practice. Never missed the sacrament in his parish, if he were
   in town. Read the best English sermons he could hear of, with liberal
   applause; and delighted not in controversies. In his last sickness,
   wherein he continued about a week's time, enduring great pain of the
   cholick, besides a continual fever, with as much patience as hath been
   seen in any man, without any pretence of Stoical apathy, animosity, or
   vanity of not being concerned thereat, or suffering no impeachment of
   happiness. Nihil agis dolor.

   "His patience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and a sound
   faith of God's Providence, and a meek and humble submission thereunto,
   which he expressed in few words: I visited him near his end, when he
   had not strength to hear or speak much; the last words which I heard
   from him, were, besides some expressions of dearness, that he did
   freely submit to the will of God, being without fear: He had oft
   triumphed over the king of terrors in others, and given many repulses
   in the defence of patients; but when his own turn came, he submitted
   with a meek, rational, and religious courage.

   "He might have made good the old saying of Dat Galenus opes, had he
   lived in a place that could have afforded it. But his indulgence and
   liberality to his children, especially in their travels, two of his
   sons in divers countries, and two of his daughters in France, spent him
   moree a little. He was liberal in his house entertainments, and in his
   charity; he left a comfortable, but no great estate, both to his lady
   and children, gained by his own industry.

   "Such was his sagacity and knowledge of all history, antient and
   modern, and his observations thereupon so singular, that it hath been
   said by them that knew him best, that if his profession, and place of
   abode, would have suited his ability, he would have made an
   extraordinary man for the privy-council, not much inferior to the
   famous Padre, Paulo, the late oracle of the Venetian state.

   "Tho' he were no prophet, nor son of a prophet, yet in that faculty
   which comes nearest it, he excelled, i. e. the stochastick, wherein he
   was seldom mistaken, as to future events, as well publick as private;
   but not apt to discover any presages or superstition."

   It is observable, that he who in his earlier years had read all the
   books against religion, was in the latter part of his life averse from
   controversies. To play with important truths, to disturb the repose of
   established tenets, to subtilize objections, and elude proof, is too
   often the sport of youthful vanity, of which maturer experience
   commonly repents. There is a time, when every wife man is weary of
   raising difficulties only to talk himself with the solution, and
   desires to enjoy truth without the labour or hazard of contest. There
   is, perhaps, no better method of encountering these troublesome
   irruptions of scepticism, with which inquisitive minds are frequently
   harassed, than that which Browne declares himself to have taken: "If
   there arise any doubts in my way, I do forget them; or at least defer
   them, till my better settled judgment and more manly reason be able to
   resolve them: for I perceive, every man's reason is his best OEdipus,
   and will, upon a reasonable truce, find a way "to loose those bonds,
   wherewith the subtilties of error have enchained our more flexible and
   tender judgments."

   The foregoing character may be confirmed and enlarged by many passages
   in the Religio Medici; in which it appears, from Whitefoot's testimony,
   that the author, though no very sparing panegyrist of himself, has not
   exceeded the truth, with respect to his attainments or visible
   qualities.

   There are, indeed, some interior and secret virtues, which a man may
   sometimes have without the knowledge of others; and may sometimes
   assume to himself, without sufficient reasons for his opinion. It is
   charged upon Browne by Dr. Watts, as an instance of arrogant temerity,
   that, after a long detail of his attainments, he declares himself to
   have escaped the first and father-sin of pride." A perusal of the
   Religio Medici will not much contribute to produce a belief of the
   author's exemption from this FATHER-SIN: pride is a vice, which pride
   itself inclines every man to find in others, and to overlook in
   himself.

   As easily may we be mistaken in mating our own courage, as our own
   humility; and, therefore, when Browne shews himself persuaded, that "he
   could lose an arm without a tear, or with a few groans be quartered to
   pieces," I am not sure that he felt in himself any uncommon powers of
   endurance; or, indeed, any thing more than a sudden effervescence of
   imagination, which, uncertain and involuntary as it is, he mistook for
   settled resolution.

   "That there were not many extant, that if in a noble way feared the
   face of death less than himself," he might likewise believe at a very
   easy expence, while death was yet at a distance; but the time will come
   to every human being, when it must be known how well he can bear to
   die; and it has appeared, that our author's fortitude did not desert
   him in the great hour of trial.

   It was observed by some of the remarkers on the Religio Medici, that
   the author was yet alive, and might grow worse as well as better:" it
   is, therefore, happy, that this suspicion can be obviated by a
   testimony given to the continuance of his virtue, at a time when death
   had set him free from danger of change, and his panegyrist from
   temptation to flattery.

   But it is not on the praises of others, but on his own writings, that
   he is to depend for the esteem of posterity; of which he will not
   easily be deprived, while learning shall have any reverence among men:
   for there is no science, in which he does not discover some skill; and
   scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or sacred, abstruse or elegant,
   which he does not appear to have cultivated with success.

   His exuberance of knowledge, and plenitude of ideas, sometimes obstruct
   the tendency of his reasoning, and the clearness of his decisions: on
   whatever subject he employed his mind, there started up immediately so
   many images before him, that he lost one by grasping another. His
   memory supplied him with so many illustrations, parallel or dependent
   notions, that he was always starting into collateral considerations:
   but the spirit and vigour of his pursuit always gives delight; and the
   reader follows him, without reluctance, thro' his mazes, in themselves
   flowery and pleasing, and ending at the point originally in view.

   To have great excellencies, and great faults, "magnæ virtutes nec
   minora vitia, is the poesy," says our author, "of the best natures."
   This poesy may be properly applied to the style of Browne: It is
   vigorous, but rugged; it is learned, but pedantick; it is deep, but
   obscure; it strikes, but does not please; it commands, but does not
   allure: his tropes are harsh, and his combinations uncouth. He fell
   into an age, in which our language began to lose the stability which it
   had obtained in the time of Elizabeth; and was considered by every
   writer as a subject on which he might try his plastick skill, by
   moulding it according to his own fancy. Milton, in consequence of this
   encroaching licence, began to introduce the Latin idiom: and Browne,
   though he gave less disturbance to our structures and phraseology, yet
   poured in a multitude of exotick words; many, indeed, useful and
   significant, which, if rejected, must be supplied by circumlocution,
   such as Commensality for the state of many living at the same table;
   but many superfluous, as a Paralogical for an unreasonable doubt; and
   some so obscure, that they conceal his meaning rather than explain it,
   as Arthritical analogies for parts that serve some animals in the place
   of joints.

   His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture of
   heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms
   originally appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the
   service of another. He must, however, be confessed to have augmented
   our philosophical diction; and in defence of his uncommon words and
   expressions, we must consider, that he had uncommon sentiments, and was
   not content to express in many words that idea for which any language
   could supply a single term.

   But his innovations are sometimes pleasing, and his temerities happy:
   he has many "verba ardentia," forcible expressions, which he would
   never have found, but by venturing to the utmost verge of propriety;
   and flights which would never have been reached, but by one who had
   very little fear of the shame of falling.

   There remains yet an objection against the writings of Browne, more
   formidable than the animadversions of criticism. There are passages,
   from which some have taken occasion to rank him among Deists, and
   others among Atheists. It would be difficult to guess how any such
   conclusion should be formed, had not experience shewn that there are
   two sorts of men willing to enlarge the catalogue of infidels.

   It has been long observed, that an Atheist has no just reason for
   endeavouring conversions; and yet none harass those minds which they
   can influence, with more importunity of solicitation to adopt their
   opinions. In proportion as they doubt the truth of their own doctrines,
   they are desirous to gain the attestation of another understanding; and
   industriously labour to win a proselyte, and eagerly catch at the
   slightest pretence to dignify their sect with a celebrated name. [23]

   The others become friends to infidelity only by unskilful hostility:
   men of rigid orthodoxy, cautious conversation, and religious asperity.
   Among these, it is too frequently the practice, to make in their heat
   concessions to Atheism, or Deism, which their most confident advocates
   had never dared to claim or to hope. A sally of levity, an idle
   paradox, an indecent jest, an unseasonable objection, are sufficient,
   in the opinion of these men, to efface a name from the lists of
   Christianity, to exclude a soul from everlasting life. Such men are so
   watchful to censure, that they have seldom much care to look for
   favourable interpretations of ambiguities, to set the general tenor of
   life against single failures, or to know how soon any slip of
   inadvertency has been expiated by sorrow and retractation; but let fly
   their fulminations, without mercy or prudence, against slight offences
   or casual temerities, against crimes never committed, or immediately
   repented.

   The Infidel knows well, what he is doing. He is endeavouring to supply,
   by authority, the deficiency of his arguments; and to make his cause
   less invidious, by shewing numbers on his side: he will, therefore, not
   change his conduct, till he reforms his principles. But the zealot
   should recollect, that he is labouring, by this frequency of
   excommunication, against his own cause; and voluntarily adding strength
   to the enemies of truth. It must always be the condition of a great
   part of mankind, to reject and embrace tenets upon the authority of
   those whom they think wiser than themselves; and, therefore, the
   addition of every name to infidelity, in some degree invalidates that
   argument upon which the religion of multitudes is necessarily founded.

   Men may differ from each other in many religious opinions, and yet all
   may retain the essentials of Christianity; men may sometimes eagerly
   dispute, and yet not differ much from one another: the rigorous
   persecutors of error, should, therefore, enlighten their zeal with
   knowledge, and temper their orthodoxy with Charity; that Charity,
   without which orthodoxy is vain; Charity that "thinketh no evil," but
   "hopeth all things," and "endureth" all things."

   Whether Browne has been numbered among the contemners of religion, by
   the fury of its friends, or the artifice of its enemies, it is no
   difficult talk to replace him among the most zealous Professors of
   Christianity. He may, perhaps, in the ardour of his imagination, have
   hazarded an expression, which a mind intent upon faults may interpret
   into heresy, if considered apart from the rest of his discourse; but a
   phrase is not to be opposed to volumes: there is scarcely a writer to
   be found, whose profession was not divinity, that has so frequently
   testified his belief of the Sacred Writings, has appealed to them with
   such unlimited submission, or mentioned them with such unvaried
   reverence.

   It is, indeed, somewhat wonderful, that He should be placed without the
   pale of Christianity, who declares, that "he assumes the honourable
   stile of A Christian," not because it is "the religion of his country,"
   but because "having in his riper years and confirmed judgment seen and
   examined all, he finds himself obliged, by the principles of Grace, and
   the law of his own reason, to embrace no other name but this:" Who, to
   specify his persuasion yet more, tells us, that he is of the Reformed
   Religion; of the same belief our Saviour taught, the Apostles
   disseminated, the Fathers authorized, and the Martyrs confirmed:" Who,
   tho' "paradoxical in philosophy, loves in divinity to keep the beaten
   road;" and pleases himself, that "he has no taint of heresy, schism, or
   error:" To whom "where the Scripture is silent, the Church is a text;
   where that speaks, 'tis but a comment; and who uses not the dictates of
   his own reason, but where there is a joint silence of both:" Who
   blesses himself, that he lived not in the days of miracles, when faith
   had been thrust upon him; but enjoys that greater blessing, pronounced
   to all that believe and saw not." He cannot surely be charged with a
   defect of faith, who "believes that our Saviour was dead, and buried,
   and rose again, and desires to see him in his glory:" and who affirms,
   that "this is not much to believe;" that as we have reason, we owe this
   faith unto history;" and that "they only had the advantage of a bold
   and noble faith, who lived before his coming; and, upon obscure
   prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief." Nor can contempt
   of the positive and ritual parts of religion be imputed to him, who
   doubts, whether a good man would refuse a poisoned eucharist; and "who
   would violate his own arm, rather than a church."

   The opinions of every man must be learned from himself: concerning his
   practice, it is safest to trust the evidence of others. Where these
   testimonies concur, no higher degree of historical certainty can be
   obtained; and they apparently concur to prove, that Browne was A
   zealous adherent to the faith of CHRIST, that he lived in obedience to
   his laws, and died in confidence of his mercy.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [1] Life of Sir Thomas Browne, prefixed to the antiquities of Norwich.

   [2] Whitefoot's character of Sir Thomas Browne in a marginal note.

   [3] Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

   [4] Wood's Athenæ Oxoniensis.

   [5] Wood.

   [6] Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

   [7] Ibid.

   [8] Biographia Britannica.

   [9] Letter to Sir Kenelm Digby, prefixed to the Religio Medici, folio
   edit.

   [10] Digby's letter to Browne, prefixed to the Religio Medici, folio
   edit.

   [11] Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

   [12] Merryweather's letter, inserted in the life of Sir Thomas Browne.

   [13] Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

   [14] Wood's Athenæ Oxonienses.

   [15] Wood.

   [16] Whitefoot.

   [17] Howell's letters.

   [18] Religio Medici.

   [19] Life of Sir Thomas Browne.

   [20] Wood, and Life of Thomas Browne.

   [21] At the end of Hydriotaphia.

   [22] Browne's Remains. Whitefoot.

   [23]

   Therefore no hereticks desire to spread

   Their wild opinions like these epicures.

   For so their stagg'ring thoughts are computed,

   And other men's assent their doubt assures.
   Davies.
     __________________________________________________________________

                               CHRISTIAN MORALS.
     __________________________________________________________________

    TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

DAVID EARL OF BUCHAN,

    VISCOUNT AUCHTERHOUSE, LORD CARDROSS
    AND GLENDOVACHIE,
    ONE OP THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF POLICE, AND LORD
    LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTIES OP STIRLING
    AND CLACKMANNAN IN NORTH
    BRITAIN.

   My Lord,

   THE Honour you have done our Family obligeth us to make all just
   Acknowledgments of it: and there is no Form of Acknowledgment in our
   Power, more worthy of your Lordship's Acceptance, than this Dedication
   of the last Work of our Honoured and Learned Father. Encouraged
   hereunto by the knowledge we have of Your Lordship's Judicious Relish
   of universal Learning, and sublime Virtue, we beg the Favour of Your
   Acceptance of it, which will very much oblige our Family in general,
   and Her in particular, who is,

   My Lord,

   Your Lordship's

   most humble Servant,

   Elizabeth Littleton.
     __________________________________________________________________

THE PREFACE.

   IF any one, after he has read Religio Medici, and the ensuing
   Discourse, can make doubt, whether the same person was the author of
   them both, he may be assured by the testimony of Mrs. Littleton, Sir
   Thomas Brown's daughter, who lived with her father when it was composed
   by him; and who, at the time, read it written by his own hand: and also
   by the testimony of others (of whom I am one), who read the manuscript
   of the author, immediately after his death, and who have since read the
   same; from which it hath been faithfully and exactly transcribed for
   the press. The reason why it was not printed sooner is, because it was
   unhappily lost, by being mislay'd among other manuscripts for which
   search was lately made in the presence of the Lord Archbishop of
   Canterbury, of which his Grace, by letter, informed Mrs. Littleton,
   when he sent the manuscript to her. There is nothing printed in the
   discourse, or in the short notes, but what is found in the original
   manuscript of the author, except only where an oversight had made the
   addition or transposition of some words necessary.

   John Jeffrey,

   Arch-Deacon of Norwich
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                               CHRISTIAN MORALS.

PART I.

   TREAD softly and circumspectly in this funambulatory [24] track and
   narrow path of goodness: pursue virtue virtuously: leven not good
   actions nor render virtues disputable. Stain not fair acts with foul
   intentions: maim not uprightness by halting concomitances, nor
   circumstantially deprave substantial goodness.

   Consider whereabout thou art in Cebes's [25] table, or that old
   philosophical pinax [26] of the life of man: whether thou art yet in
   the road of uncertainties; whether thou hast yet entred the narrow
   gate, got up the hill and asperous way, which leadeth unto the house of
   sanity; or taken that purifying potion from the hand of sincere
   erudition, which may send thee clear and pure away unto a virtuous and
   happy life.

   In this virtuous voyage of thy life hull not about like the ark,
   without the use of rudder, mast, or sail, and bound for no port. Let
   not disappointment cause despondency, nor difficulty despair. Think not
   that you are failing from Lima to Manilla, [27] when you may fasten up
   the rudder, and sleep before the wind; but expect rough seas, flaws,
   [28] and contrary blasts: and 'tis well, if by many cross tacks and
   veerings you arrive at the port; for we sleep in lions' skins [29] in
   our progress unto virtue, and we slide not but climb unto it.

   Sit not down in the popular forms and common level of virtues. Offer
   not only peace-offerings but holocausts unto God: where all is due make
   no reserve, and cut not a cummin-seed with the Almighty: to serve Him
   singly to serve ourselves, were too partial a piece of piety; not like
   to place us in the illustrious mansions of glory.
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   REST not in an ovation [30] but a triumph over thy passions. Let anger
   walk hanging down the head; let malice go manicled, and envy fetter'd
   after thee. Behold within thee the long train of thy trophies, not
   without thee. Make the quarrelling Lapithytes sleep, and Centaurs
   within lie quiet. [31] Chain up the unruly legion of thy breast. Lead
   thine own captivity captive, and he Cæsar within thyself.
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   HE that is chast and continent not to impair his strength, or honest
   for fear of contagion, will hardly be heroically virtuous. Adjourn not
   this virtue until that temper, when Cato [32] could lend out his wife,
   and impotent satyrs write satyrs upon lust: but be chast in thy flaming
   days, when Alexander dar'd not trust his eyes upon the fair sisters of
   Darius, and when so many think there is no other way but Origen's.
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   SOW thy art in honesty, and lose not thy virtue by the bad managery of
   it. Be temperate and sober; not to preserve your body in an ability for
   wanton ends; not to avoid the infamy of common transgressors that way,
   and thereby to hope to expiate or palliate obscure and closer vices;
   not to spare your purse, nor simply to enjoy health: but in one word,
   that thereby you may truly serve God, which every sickness will tell
   you you cannot well do without health. The sick man's sacrifice is but
   a lame oblation. Pious treasures laid up in healthful days, plead for
   sick non-performances without which we must needs look back with
   anxiety upon the lost opportunities of health; and may have cause
   rather to envy than pity the ends of penitent publick sufferers, who go
   with healthful prayers unto the last scene of their lives, and in the
   integrity of their faculties [33] return their spirit unto God that
   gave it.
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   BE charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and lose not the glory
   of the mite. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them; and
   think it not enough to be liberal, but munificent. Though a cup of cold
   water from some hand may not be without its reward, yet stick not thou
   for wine and oil for the wounds of the distressed; and treat the poor,
   as our Saviour did the multitude, to the reliques of some baskets.
   Diffuse thy beneficence early, and while thy treasures call thee
   master: there may be an Atropos [34] of thy fortunes before that of thy
   life, and thy wealth cut off before that hour, when all men shall be
   poor; for the justice of death looks equally upon the dead, and Charon
   expects no more from Alexander than from Irus.
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   GIVE not only unto seven, but also unto eight, that is, unto more than
   many. [35] Though to give unto every one that asketh may seem severe
   advice, [36] yet give thou also before asking; that is, where want is
   silently clamorous, and men's necessities not their tongues do loudly
   call for thy mercies. For though sometimes necessitousness be dumb, or
   misery speak not out, yet true charity is sagacious, and will find out
   hints for beneficence. Acquaint thyself with the physiognomy of want,
   and let the dead colours and first lines of necessity suffice to tell
   thee there is an object for thy bounty. Spare not where thou canst not
   easily be prodigal, and fear not to be undone by mercy; for since he
   who hath pity on the poor lendeth unto the Almighty rewarder, who
   observes no ides [37] but every day for his payments, charity becomes
   pious usury, Christian liberality the most thriving industry; and what
   we adventure in a cockboat may return in a carrack unto us. He who thus
   casts his bread upon the water, shall surely find it again; for though
   it falleth to the bottom, it sinks but like the ax of the prophet, to
   rise again unto him.
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   IF avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment. Miserable men
   commiserate not themselves, bowelless unto others, and merciless unto
   their own bowels. Let the fruition of things bless the possession of
   them, and think it more satisfaction to live richly than die rich. For
   since thy good works, not thy goods, will follow thee; since wealth is
   an appertinance of life, and no dead man is rich; to famish in plenty,
   and live poorly, to die rich, were a multiplying improvement in
   madness, and use upon use in folly.
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   TRUST not to the omnipotency of gold, and say not unto it thou art my
   confidence. Kiss not thy hand to that terrestrial sun, nor bore thy ear
   unto its servitude. A slave unto mammon makes no servant unto God.
   Covetousness cracks the sinews of faith; numbs the apprehension of any
   thing above sense; and only affected with the certainty of things
   present, makes a peradventure of things to come; lives but unto one
   world, nor hopes but fears another; makes their own death sweet unto
   others, bitter unto themselves; brings formal sadness, scenical
   mourning, and no wet eyes at the grave.
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   PERSONS lightly dipt, not grain'd [38] in generous honesty, are but
   pale in goodness, and faint hued in integrity. But be thou what thou
   virtuously art, and let not the ocean wash away thy tincture. Stand
   magnetically [39] upon that axis, when prudent simplicity hath fixt
   there; and let no attraction invert the poles of thy honesty. That vice
   may be uneasy and even monstrous unto thee, let iterated good ads and
   long confirmed habits make virtue almost natural, or a second nature in
   thee. Since virtuous superstructions have commonly generous
   foundations, dive into thy inclinations, and early discover what nature
   bids thee to be, or tells thee thou may'st be. They who thus timely
   descend into themselves, and cultivate the good seeds which nature hath
   set in them, prove not shrubs but cedars in their generation. And to be
   in the form of the best of the bad, or the worst of the good, [40] will
   be no satisfaction unto them.
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   MAKE not the consequence of virtue the ends thereof. Be not beneficent
   for a name or cymbal of applause; nor exalt and just in commerce for
   the advantages of trust and credit, which attend the reputation of true
   and punctual dealing: for these rewards, though unsought for, plain
   virtue will bring with her. To have other by-ends in good actions
   sowers laudable performances, which must have deeper roots, motives,
   and instigations, to give them the stamp of virtues.
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   LET not the law of thy country be the non ultra of thy honesty; nor
   think that always good enough which the law will make good. Narrow not
   the law of charity, equity, mercy. Join gospel righteousness with legal
   right. Be not a mere Gamaliel in the faith, but let the sermon in the
   mount be thy Targum [41] unto the law of Sinai.
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   LIVE by old ethicks and the classical rules of honesty. Put no new
   names or notions upon authentick virtues and vices. Think not, that
   morality is ambulatory; that vices in one age are not vices in another;
   or that virtues, which are under the everlasting seal of right reason,
   may be stamped by opinion. And therefore though vicious times invert
   the opinions of things, and set up new ethicks against virtue, yet hold
   thou unto old morality; and rather than follow a multitude to do evil,
   stand like Pompey's pillar conspicuous by thyself, and single in
   integrity. And since the worst of times afford imitable examples of
   virtue; since no deluge of vice is like to be so general but more than
   eight will escape; [42] eye well those heroes who have held their heads
   above water, who have touched pitch and not been defiled, and in the
   common contagion have remained uncorrupted.
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   LET age not envy draw wrinkles on thy cheeks; be content to be envy'd,
   but envy not. Emulation may be plausible and indignation allowable, but
   admit no treaty with that passion which no circumstance can make good.
   A displacency at the good of others because they enjoy it, though not
   unworthy of it, is an absurd depravity, sticking fast unto corrupted
   nature, and often too hard for humility and charity, the great
   suppressors of envy. This surely is a lion not to be strangled but by
   Hercules himself, or the highest stress of our minds, and an atom of
   that power which subdueth all things unto itself.
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   WE not thy humility unto humiliation from adversity, but look humbly
   down in that state when others look upwards upon thee. Think not thy
   own shadow longer than that of others, nor delight to take the altitude
   of thyself. Be patient in the age of pride, when men live by short
   intervals of reason under the dominion of humor and passion, when it's
   in the power of every one to transform thee out of thyself, and run
   thee into the short madness. If you cannot imitate Job, yet come not
   short of Socrates, [43] and those patient Pagans who tired the tongues
   of their enemies, while they perceived they spit their malice at brazen
   walls and statues.
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   LET not the sun in capricorn [44] go down upon thy wrath, but write thy
   wrongs in ashes. Draw the curtain of night upon injuries, shut them up
   in the tower of oblivion, [45] and let them be as though they had not
   been. To forgive our enemies, yet hope that God will punish them, is
   not to forgive enough. To forgive them ourselves, and not to pray God
   to forgive them, is a partial piece of charity. Forgive thine enemies
   totally, and without any reserve that, however, God will revenge thee.
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   WHILE thou so hotly disclaimest the devil, be not guilty of diabolism.
   Fall not into one name with that unclean spirit, nor act his nature
   whom thou so much abhorrest; that is, to accuse, calumniate, backbite,
   whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret others. Degenerous
   depravities, and narrow-minded vices! not only below St. Paul's noble
   Christian but Aristotle's true gentleman. [46] Trust not with some that
   the epistle of St. James is apocryphal, and so read with less fear that
   stabbing truth, that in company with this vice "thy religion is in
   vain." Moses broke the tables, without breaking of the law; but where
   charity is broke, the law itself is shattered, which cannot be whole
   without Love, which is "the fulfilling of it." Look humbly upon thy
   virtues; and though thou art rich in some, yet think thyself poor and
   naked without that crowning grace, which "thinketh no evil, which
   envieth not, which beareth, hopeth, believeth, endureth all things."
   With these sure graces, while busy tongues are crying out for a drop of
   cold water, mutes may be in happiness, and sing the Trisagion [47] in
   heaven.
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   HOWEVER thy understanding may waver in the theories of true and false,
   yet fasten the rudder of thy will, steer straight unto good and fall
   not foul on evil. Imagination is apt to rove, and conjecture to keep no
   bounds. Some have run out so far, as to fancy the stars might be but
   the light of the crystalline heaven shot through perforations on the
   bodies of the orbs. Others more ingeniously doubt whether there hath
   not been a vast tract of land in the Atlantick ocean, which earthquakes
   and violent causes have long ago devoured. Speculative misapprehensions
   may be innocuous, but immorality pernicious; theorical mistakes and
   physical deviations may condemn our judgments, not lead us into
   judgment. But perversity of will, immoral and sinful enormities walk
   with Adraste and Nemesis [48] at their backs, pursue us unto judgment,
   and leave us viciously miserable.
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   BID early defiance unto those vices which are of thine inward family,
   and having a root in thy temper plead a right and propriety in thee.
   Raise timely batteries against those strong holds built upon the rock
   of nature, and make this a great part of the militia of thy life.
   Delude not thyself into iniquities from participation or community,
   which abate the sense but not the obliquity of them. To conceive sins
   less, or less of sins, because others also transgress, were morally to
   commit that natural fallacy of man, to take comfort from society, and
   think adversities less because others also suffer them. The politick
   nature of vice must be opposed by policy; and, therefore, wiser
   homilies project and plot against it: wherein, notwithstanding, we are
   not to rest in generals, or the trite stratagems of art. That may
   succeed with one, which may prove successless with another: there is no
   community or commonweal of virtue: every man must study his own
   oeconomy, and adapt such rules unto the figure of himself.
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   BE substantially great in thyself, and more than thou appearest unto
   others; and let the world be deceived in thee, as they are in the
   lights of heaven. Hang early plummets upon the heels of pride, and let
   ambition have but an epicycle [49] and narrow circuit in thee. Measure
   not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave; and
   reckon thyself above the earth, by the line thou must be contented with
   under it. Spread not into boundless expansions either of designs or
   desires. Think not that mankind liveth but for a few; and that the rest
   are born but to serve those ambitions, which make but flies of men and
   wildernesses of whole nations. Swell not into vehement actions which
   imbroil and confound the earth; but be one of those violent ones which
   force the kingdom of heaven. [50] If thou must needs rule, be Zeno's
   king, [51] and enjoy that empire which every man gives himself. He who
   is thus his own monarch contentedly sways the scepter of himself, not
   envying the glory of crowned heads and elohims of the earth. Could the
   world unite in the practise of that despised train of virtues, which
   the divine ethicks of our Saviour hath so inculcated upon us, the
   furious face of things must disappear; Eden would be yet to be found,
   and the angels might look down, not with pity, but joy upon us.
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   THOUGH the quickness of thine ear were able to reach the noise of the
   moon, which some think it maketh in its rapid revolution; though the
   number of thy ears should equal Argus his eyes; yet stop them all with
   the wise man's wax, [52] and be deaf unto the suggestions of
   tale-bearers, calumniators, pickthank or malevolent delators, who,
   while quiet men sleep, sowing the tares of discord and division,
   distract the tranquillity of charity and all friendly society. These
   are the tongues that set the world on fire, cankers of reputation, and,
   like that of Jonas his gourd, wither a good name in a night. Evil
   spirits may sit still, while these spirits walk about and perform the
   business of hell. To speak more strictly, our corrupted hearts are the
   factories of the devil, which may be at work without his presence; for
   when that circumventing spirit hath drawn malice, envy, and all
   unrighteousness unto well rooted habits in his disciples, iniquity then
   goes on upon its own legs; and if the gate of hell were shut up for a
   time, vice would still be fertile and produce the fruits of hell. Thus
   when God forsakes us, Satan also leaves us: for such offenders he looks
   upon as sure and sealed up, and his temptations then needless unto
   them.
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   ANNIHILATE not the mercies of God by the oblivion of ingratitude: for
   oblivion is a kind of annihilation; and for things to be as though they
   had not been, is like unto never being. Make not thy head a grave, but
   a repository of God's mercies. Though thou hadst the memory of Seneca,
   or Simonides, and conscience the punctual memorist within us, yet trust
   not to thy remembrance in things which need phylacteries. [53] Register
   not only strange, but merciful occurrences. Let Ephemerides not
   Olympiads [54] give thee account of his mercies: let thy diaries stand
   thick with dutiful mementos and asterisks of acknowledgment. And to be
   compleat and forget nothing, date not his mercy from thy nativity; look
   beyond the world, and before the æra of Adam.
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   PAINT not the sepulcher of thy self, and strive not to beautify thy
   corruption. Be not an advocate for thy vices, nor call for many
   hour-glasses [55] to justify thy imperfections. Think not that always
   good which thou thinkest thou canst always make good, nor that
   concealed which the sun doth not behold: that which the sun doth not
   now see, will be visible when the sun is out, and the stars are fallen
   from heaven. Mean while there is no darkness unto conscience; which can
   see without light, and in the deepest obscurity give a clear draught of
   things, which the cloud of dissimulation hath conceal'd from all eyes.
   There is a natural standing court within us, examining, acquitting, and
   condemning at the tribunal of ourselves; wherein iniquities have their
   natural thetas [56] and no nocent is absolved by the verdict of
   himself. [57] And therefore although our transgressions shall be tried
   at the last bar, the process need not be long: for the Judge of all
   knoweth all, and every man will nakedly know himself; and when so few
   are like to plead not guilty, the assize must soon have an end.
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   COMPLY with some humours, bear with others, but serve none. Civil
   complacency consists with decent honesty: Flattery is a juggler, and no
   kin unto sincerity. But while thou maintainest the plain path, and
   scornest to flatter others, fall not into self-adulation, and become
   not thine own parasite. Be deaf unto thyself, and be not betrayed at
   home. Self-credulity, pride, and levity lead unto self-idolatry. There
   is no Damocles [58] like unto self-opinion, nor any Siren to our own
   fawning conceptions. To magnify our minor things, or hug ourselves in
   our apparitions; [59] to afford a credulous ear unto the clawing [60]
   suggestions of fancy; to pass our days in painted mistakes of
   ourselves; and tho' we behold our own blood, [61] to think ourselves
   the sons of Jupiter; [62] are blandishments of self-love, worse than
   outward delusion. By this imposture wise men sometimes are mistaken in
   their elevation, and look above themselves. And fools, which are
   antipodes [63] unto the wise, conceive themselves to be but their
   Perioeci, [64] and in the same parallel with them.
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   BE not a Hercules furens abroad, and a poltron within thyself. To chase
   our enemies out of the field, and be led captive by our vices; to beat
   down our foes, and fall down to our concupiscences; are solecisms in
   moral schools, and no laurel attends them. To well manage our
   affections, and wild horses of Plato, are the highest Circenses: [65]
   and the noblest digladiation [66] is in the theatre of ourselves; for
   therein our inward antagonists, not only like common gladiators, with
   ordinary weapons and down-right blows make at us, but also, like
   retiary and laqueary [67] combatants, with nets, frauds, and
   entanglements, fall upon us. Weapons for such combats are not to be
   forged at Lipara: [68] Vulcan's art doth nothing in this internal
   militia; wherein not the armour of Achilles, but the armature of St.
   Paul, gives the glorious day, and triumphs not leading up into
   capitols, but up into the highest heavens. And, therefore, while so
   many think it the only valour to command and master others, study thou
   the dominion of thyself, and quiet thine own commotions. Let right
   reason be thy Lycurgus, [69] and lift up thy hand unto the law of it:
   move by the intelligences of the superiour faculties, not by the rapt
   of passion, nor merely by that of temper and constitution. They who are
   merely carried on by the wheel of such inclinations, without the hand
   and guidance of sovereign reason, are but the automatous [70] part of
   mankind, rather lived than living, or at least underliving themselves.
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   LET not fortune, which hath no name in Scripture, have any in thy
   divinity. Let Providence, not chance, have the honour of thy
   acknowledgments, and be thy OEdipus in contingences. Mark well the
   paths and winding ways thereof; but be not too wise in the
   construction, or sudden in the application. The hand of Providence
   writes often by abbreviatures, hieroglyphicks or short characters,
   which, like the Laconism [71] on the wall, are not to be made out but
   by a hint or key from that Spirit which indited them. Leave future
   occurrences to their uncertainties, think that which is present thy
   own; and since it is easier to foretel an eclipse, than a soul day, at
   some distance, look for little regular below. Attend with patience the
   uncertainty of things, and what lieth yet unexerted in the chaos of
   futurity. The uncertainty and ignorance of things to come, makes the
   world new unto us by unexpected emergencies; whereby we pass not our
   days in the trite road of affairs affording no novity; for the
   novelizing spirit of man lives by variety, and the new faces of things.
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   THOUGH a contented mind enlargeth the dimension of little things; and
   unto some 'tis wealth enough not to be poor; and others are well
   content, if they be but rich enough to be honest, and to give every man
   his due yet fall not into that obsolete affectation of bravery, to
   throw away thy money, and to reject all honours or honourable stations
   in this courtly and splendid world. Old generosity is superannuated,
   and such contempt of the world out of date. No man is now like to
   refuse the favour of great ones, or be content to say unto princes,
   stand out of my sun. [72] And if any there be of such antiquated
   resolutions, they are not like to be tempted out of them by great ones;
   and 'tis fair if they escape the name of hypocondriacks from the genius
   of latter times, unto whom contempt of the world is the most
   contemptible opinion; and to be able, like Bias, to carry all they have
   about them were to be the eighth wise-man. However, the old tetrick
   philosophers [73] look'd always with indignation upon such a face of
   things; and observing the unnatural current of riches, power, and
   honour in the world, and withal the imperfection and demerit of persons
   often advanced unto them, were tempted unto angry opinions, that
   affairs were ordered more by stars than reason, and that things went on
   rather by lottery than election.
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   IF thy vessel be but small in the ocean of this world, if meanness of
   possessions be thy allotment upon earth, forget not those virtues which
   the great disposer of all bids thee to entertain from thy quality and
   condition; that is, submission, humility, content of mind, and
   industry. Content may dwell in all stations. To be low, but above
   contempt, may be high enough to be happy. But many of low degree may be
   higher than computed, and some cubits above the common commensuration;
   for in all states virtue gives qualifications and allowances, which
   make out defects. Rough diamonds are sometimes mistaken for pebbles;
   and meanness may be rich in accomplishments, which riches in vain
   desire. If our merits be above our stations, if our intrinsecal value
   be greater than what we go for, or our value than our valuation, and if
   we stand higher in God's, than in the Censor's book; [74] it may make
   some equitable balance in the inequalities of this world, and there may
   be no such vast chasm or gulph between disparities as common measures
   determine. The Divine eye looks upon high and low differently from that
   of man. They who seem to stand upon Olympus, [75] and high mounted unto
   our eyes, may be but in the valleys, and low ground unto his; for he
   looks upon those as highest who nearest approach his Divinity, and upon
   those as lowest who are farthest from it.
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   WHEN thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow one eye for
   what is laudable in them, and the balance they have from some
   excellency, which may render them considerable. While we look with fear
   or hatred upon the teeth of the viper, we may behold his eye with love.
   In venemous natures something may be amiable: poisons afford
   antipoisons: nothing is totally, or altogether uselessly bad. Notable
   virtues are sometimes dashed with notorious vices, and in some vicious
   tempers have been found illustrious acts of virtue; which makes such
   observable worth in some actions of king Demetrius, Antonius, and Ahab,
   as are not to be found in the fame kind in Aristides, Numa, or David.
   Constancy, generosity, clemency, and liberality, have been highly
   conspicuous in some persons not mark'd out in other concerns for
   example or imitation. But since goodness is exemplary in all, if others
   have not our virtues, let us not be wanting in theirs; nor scorning
   them for their vices whereof we are free, be condemned by their virtues
   wherein we are deficient. There is dross, alloy, and embasement in all
   human tempers; and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find ophir or
   pure metal in any. For perfection is not, like light, center'd in any
   one body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables at the
   creation, scattered through the whole mass of the earth, no place
   producing all, and almost all some. So that 'tis well, if a perfect man
   can be made out of many men, and, to the perfect eye of God, even out
   of mankind. Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others.
   Could we intimately apprehend the ideated man, and as he flood in the
   intellect of God upon the first exertion by creation, we might more
   narrowly comprehend our present degeneration, and how widely we are
   fallen from the pure exemplar and idea of our nature: for after this
   corruptive elongation from a primitive and pure creation, we are almost
   lost in degeneration; and Adam hath not only fallen from his Creator,
   but we ourselves from Adam, our Tycho [76] and primary generator.
     __________________________________________________________________

   QUARREL not rashly with adversities not yet understood; and overlook
   not the mercies often bound up in them: for we consider not
   sufficiently the good of evils, nor fairly compute the mercies of
   Providence in things afflictive at first hand. The famous Andreas Doria
   being invited to a feast by Aloysio Fieschi with design to kill him,
   just the night before fell mercifully into a fit of the gout and so
   escaped that mischief. When Cato intended to kill himself, from a blow
   which he gave his servant, who would not reach his sword unto him, his
   hand so swell'd that he had much ado to effect his design. Hereby any
   one but a resolved Stoick might have taken a fair hint of
   consideration, and that some merciful genius would have contrived his
   preservation. To be sagacious in such intercurrences is not
   superstition, but wary and pious discretion; and to contemn such hints
   were to be deaf unto the speaking hand of God, wherein Socrates and
   Cardan [77] would hardly have been mistaken.
     __________________________________________________________________

   BREAK not open the gate of destruction, and make no haste or bustle
   unto ruin. Post not heedlessly on unto the non ultra of folly, or
   precipice of perdition. Let vicious ways have their tropicks [78] and
   deflexions, and swim in the waters of sin but as in the Asphaltick
   lake, [79] though smeared and defiled, not to sink to the bottom. If
   thou hast dipt thy foot in the brink, yet venture not over Rubicon.
   [80] Run not into extremities from whence there is no regression. In
   the vicious ways of the world it mercifully falleth out that we become
   not extempore wicked, but it taketh some time and pains to undo
   ourselves. We fall not from virtue, like Vulcan from heaven, in a day.
   Bad dispositions require some time to grow into bad habits; bad habits
   must undermine good, and often repeated acts make us habitually evil:
   so that by gradual depravations, and while we are but staggeringly
   evil, we are not left without parentheses of considerations, thoughtful
   rebukes, and merciful interventions, to recal us unto ourselves. For
   the wisdom of God hath methodiz'd the course of things unto the best
   advantage of goodness, and thinking considerators overlook not the
   tract thereof.
     __________________________________________________________________

   SINCE men and women have their proper virtues and vices; and even twins
   of different sexes have not only distinct coverings in the womb, but
   differing qualities and virtuous habits after; transplace not their
   proprieties, nor confound not their distinctions. Let masculine and
   feminine accomplishments shine in their proper orbs, and adorn their
   respective subjects. However unite not the vices of both sexes in one;
   be not monstrous in iniquity, nor hermaphroditically vitious.
     __________________________________________________________________

   IF generous honesty, valour, and plain dealing, be the cognisance of
   thy family, or charateristick of thy country, hold fast such
   inclinations suckt in with thy first breath, and which lay in the
   cradle with thee. Fall not into transforming degenerations, which under
   the old name create a new nation. Be not an alien in thine own nation;
   bring not Orontes into Tiber; [81] learn the virtues not the vices of
   thy foreign neighbours, and make thy imitation by discretion not
   contagion. Feel something of thyself in the noble acts of thy
   ancestors, and find in thine own genius that of thy predecessors. Rest
   not under the expired merits of others, shine by those of thy own.
   Flame not like the central fire which enlightneth no eyes, which no man
   seeth, and most men think there's no such thing to be seen. Add one ray
   unto the common lustre; add not only to the number but the note of thy
   generation; and prove not a cloud but an asterisk [82] in thy region.
     __________________________________________________________________

   SINCE thou hast an alarum [83] in thy breast, which tells thee thou
   hast a living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour; dull
   not away thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing
   nothing. To strenuous minds there is an inquietude in overquietness,
   and no laboriousness in labour; and to tread a mile after the flow pace
   of a snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, [84] were a
   most tiring pennance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the
   Olympicks. [85] The rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather
   imitable by our thoughts, than our corporeal motions; yet the solemn
   motions of our lives amount unto a greater measure than is commonly
   apprehended. Some few men have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet
   many in the set locomotions and movements of their days have measured
   the circuit of it, and twenty thousand miles have been exceeded by
   them. Move circumspectly not meticulously, [86] and rather carefully
   sollicitous than anxiously sollicitudinous. Think not there is a lion
   in the way, nor walk with leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but
   in all virtuous motions let prudence determine thy measures. Strive not
   to run like Hercules, a furlong in a breath: festination may prove
   precipitation; deliberating delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness
   no slothfulness.
     __________________________________________________________________

   SINCE virtuous actions have their own trumpets, and, without any nose
   from thyself, will have their resound abroad; busy not thy best member
   in the encomium of thyself. Praise is a debt we owe unto the virtues of
   others, and due unto our own from all, whom malice hath not made mutes,
   or envy struck dumb. Fall not, however, into the common prevaricating
   way of self-commendation and boasting, by denoting the imperfections of
   others. He who discommendeth others obliquely, commendeth himself. He
   who whispers their infirmities, proclaims his own exemption from them;
   and, consequently, says, I am not as this publican, or hic niger, [87]
   whom I talk of. Open ostentation and loud vain-glory is more tolerable
   than this obliquity, as but containing some froth no ink, as but
   confining of a personal piece of folly, nor complicated with
   uncharitableness. Superfluously we seek a precarious applause abroad:
   every good man hath his plaudite [88] within himself; and though his
   tongue be fluent, is not without loud cymbals in his breast. Conscience
   will become his panegyrist, and never forget to crown and extol him
   unto himself.
     __________________________________________________________________

   BLESS not thyself only that thou wert born in Athens; [89] but, among
   thy multiplied acknowledgements, lift up one hand unto heaven, that
   thou wert born of honest parents; that modesty, humility, patience, and
   veracity, lay in the same egg, and came into the world with thee. From
   such foundations thou mayst be happy in a virtuous precocity, [90] and
   make an early and long walk in goodness; so mayst thou more naturally
   feel the contrariety of vice unto nature, and resist some by the
   antidote of thy temper. As charity covers, so modesty preventeth a
   multitude of sins; withholding from noon-day vices and brazen-brow'd
   iniquities, from sinning on the house-top, and painting our follies
   with the rays of the sun. Where this virtue reigneth, though vice may
   show its head, it cannot be in its glory. Where shame of sin sets, look
   not for virtue to arise; for when modesty taketh wing, Astræa [91] goes
   soon after.
     __________________________________________________________________

   THE heroical vein of mankind runs much in the soldiery, and courageous
   part of the world; and in that form we oftenest find men above men.
   History is full of the gallantry of that tribe; and when we read their
   notable acts, we easily find what a difference there is between a life
   in Plutarch [92] and in Laërtius. [93] Where true fortitude dwells,
   loyalty, bounty, friendship, and fidelity may be found. A man may
   confide in persons constituted for noble ends, who dare do and suffer,
   and who have a hand to burn for their country and their friend. [94]
   Small and creeping things are the product of petty souls. He is like to
   be mistaken, who makes choice of a covetous man for a friend, or
   relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltron friendship. Pitiful things
   are only to be found in the cottages of such breath; but bright
   thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity, bounty, and generous
   honesty are the gems of noble minds; wherein, to derogate from none,
   the true heroick English gentleman hath no peer.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [24] Narrow, like the walk of a rope-dancer.

   [25] The table or picture of Cebes, an allegorical representation of
   the characters and conditions of mankind; which is translated by Mr.
   Collier, and added to the meditations of Antoninus.

   [26] Picture.

   [27] Over the pacifick ocean, in the course of the ship which now sails
   from Acapulco to Manilla, perhaps formerly from Lima, or more properly
   from Callao, Lima not being a seaport.

   [28] "Sudden gusts, or violent attacks of bad weather."

   [29] That is, "in armour, in a state of military vigilance." One of the
   Grecian chiefs used to represent open force by the "lion's skin," and
   policy by the "fox's tail."

   [30] Ovation, a petty and minor kind of triumph. Note to the first
   edition.

   [31] That is, "thy turbulent and irascible passions." For the
   Lapithytes and Centaurs, see Ovid.

   [32] The Censor, who is frequently confounded, and by Pope amongst
   others, with Cato of Utica.

   [33] "With their faculties unimpaired."

   [34] Atropos is the lady of destiny that cuts the thread of life.

   [35] Ecclesiasticus.

   [36] Luke.

   [37] ' The ides was the time when money lent out at interest was
   commonly repaid.

   Foenerator Alphius

   Suam religit Idibus pecuniam,

   Quætrit calendis ponere.
   Hor.

   [38] Not deeply tinged, not died in grain.

   [39] That is, "with a position as immutable as that of the magnetical
   axis," which is popularly supposed to be invariably parallel to the
   meridian, or to stand exactly north and south.

   [40] Optimi malorum pessimi bonorum. First edit.

   [41] A paraphrase or amplification.

   [42] Alluding to the flood of Noah.

   [43]

   --Dulcique fenex vicinus Hymetto,

   Qui partem acceptæ sæva inter vincla cicutæ,

   Accusatori nollet dare.
   Juv.

   Not so mild Thales, nor Chrysippus thought;

   Nor the good man who drank the pois'nous draught

   With mind serene, and could not wish to see

   His vile accuser drink as deep as he:

   Exalted Socrates!--
   Creech.

   [44] Even when the days are shortest. First edit.

   [45] Alluding unto the tower of oblivion mentioned by Procopius, which
   was the name of a tower of imprisonment among the Persians: whoever was
   put therein was as it were buried alive, and it was death for any but
   to name him. First edit.

   [46] See Aritiotle's Ethicks, chapter of Magnanimity. Note to the first
   edit.

   [47] Holy, holy, holy. First edit.

   [48] The powers of vengeance.

   [49] An epicycle is a small revolution made by one planet in the wider
   orbit of another planet. The meaning is, "Let not ambition form thy
   circle of action, but move upon other principles; and let ambition only
   operate as something extrinsick and adventitious."

   [50] Matthew xi.

   [51] That is, "the king of the Stoics," whole founder was Zeno, and who
   held, that the wife man alone had power and royalty.

   [52] Alluding to the Dory of Ulysses, who stopped the ears of his
   companions with wax when they passed by the Sirens.

   [53] A phylactery is a writing bound upon the forehead, containing
   something to be kept constantly in mind. This was practised by the
   Jewish doctors with regard to the Mosaic law.

   [54] Particular journals of every day, not abstracts comprehending
   several years under one notation. An Ephemeris is a diary, an Olympiad
   is the space of four years.

   [55] That is, "do not speak much or long in justification of "thy
   faults." The antient pleaders talked by a Clepsydra, or measurer of
   time.

   [56] Th a theta inscribed upon the judge's tessera or ballot was a mark
   for death or capital condemnation.

   [57]

   --Se

   Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.
   Juv.

   [58] Damocles was a flatterer of Dionysius.

   [59] Appearances without realities.

   [60] Tickling, flattering. A clawback is an old word for a flatterer.
   Jewel calls some writers for popery "the pope's clawbacks."

   [61] That is, "though we bleed when we are wounded, though we find in
   ourselves the imperfections of humanity."

   [62] As Alexander the Great did. First edit.

   [63] Opposites.

   [64] Only placed at a distance in the same line.

   [65] Circenses were Roman horse-races.

   [66] Fencing-match.

   [67] The Retiarius or Laquearius was a prize-fighter, who entangled his
   opponent in a net, which by some dexterous management he threw upon
   him.

   [68] The Liparæan islands, near Italy, being volcanos, were fabled to
   contain the forges of the Cyclops.

   [69] Thy lawgiver.

   [70] Moved not by choice, but by some mechanical impulse.

   [71] The short sentence written on the wall of Belshazzar. See Daniel.

   [72] This was the answer made by Diogenes to Alexander, who asked him
   what he had to request.

   [73] Sour, morose.

   [74] The book in which the Census, or account of every man's estate,
   was registered among the Romans.

   [75] An high mountain.

   [76] Ho tuchon qui facit, Ho tuchon qui adeptus est: he that makes, or
   he that possesses; as Adam might be said to contain within him the race
   of mankind.

   [77] Socrates, and Cardan, perhaps in imitation of him, talked of an
   attendant spirit or genius, that hinted from time to time how they
   should act.

   [78] The tropick is the point where the sun turns back.

   [79] The lake of Sodom; the waters of which being very salt, and,
   therefore, heavy, will scarcely suffer an animal to sink.

   [80] The river, by crossing which Cæsar declared war against the
   senate.

   [81] In Tiberim defluxit Orontes: "Orontes has mingled her stream with
   the Tiber," says Juvenal, speaking of the confluence of foreigners to
   Rome.

   [82] A small star.

   [83] The motion of the heart, which beats about sixty times in a
   minute; or, perhaps, the motion of respiration, which is nearer to the
   number mentioned.

   [84] An animal called more commonly the Sloth, which is said to be
   several days in climbing a tree.

   [85] The Olympick games, of which the race was one of the chief.

   [86] Timidly.

   [87] Hic niger est, hunc to Romane caveto. Hor. First edit.


   This man is vile; here, Roman, fix your mark;

   His soul is black, as his complexion's dark.

   Francis.

   [88] Plaudite was the term by which the antient theatrical performers
   solicited a clap.

   [89] As Socrates did. Athens a place of learning and civility. First
   edit.

   [90] A ripeness preceding the usual time.

   [91] Astræa Goddess of justice and consequently of all virtue. First
   edit.

   [92] Who wrote the lives, for the most part, of warriors.

   [93] Who wrote the lives of philosophers.

   [94] Like Mutius Sævola.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHRISTIAN MORALS.

PART II.

   PUNISH not thyself with pleasure; glut not thy sense with palative
   delights; nor revenge the contempt of temperance by the penalty of
   satiety. Were there an age of delight or any pleasure durable, who
   would not honour Volupia? but the race of delight is sport, and
   pleasures have mutable faces. The pleasures of one age are not
   pleasures in another, and their lives fall short of our own. Even in
   our sensual days, the strength of delight [95] is in its seldomness or
   rarity, and sting in its satiety: mediocrity is its life, and
   immoderacy its confusion. The luxurious emperors of old inconsiderately
   satiated themselves with the dainties of sea and land, till, wearied
   through all varieties, their refections became a study unto them, and
   they were fain to feed by invention: novices in true Epicurism! which
   by mediocrity, paucity, quick and healthful appetite, makes delights
   smartly acceptable; whereby Epicurus himself found Jupiter's brain [96]
   in a piece of Cytheridian cheese, and the tongues of nightingales [97]
   in a dish of onions. Hereby healthful and temperate poverty hath the
   start of nauseating luxury; unto whose clear and naked appetite every
   meal is a feast, and in one single dish the first course of Metellus;
   [98] who are cheaply hungry, and never lose their hunger, or advantage
   of a craving appetite, because obvious food contents it; while Nero,
   [99] half famish'd, could not feed upon a piece of bread, and, lingring
   after his snowed water, hardly got down an ordinary cup of Calda. [100]
   By such circumscriptions of pleasure the contemned philosophers
   reserved unto themselves the secret of delight, which the Helluo's
   [101] of those days lost in their exorbitances. In vain we study
   delight: it is at the command of every sober mind, and in every sense
   born with us: but nature, who teacheth us the rule of pleasure,
   instructeth also in the bounds thereof, and where its line expireth.
   And therefore temperate minds, not pressing their pleasures until the
   sting appeareth, enjoy their contentations contentedly, and without
   regret, and so escape the folly of excess, to be pleased unto
   displacency.
     __________________________________________________________________

   BRING candid eyes unto the perusal of men's works, and let not Zoilism
   [102] or detraction blast well-intended labours. He that endureth no
   faults in men's writings must only read his own, wherein for the most
   part all appeareth white. Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition,
   and human lapses, may make not only moles but warts in learned authors;
   who, notwithstanding, being judged by the capital matter, admit not of
   disparagement. I should unwillingly affirm that Cicero was but slightly
   versed in Homer, because in his work "De Gloria" he ascribed those
   verses unto Ajax, which were delivered by Hector. What if Plautus in
   the account of Hercules mistaketh nativity for conception? Who would
   have mean thoughts of Apollinaris Sidonius, who seems to mistake the
   river Tigris for Euphrates? and though a good historian and learned
   bishop of Avergne had the misfortune to be out in the story of David,
   making mention of him when the ark was sent back by the Philistins upon
   a cart; which was before his time. Though I have no great opinion of
   Machiavel's learning, yet I shall not presently say that he was but a
   novice in Roman history, because he was mistaken in placing Commodus
   after the emperor Severus. Capital truths are to be narrowly eyed;
   collateral lapses and circumstantial deliveries not to be too strictly
   sifted. And if the substantial subject be well forged out, we need not
   examine the sparks which irregularly fly from it.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LET well-weighed considerations, not stiff and peremptory assumptions,
   guide thy discourses, pen, and actions. To begin or continue our works
   like Trismegistus of old, "verum certè verum atque verissimum est,"
   [103] would sound arrogantly unto present ears in this strict enquiring
   age; wherein, for the most part, probably, and perhaps, will hardly
   serve to mollify the spirit of captious contradictors. If Cardan faith
   that a parrot is a beautiful bird, Scaliger will set his wits o' work
   to prove it a deformed animal. The compage of all physical truths is
   not so closely jointed, but opposition may find intrusion; nor always
   so closely maintained, as not to suffer attrition. Many positions seem
   quodlibetically [104] constituted, and like a Delphian blade [105] will
   cut on both sides. Some truths seem almost falshoods, and some
   falshoods almost truths; wherein falshood and truth seem almost
   æquilibriously stated, and but a few grains of distinction to bear down
   the balance. Some have digged deep, yet glanced by the royal vein;
   [106] and a man may come unto the Pericardium, [107] but not the heart
   of truth. Besides, many things are known, as some are seen, that is by
   Parallaxis, [108] or at some distance from their true and proper
   beings, the superficial regard of things having a different aspect from
   their true and central natures. And this moves sober pens unto
   suspensory and timorous assertions, nor presently to obtrude them as
   Sibyls' leaves, [109] which after considerations may find to be but
   solious apparances, and not the central and vital interiors of truth.
     __________________________________________________________________

   VALUE the judicious, and let not mere acquests in minor parts of
   learning gain thy preexistimation. 'Tis an unjust way of compute, to
   magnify a weak head for some Latin abilities; and to undervalue a solid
   judgment, because he knows not the genealogy of Hector. When that
   notable king of France [110] would have his son to know but one
   sentence in Latin, had it been a good one, perhaps it had been enough.
   Natural parts and good judgments rule the world. States are not
   governed by ergotisms. [111] Many have ruled well, who could not,
   perhaps, define a commonwealth; and they who understand not the globe
   of the earth, command a great part of it. Where natural logick prevails
   not, artificial too often faileth. Where nature fills the sails, the
   vessel goes smoothly on; and when judgment is the pilot, the ensurance
   need not be high. When industry builds upon nature, we may expel
   pyramids: where that foundation is wanting, the structure must be low.
   They do most by books, who could do much without them; and he that
   chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial man.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LET thy studies be free as thy thoughts and contemplations: but fly not
   only upon the wings of imagination; join sense unto reason, and
   experiment unto speculation, and so give life unto embryon truths, and
   verities yet in their chaos. There is nothing more acceptable unto the
   ingenious world, than this noble eluctation [112] of truth; wherein,
   against the tenacity of prejudice and prescription, this century now
   prevaileth. What libraries of new volumes aftertimes will behold, and
   in what a new world of knowledge the eyes of our posterity may be
   happy, a few ages may joyfully declare; and is but a cold thought unto
   those, who cannot hope to behold this exantlation of truth, or that
   obscured virgin half out of the pit: which might make some content with
   a commutation of the time of their lives, and to commend the fancy of
   the Pythagorean metempsychosis; [113] whereby they might hope to enjoy
   this happiness in their third or fourth selves, and behold that in
   Pythagoras, which they now but foresee in Euphorbus. [114] The world,
   which took but six days to make, is like to take six thousand to make
   out: meanwhile old truths voted down begin to resume their places, and
   new ones arise upon us; wherein there is no comfort in the happiness of
   Tully's Elizium, [115] or any satisfaction from the ghosts of the
   antients, who knew so little of what is now well known. Men disparage
   not antiquity, who prudently exalt new enquiries; and make not them the
   judges of truth, who were but fellow enquirers of it. Who can but
   magnify the endeavours of Aristotle, and the noble start which learning
   had under him; or less than pity the slender progression made upon such
   advantages? while many centuries were lost in repetitions and
   transcriptions sealing up the book of knowledge. And therefore rather
   than to swell the leaves of learning by fruitless repetitions, to sing
   the fame song in all ages, nor adventure at essays beyond the attempt
   of others, many would be content that some would write like Helmont or
   Paracelsus; [116] and be willing to endure the monstrosity of some
   opinions, for divers singular notions requiting such aberrations.
     __________________________________________________________________

   DESPISE not the obliquities of younger ways, nor despair of better
   things whereof there is yet no prospect. Who would imagine that
   Diogenes, who in his younger days was a falsifier of money, should in
   the after-course of his life be so great a contemner of metal? Some
   Negros who believe the resurrection, think that they shall rise white.
   [117] Even in this life, regeneration may imitate resurrection; our
   black and vicious tinctures may wear off, and goodness clothe us with
   candour. Good admonitions knock not always in vain. There will be
   signal examples of God's mercy, and the angels must not want their
   charitable rejoices for the conversion of lost sinners. Figures of most
   angles do nearest approach unto circles, which have no angles at all.
   Some may be near unto goodness, who are conceived far from it; and many
   things happen, not likely to ensue from any promises of antecedencies.
   Culpable beginnings have found commendable conclusions, and infamous
   courses pious retractations. Detestable sinners have proved exemplary
   converts on earth, and may be glorious in the apartment of Mary
   Magdalen in heaven. Men are not the fame through all divisions of their
   ages: time, experience, self-reflexions, and God's mercies, make in
   some well-temper'd minds a kind of translation before death, and men to
   differ from themselves as well as from other persons. Hereof the old
   world afforded many examples to the infamy of latter ages, wherein men
   too often live by the rule of their inclinations; so that, without any
   astral prediction, the first day gives the last: [118] men are commonly
   as they were; or rather, as bad dispositions run into worser habits,
   the evening doth not crown, but sowerly conclude the day.
     __________________________________________________________________

   IF the Almighty will not spare us according to his merciful
   capitulation at Sodom; if his goodness please not to pass over a great
   deal of bad for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us in the
   lump; there is slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption of
   fulfilling half his will, either in persons or nations: they who excel
   in some virtues being so often defective in others; few men driving at
   the extent and amplitude of goodness, but computing themselves by their
   best parts, and others by their worst, are content to rest in those
   virtues which others commonly want. Which makes this speckled face of
   honesty in the world; and which was the imperfection of the old
   philosophers and great pretenders unto virtue, who well declining the
   gaping vices of intemperance, incontinency, violence and oppression,
   were yet blindly peccant in iniquities of closer faces, were envious,
   malicious, contemners, scoffers, censurers, and stuft with vizard
   vices, no less depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion of
   man. For envy, malice, hatred, are the qualities of Satan, close and
   dark like himself; and where such brands smoke, the soul cannot be
   white. Vice may be had at all prices; expensive and costly iniquities,
   which make the noise, cannot be every man's sins: but the soul may be
   fouly inquinated [119] at a very low rate; and a man may be cheaply
   vicious, to the perdition of himself.
     __________________________________________________________________

   OPINION rides upon the neck of reason; and men are happy, wise, or
   learned, according as that empress shall set them down in the register
   of reputation. However, weigh not thyself in the scales of thy own
   opinion, but let the judgment of the judicious be the standard of thy
   merit. Self-estimation is a flatterer too readily intitling us unto
   knowledge and abilities, which others sollicitously labour after, and
   doubtfully think they attain. Surely, such confident tempers do pass
   their days in best tranquillity, who, resting in the opinion of their
   own abilities, are happily gull'd by such contentation; wherein pride,
   self-conceit, confidence, and opiniatrity, will hardly suffer any to
   complain of imperfection. To think themselves in the right, or all that
   right, or only that, which they do or think, is a fallacy of high
   content; though others laugh in their sleeves, and look upon them as in
   a deluded state of judgment: wherein, notwithstanding, 'twere but a
   civil piece of complacency to suffer them to sleep who would not wake,
   to let them rest in their securities, nor by dissent or opposition to
   stagger their contentments.
     __________________________________________________________________

   SINCE [120] the brow speaks often true, since eyes and noses have
   tongues, and the countenance proclaims the heart and inclinations; let
   observation so far instruct thee in physiognomical lines, as to be some
   rule for thy distinction, and guide for thy affection unto such as look
   most like men. Mankind, methinks, is comprehended in a few faces, if we
   exclude all visages which any way participate of symmetries and schemes
   of look common unto other animals. For as though man were the extra of
   the world, in whom all were "in coagulato," [121] which in their forms
   were "in soluto," [122] and at extension; we often observe that men do
   most act those creatures, whose constitution, parts, and complexion do
   most predominate in their mixtures. This is a corner-stone in
   physiognomy, and holds some truth not only in particular persons but
   also in whole nations. There are, therefore, provincial faces, national
   lips and noses, which testify not only the natures of those countries,
   but of those which have them elsewhere. Thus we may make England the
   whole earth, dividing it not only into Europe, Asia, Africa, but the
   particular regions thereof; and may in some latitude affirm, that there
   are Ægyptians, Scythians, Indians among us, who, though born in
   England, yet carry the faces and air of those countries, and are also
   agreeable and correspondent unto their natures. Faces look uniformly
   unto our eyes: how they appear unto some animals of a more piercing or
   differing sight, who are able to discover the inequalities, rubbs, and
   hairiness of the skin, is not without good doubt: and, therefore, in
   reference unto man, Cupid is said to be blind. Affection should not be
   too sharp-eyed, and love is not to be made by magnifying glasses. If
   things were seen as they truly are, the beauty of bodies would be much
   abridged. And, therefore, the wise Contriver hath drawn the pictures
   and outsides of things softly and amiably unto the natural edge of our
   eyes, not leaving them able to discover those uncomely asperities,
   which make oyster-shells in good faces, and hedghogs even in Venus's
   moles.
     __________________________________________________________________

   COURT not felicity too far, and weary not the favourable hand of
   fortune. Glorious actions have their times, extent, and non ultra's. To
   put no end unto attempts were to make prescription of successes, and to
   bespeak unhappiness at the last: for the line of our lives is drawn
   with white and black vicissitudes, wherein the extremes hold seldom one
   complexion. That Pompey should obtain the surname of great at
   twenty-five years, that men in their young and alive days should be
   fortunate and perform notable things, is no observation of deep wonder;
   they having the strength of their fates before them, nor yet ailed
   their parts in the world for which they were brought into it: whereas
   men of years, matured for counsels and designs, seem to be beyond the
   vigour of their active fortunes, and high exploits of life,
   providentially ordained unto ages best agreeable unto them. And,
   therefore, many brave men finding their fortune grow faint, and feeling
   its declination, have timely withdrawn themselves from great attempts,
   and so escaped the ends of mighty men, disproportionable to their
   beginnings. But magnanimous thoughts have so dimmed the eyes of many,
   that forgetting the very essence of fortune, and the vicissitude of
   good and evil, they apprehend no bottom in felicity; and so have been
   frill tempted on unto mighty actions, reserved for their destructions.
   For fortune lays the plot of our adversities in the foundation of our
   felicities, blessing us in the first quadrate, [123] to blast us more
   sharply in the last. And since in the highest felicities there lieth a
   capacity of the lowest miseries, she hath this advantage from our
   happiness to make us truly miserable: for to become acutely miserable
   we are to be first happy. Affliction smarts most in the most happy
   state, as having somewhat in it of Bellisarius at beggars bush, or
   Bajazet in the grate. [124] And this the fallen angels severely
   understand; who having acted their first part in heaven, are made
   sharply miserable by transition, and more afflictively feel the
   contrary state of hell.
     __________________________________________________________________

   CARRY no careless eye upon the unexpected scenes of things; but ponder
   the acts of Providence in the publick ends of great and notable men,
   set out unto the view of all for no common memorandums. The tragical
   exits and unexpected periods of some eminent persons, cannot but amuse
   considerate observators; wherein, notwithstanding, most men seem to see
   by extramission, [125] without reception or self-reflexion, and
   conceive themselves unconcerned by the fallacy of their own exemption:
   whereas, the mercy of God hath singled out but few to be the signals of
   his justice, leaving the generality of mankind to the pædagogy of
   example. But the inadvertency of our natures not well apprehending this
   favourable method and merciful decimation, [126] and that he sheweth in
   some what others also deserve; they entertain no sense of his hand
   beyond the stroke of themselves. Whereupon the whole becomes
   necessarily punished, and the contrasted hand of God extended unto
   universal judgments: from whence, nevertheless, the stupidity of our
   tempers receives but faint impressions, and in the most tragical state
   of tunes holds but starts of good motions. So that to continue us in
   goodness there must be iterated returns of misery, and a circulation in
   afflictions is necessary. And since we cannot be wise by warnings;
   since plagues are insignificant, except we be personally plagued;
   since, also, we cannot be punish'd unto amendment by proxy or
   commutation, nor by vicinity, but contraction; there is an unhappy
   necessity that we must smart in our own skins, and the provoked arm of
   the Almightly must fall upon ourselves. The capital sufferings of
   others are rather our monitions than acquitments. There is but one who
   died salvifically [127] for us, and able to say unto death, hitherto
   shalt thou go and no farther; only one enlivening death, which makes
   gardens of graves, and that which was sowed in corruption to arise and
   flourish in glory: when death itself shall die, and living shall have
   no period; when the damned than mourn at the funeral of death; when
   life not death shall be the wages of sin; when the second death shall
   prove a miserable life, and destruction shall be courted.
     __________________________________________________________________

   ALTHOUGH their thoughts may seem too severe, who think that few
   ill-natur'd men go to heaven; yet it may be acknowledged that
   good-natur'd persons are best founded for that place; who enter the
   world with good dispositions and natural graces, more ready to be
   advanced by impressions from above, and christianized unto pieties; who
   carry about them plain and down-right dealing minds, humility, mercy,
   charity, and virtues acceptable unto God and man. But whatever success
   they may have as to heaven, they are the acceptable men on earth, and
   happy is he who hath his quiver full of them for his friends. These are
   not the dens wherein falshood lurks, and hypocrisy hides its head;
   wherein frowardness makes its nest; or where malice, hard-heartedness,
   and oppression love to dwell; not those by whom the poor get little,
   and the rich some time lose all; men not of retracted looks, but who
   carry their hearts in their faces, and need not to be look'd upon with
   perspectives; not sordidly or mischievously ingrateful; who cannot
   learn to ride upon the neck of the afflicted, nor load the heavy laden,
   but who keep the temple of Janus shut by peaceable and quiet tempers;
   [128] who make not only the best friends, but the best enemies, as
   easier to forgive than offend, and ready to pass by the second offence
   before they avenge the first; who make natural royalists, obedient
   subjects, kind and merciful princes, verified in our own, one of the
   best-natur'd kings of this throne. Of the old Roman emperors the best
   were the best-natur'd; though they made but a small number, and might
   be writ in a ring. Many of the rest were as bad men as princes;
   humourists rather than of good humours; and of good natural parts
   rather than of good natures, which did but arm their bad inclinations,
   and make them wittily wicked.
     __________________________________________________________________

   WITH what shift and pains we come into the world, we remember not; but
   'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it. Many have studied
   to exasperate the ways of death, but fewer hours have been spent to
   soften that necessity. That the smoothest way unto the grave is made by
   bleeding, as common opinion presumeth, beside the sick and fainting
   languors which accompany that effusion, the experiment in Lucan and
   Seneca [129] will make us doubt; under which the noble Stoick so deeply
   laboured, that, to conceal his affliction, he was fain to retire from
   the sight of his wife, and not ashamed to implore the merciful hand of
   his physician to shorten his misery therein. Ovid, [130] the old
   heroes, and the Stoicks, who were so afraid of drowning, as dreading
   thereby the extinction of their soul, which they conceived to be a
   fire, stood probably in fear of an easier way of death; wherein the
   water, entring the possessions of air, makes a temperate suffocation,
   and kills as it were without a fever. Surely many, who have had the
   spirit to destroy themselves, have not been ingenious in the
   contrivance thereof. 'Twas a dull way practised by Themistocles, to
   overwhelm himself with bulls-blood, [131] who, being an Athenian, might
   have held an easier theory of death from the state potion of his
   country; from which Socrates in Plato seemed not to suffer much more
   than from the fit of an ague. Cato is much to be pitied, who mangled
   himself with poniards; and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his
   delivery, not in the point but the pummel [132] of his sword.

   The Egyptians were merciful contrivers, who destroyed their malefactors
   by asps, charming their senses into an invincible sleep, and killing as
   it were with Hermes his rod. [133] The Turkish emperor, [134] odious
   for other cruelty, was herein a remarkable master of mercy, killing his
   favourite in his sleep, and sending him from the shade into the house
   of darkness. He who had been thus destroyed would hardly have bled at
   the presence of his destroyer: when men are already dead by metaphor,
   and pass but from one sleep unto another, wanting herein the eminent
   part of severity, to feel themselves to die; and escaping the sharpest
   attendant of death, the lively apprehension thereof. But to learn to
   die, is better than to study the ways of dying. Death will find Tome
   ways to untie or cut the most gordian knots of life, and make men's
   miseries as mortal as themselves: whereas evil spirits, as undying
   substances, are unseparable from their calamities; and, therefore, they
   everlastingly struggle under their anguftias, [135] and bound up with
   immortality can never get out of themselves.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [95] Voluptates commendat rarior usus.

   [96] Cerebrum Jovis, for a delicious bit. First edit.

   [97] A dish used among the luxurious of antiquity.

   [98] Metellus his riotous pontifical supper, the great variety whereat
   is to be seen in Macrobius. First edit. The supper was not given by
   Metellus, but by Lentulus when he was made priest of Mars, and recorded
   by Metellus.

   [99] Nero in his flight. Sueton. First edit.

   [100] Warm water. Caldæ gelidæque minister. First edit.

   [101] Gluttons.

   [102] From Zoilus the calumniator of Homer.

   [103] In Tabula Smaragdina. First edit. "It is true, certainly true,
   true in the highest degree."

   [104] Determinable on either side.

   [105] The Delphian sword became proverbial, not because it cut on both
   sides, but because it was used to different purposes.

   [106] I suppose the main vein of a mine.

   [107] The integument of the heart.

   [108] The parallax of a star is the difference between its real and
   apparent place.

   [109] On which the Sibyl wrote her oraculous answers. VIRGIL.

   [110] Lewis the eleventh. Qui nescit dissimulare nescit Regnare. First
   edit.

   [111] Conclusions deduced according to the forms of logick.

   [112] Forcible eruption.

   [113] Transmigration of the soul from body to body,

   [114] Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempore belli
   Panthoides Euphorbus eram.--Ovid. Note to the first edit.

   [115] Who comforted himself that he should there converse with the old
   Philosophers. First edit.

   [116] Wild and enthusiastick authors of romantick chymystry.

   [117] Mandelslo's travels.

   [118] Primusque dies dedit extremum. First edit.

   [119] Defiled.

   [120] This is a very fanciful and indefensible section.

   [121] "In a congealed or compressed mass."

   [122] "In a state of expansion and separation."

   [123] That is, "in the first part of our time," alluding to the four
   quadratures of the moon.

   [124] Bellisarius, after he had gained many victories, is said to have
   been reduced, by the displeasure of the emperor, to actual beggary:
   Bajazet, made captive by Tamerlane, is reported to have been shut up in
   a cage. It may somewhat gratify those who deserve to be gratified, to
   inform them that both these stories are FALSE.

   [125] By the passage of sight from the eye to the object.

   [126] The selection of every tenth man for punishment, a practice
   sometimes used in general mutinies.

   [127] "So as to procure salvation."

   [128] The temple of Janus among the Romans was shut in time of peace,
   and opened at a declaration of war.

   [129] Seneca, having opened his veins, found the blood flow so slowly,
   and death linger so long, that he was forced to quicken it by going
   into a warm bath.

   [130] Demito naufragium, mors mihi munus erit. Note to the first edit.

   [131] Plutarch's lives. Note to the first edit.

   [132] I Pummel, wherein he is said to have carried something, whereby
   upon a struggle or despair he might deliver himself from all
   misfortunes. First edit. Juvenal says, it was carried in a ring:--

     Cannarum vindex, et tanti sanguinis ultor, Annulus.--

     Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar,
     Are doom'd t' avenge the tedious bloody war,
     But poison drawn thro' a ring's hollow plate.

     Dryden.

   [133] Which procured sleep by a touch.

   [134] Solyman. Turkish history. Note to the first edit.

   [135] Agonies.
     __________________________________________________________________

CHRISTIAN MORALS.

PART III.

   TIS hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to propose for
   example. Some have been far more approveable than others; but virtue
   and vice, panegyricks and satyrs, scatteringly to be found in all.
   History sets down not only things laudable, but abominable; things
   which should never have been, or never have been known: so that noble
   patterns must be fetched here and there from single persons, rather
   than whole nations; and from all nations, rather than any one. The
   world was early bad, and the first sin the most deplorable of any. The
   younger world afforded the oldest men, and perhaps the best and the
   worst, when length of days made virtuous habits heroical and
   immoveable, vicious, inveterate, and irreclaimable. And since 'tis said
   the imaginations of their hearts were evil, only evil, and continually
   evil; it may be feared that their sins held pace with their lives; and
   their longevity swelling their impieties, the longanimity of God would
   no longer endure such vivacious abominations. Their impieties were
   surely of a deep dye, which required the whole element of water to wash
   them away, and overwhelmed their memories with themselves; and so shut
   up the first windows of time, leaving no histories of those longevous
   generations, when men might have been properly historians, when Adam
   might have read long lectures unto Methuselah, and Methuselah unto
   Noah. For had we been happy in just historical accounts of that
   unparallel'd world, we might have been acquainted with wonders; and
   have understood not a little of the acts and undertakings of Moses his
   mighty men, and men of renown of old; which might have enlarged our
   thoughts, and made the world older unto us. For the unknown part of
   time shortens the estimation, if not the compute of it. What hath
   escaped our knowledge, falls not under our consideration; and what is
   and will be latent, is little better than non-existent.
     __________________________________________________________________

   SOME things are dictated for our instruction, some acted for our
   imitation; wherein 'tis best to ascend unto the highest conformity, and
   to the honour of the exemplar. He honours God, who imitates him; for
   what we virtuously imitate we approve and admire: and since we delight
   not to imitate inferiors, we aggrandize and magnify those we imitate;
   since also we are most apt to imitate those we love, we testify our
   affection in our imitation of the inimitable. To affect to be like, may
   be no imitation: to act, and not to be what we pretend to imitate, is
   but a mimical conformation, and carrieth no virtue in it. Lucifer
   imitated not God, when he said he would be like the Highest; and he
   imitated not Jupiter, [136] who counterfeited thunder. Where imitation
   can go no farther, let admiration step on, whereof there is no end in
   the wisest form of men. Even angels and spirits have enough to admire
   in their sublimer natures; admiration being the act of the creature,
   and not of God, who doth not admire himself. Created natures allow of
   swelling hyperboles: nothing can be said hyperbolically of God, nor
   will his attributes admit of expressions above their own exuperances.
   [137] Trismegistus his circle, whose center is every where, and
   circumference no where, was no hyperbole. Words cannot exceed, where
   they cannot express enough. Even the most winged thoughts fall at the
   setting out, and reach not the portal of Divinity.
     __________________________________________________________________

   IN bivious theorems, [138] and Janus-faced doctrines, let virtuous
   considerations state the determination. Look upon opinions as thou dost
   upon the moon, and choose not the dark hemisphere for thy
   contemplation. Embrace not the opacous and blind side of opinions, but
   that which looks most luciferously or influentially unto goodness. Tis
   better to think that there are guardian spirits, than that there are no
   spirits to guard us; that vicious persons are slaves, than that there
   is any servitude in virtue; that times past have been better than times
   present, than that times were always bad; and that to be men it
   sufficeth to be no better than men in all ages, and so promiscuously to
   swim down the turbid stream, and make up the grand confusion. Sow not
   thy understanding with opinions, which make nothing of iniquities, and
   fallaciously extenuate transgressions. Look upon vices and vicious
   objects, with hyperbolical eyes; and rather enlarge their dimensions,
   that their unseen deformities may not escape thy sense, and their
   poisonous parts and stings may appear massy and monstrous unto thee:
   for the undiscerned particles and atoms of evil deceive us, and we are
   undone by the invisibles of seeming goodness. We are only deceived in
   what is not discerned, and to err is but to be blind or dim-lighted as
   to some perceptions.
     __________________________________________________________________

   TO be honest in a right line, [139] and virtuous by epitome, be firm
   unto such principles of goodness, as carry in them volumes of
   instruction and may abridge thy labour. And since instructions are
   many, hold close unto those, whereon the rest depend: so may we have
   all in a few, and the law and the prophets in a rule; the Sacred Writ
   in stenography, [140] and the Scripture in a nut-shell. To pursue the
   osseous and solid part of goodness, which gives stability and rectitude
   to all the rest; to settle on fundamental virtues, and bid early
   defiance unto mother-vices, which carry in their bowels the seminals of
   other iniquities; makes a short cut in goodness, and strikes not off an
   head but the whole neck of Hydra. For we are carried into the dark
   lake, like the Ægyptian river into the sea, by seven principal
   ostiaries: the mother-sins [141] of that number are the deadly engins
   of evil spirits that undo us, and even evil spirits themselves; and he
   who is under the chains thereof is not without a possession. Mary
   Magdalene had more than seven devils, if these with their imps were in
   her; and he who is thus possessed, may literally be named "Legion."
   Where such plants grow and prosper, look for no champain or region void
   of thorns; but productions like the tree of Goa, [142] and forests of
   abomination.
     __________________________________________________________________

   GUIDE not the hand of God, nor order the finger of the Almighty unto
   thy will and pleasure; but sit quiet in the soft showers of Providence,
   and favourable distributions in this world, either to thyself or
   others. And since not only judgments have their errands, but mercies
   their commissions; snatch not at every favour, nor think thyself passed
   by if they fall upon thy neighbour. Rake not up envious displacences at
   things successful unto others, which the WISE DISPOSER of all thinks
   not fit for thyself. Reconcile the events of things unto both beings,
   that is, of this world and the next: so will there not seem so many
   riddles in Providence, nor various inequalities in the dispensation of
   things below. If thou dost not anoint thy face, yet put not on
   sackcloth at the felicities of others. Repining at the good, draws on
   rejoicing at the evils of others: and so falls into that inhumane vice,
   [143] for which so few languages have a name. The blessed Spirits above
   rejoice at our happiness below: but to be glad at the evils of one
   another, is beyond the malignity of hell; and falls not on evil
   spirits, who, tho' they rejoice at our unhappiness, take no pleasure at
   the afflictions of their own society or of their fellow natures.
   Degenerous heads! who must be fain to learn from such examples, and to
   be taught from the school of hell.
     __________________________________________________________________

   GRAIN [144] not thy vicious stains; nor deepen those swart tinctures,
   which temper, infirmity, or ill habits have set upon thee; and fix not,
   by iterated depravations, what time might efface, or virtuous washes
   expunge. He, who thus still advanceth in iniquity, deepneth his
   deformed hue; turns a shadow into night, and makes himself a Negro in
   the black jaundice; and so becomes one of those lost ones, the
   disproportionate pores of whose brains afford no entrance unto good
   motions, but reflect and frustrate all counsels, deaf unto the thunder
   of the laws, and rocks unto the cries of charitable commiserators. He
   who hath had the patience of Diogenes, to make orations unto statues,
   may more sensibly apprehend how all words fall to the ground, spent
   upon such a surd and earless generation of men, stupid unto all
   instruction, and rather requiring an exorcist than an orator for their
   conversion!
     __________________________________________________________________

   BURDEN not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus, [145] with thy faults;
   nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy follies. Think not to
   fasten thy imperfections on the stars, and so despairingly conceive
   thyself under a fatality of being evil. Calculate thyself within; seek
   not thyself in the moon, but in thine own orb or microcosmical
   circumference. [146] Let celestial aspects admonish and advertise, not
   conclude and determine thy ways. For since good and bad stars moralize
   not our actions, and neither excuse or commend, acquit or condemn our
   good or bad deeds at the present or last bar; since some are
   astrologically well disposed, who are morally highly vicious; not
   celestial figures, but virtuous schemes, must denominate and state our
   actions. If we rightly understood the names whereby God calleth the
   stars; if we knew his name for the dog-star, or by what appellation
   Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn obey his will; it might be a welcome
   accession unto astrology, which speaks great things, and is fain to
   make use of appellations from Greek and barbarick systems. Whatever
   influences, impulsions, or inclinations there be from the lights above,
   it were a piece of wisdom to make one of those wise men who overrule
   their stars, [147] and with their own militia contend with the host of
   heaven. Unto which attempt there want not auxiliaries from the whole
   strength of morality, supplies from christian ethicks, influences also
   and illuminations from above, more powerful than the lights of heaven.
     __________________________________________________________________

   CONFOUND not the distinctions of thy life which nature hath divided;
   that is, youth, adolescence, manhood, and old age: nor in these divided
   periods, wherein thou art in a manner four, conceive thyself but one.
   Let every division be happy in its proper virtues, nor one vice run
   through all. Let each distinction have its salutary transition, and
   critically deliver thee from the imperfections of the former; so
   ordering the whole, that prudence and virtue may have the largest
   section. Do as a child but when thou art a child, and ride not on a
   reed at twenty. He who hath not taken leave of the follies of his
   youth, and in his maturer state scarce got out of that division,
   disproportionately divideth his days, crowds up the latter part of his
   life, and leaves too narrow a corner for the age of wisdom; and so hath
   room to be a man, scarce longer than he hath been a youth. Rather than
   to make this confusion, anticipate the virtues of age, and live long
   without the infirmities of it. So mayst thou count up thy days as some
   do Adam's, [148] that is by anticipation; so mayst thou be coetaneous
   unto thy elders, and a father unto thy contemporaries.
     __________________________________________________________________

   WHILE others are curious in the choice of good air, and chiefly
   sollicitous for healthful habitations, study thou conversation, and be
   critical in thy consortion. The aspects, conjunctions, and
   configurations of the stars, which mutually diversify, intend, or
   qualify their influences, are but the varieties of their nearer or
   farther conversation with one another, and like the consortion of men,
   whereby they become better or worse, and even exchange their natures.
   Since men live by examples, and will be imitating something; order thy
   imitation to thy improvement, not thy ruin. Look not for rotes in
   Attalus his garden, [149] or wholesome flowers in a venomous
   plantation. And since there is scarce any one bad, but some others are
   the worse for him; tempt not contagion by proximity, and hazard not
   thyself in the shadow of corruption. He who hath not early suffered
   this shipwreck, and in his younger days escaped this Charybdis, may
   make a happy voyage, and not come in with black sails [150] into the
   port. Self-conversation, or to be alone, is better than such
   consortion. Some schoolmen tell us, that he is properly alone, with
   whom in the same place there is no other of the same species.
   Nabuchodonozor was alone, though among the beasts of the field; and a
   wise man may be tolerably said to be alone, though with a rabble of
   people little better than beasts about him. Unthinking heads, who have
   not learn'd to be alone, are in a prison to themselves, if they be not
   also with others: whereas, on the contrary, they whose thoughts are in
   a fair, and hurry within, are sometimes fain to retire into company, to
   be out of the crowd of themselves. He who must needs have company, must
   needs have sometimes bad company. Be able to be alone. Lose not the
   advantage of solitude, and the society of thyself; nor be only content,
   but delight to be alone and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus
   prepared, the day is not uneasy nor the night black unto him. Darkness
   may bound his eyes, not his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like
   Pompey and his sons, in all quarters of the earth; [151] may speculate
   the universe, and enjoy the whole world in the hermitage of himself.
   Thus the old Ascetick christians found a paradise in a desert, and with
   little converse on earth held a conversation in heaven; thus they
   astronomiz'd in caves, and though they beheld not the stars, had the
   glory of heaven before them.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LET the characters of good things stand indelibly in thy mind, and thy
   thoughts be active on them. Trust not too much unto suggestions from
   reminiscential amulets, [152] or artificial memorandums. Let the
   mortifying Janus of Covarrubias [153] be in thy daily thoughts, not
   only on thy hand and signets. Rely not alone upon fluent and dumb
   remembrances. Behold not death's heads till thou doest not see them,
   nor look upon mortifying objects till thou overlook'st them. Forget not
   how assuefaction unto any thing minorates the passion from it; how
   constant objects lose their hints, and steal an inadvertisement upon
   us. There is no excuse to forget what every thing prompts unto us. To
   thoughtful observators, the whole world is a phylactery; [154] and
   every thing we see an item of the wisdom, power, or goodness of God.
   Happy are they who verify their amulets, and make their phylacteries
   speak in their lives and actions. To run on in despight of the
   revulsions and pull-backs of such remoras, aggravates our
   transgressions. When death's-heads on our hands have no influence upon
   our heads, and fleshless cadavers abate not the exorbitances of the
   flesh; when crucifixes upon men's hearts suppress not their bad
   commotions, and his image who was murdered for us withholds not from
   blood and murder; phylacteries prove but formalities, and their
   despised hints sharpen our condemnations.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LOOK not for whales in the Euxine sea, or expect great matters where
   they are not to be found. Seek not for profundity in shallowness, or
   fertility in a wilderness. Place not the expectation of great happiness
   here below, or think to find heaven on earth; wherein we must be
   content with embryon-felicities, and fruitions of doubtful faces: for
   the circle of our felicities makes but short arches. In every clime we
   are in a periscian state; [155] and, with our light, our shadow and
   darkness walk about us. Our contentments stand upon the tops of
   pyramids ready to fall off, and the insecurity of their enjoyments
   abrupteth our tranquillities. What we magnify is magnificent, but, like
   to the Colossus, noble without, stuft with rubbidge and coarfe metal
   within. Even the sun, whose glorious outside we behold, may have dark
   and smoky entrails. In vain we admire the lustre of any thing seen:
   that which is truly glorious, is invisible. Paradise was but a part of
   the earth, lost not only to our fruition but our knowledge. And if,
   according to old dictates, no man can be said to be happy before death;
   the happiness of this life goes for nothing before it be over, and
   while we think ourselves happy we do but usurp that name. Certainly,
   true beatitude groweth not on earth, nor hath this world in it the
   expectations we have of it. He swims in oil, [156] and can hardly avoid
   sinking, who hath such light foundations to support him: 'tis,
   therefore, happy, that we have two worlds to hold on. To enjoy true
   happiness, we must travel into a very far country, and even out of
   ourselves; for the pearl we seek for is not to be found in the Indian,
   but in the Empyrean ocean. [157]
     __________________________________________________________________

   ANSWER not the spur of fury, and be not prodigal or prodigious in
   revenge. Make not one in the Historia horribilis; [158] stay not thy
   servant for a broken glass, [159] nor pound him in a mortar who
   offendeth thee; [160] supererogate not in the worst sense, and overdo
   not the necessities of evil; humour not the injustice of revenge. Be
   not stoically mistaken in the equality of sins, nor commutatively
   iniquous in the valuation of transgressions; but weigh them in the
   scales of heaven, and by the weights of righteous reason. Think that
   revenge too high, which is but level with the offence. Let thy arrows
   of revenge fly short; or be aimed like those of Jonathan, to fall
   beside the mark. Too many there be to whom a dead enemy smells well,
   and who find musk and amber in revenge. The ferity of such minds holds
   no rule in retaliations, requiring too often a head for a tooth, and
   the supreme revenge for trespasses which a night's rest should
   obliterate. But patient meekness takes injuries like pills, not chewing
   but swallowing them down, laconically suffering, and fluently passing
   them over; while angered pride makes a nose, like Homerican Mars, [161]
   at every scratch of offences. Since women do most delight in revenge,
   [162] it may seem but feminine manhood to be vindicative. If thou must
   needs have thy revenge of thine enemy, with a soft tongue break his
   bones, [163] heap coals of fire on his head, forgive him and enjoy it.
   To forgive our enemies is a charming way of revenge, and a short
   Cæsarian conquest overcoming without a blow; laying our enemies at our
   feet, under sorrow, shame, and repentance; leaving our foes our
   friends, and sollicitously inclined to grateful retaliations. Thus to
   return upon our adversaries, is a healing way of revenge; and to do
   good for evil a soft and melting ultion, a method taught from heaven to
   keep all smooth on earth. Common forceable ways make not an end of
   evil, but leave hatred and malice behind them. An enemy thus reconciled
   is little to be trusted, as wanting the foundation of love and charity,
   and but for a time restrained by disadvantage or inability. If thou
   hast not mercy for others, yet be not cruel unto thyself. To ruminate
   upon evils, to make critical notes upon injuries, and be too acute in
   their apprehensions; is to add unto our own tortures, to feather the
   arrows of our enemies, to lath ourselves with the scorpions of our
   foes, and to resolve to sleep no more: for injuries long dreamt on,
   take away at hit all rest; and he sleeps but like Regulus, who busieth
   his head about them.
     __________________________________________________________________

   AMUSE not thyself about the riddles of future things. Study prophecies
   when they are become histories, and part hovering in their causes. Eye
   well things past and present, and let conjectural sagacity suffice for
   things to come. There is a sober latitude for prescience in
   contingences of discoverable tempers, whereby discerning heads see
   sometimes beyond their eyes, and wise men become prophetical. Leave
   cloudy predictions to their periods, and let appointed seasons have the
   lot of their accomplishments. 'Tis too early to study such prophecies
   before they have been long made, before some train of their causes have
   already taken fire, laying open in part what lay obscure and before
   buried unto us. For the voice of prophecies is like that of
   whisfpering-places: they who are near, or at a little distance, hear
   nothing; those at the farthest extremity will understand all. But a
   retrograde cognition of times past, & things which have already been,
   is more satisfactory than a suspended knowledge of what is yet
   unexistent. And the greatest part of time being already wrapt up in
   things behind us; it's now somewhat late to bait after things before
   us; for futurity still shortens, and time present sucks in time to
   come. What is prophetical in one age proves historical in another, and
   so must hold on unto the last of time; when there will be no room for
   prediction, when Janus shall loose one face, and the long beard of time
   shall look like those of David's servants, shorn away upon one side, &
   when, if the expected Elias should appear, he might say much of what is
   past, not much of what's to come.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LIVE unto the dignity of thy nature, and leave it not disputable at
   last, whether thou hast been a man; or, since thou art a composition of
   man and beast, how thou hast predominantly passed thy days, to state
   the denomination. Un-man not, therefore, thyself by a bestial
   transformation, nor realize old fables. Expose not thyself by
   four-footed manners unto monstrous draughts, and caricatura
   representations. Think not after the old Pythagorean conceit, what
   beast thou mayst be after death. Be not under any brutal metempsychofis
   [164] while thou livest, and walkest about erectly under the scheme of
   man. In thine own circumference, as in that of the earth, let the
   rational horizon be larger than the sensible, and the circle of reason
   than of sense: let the divine part be upward, and the region of beast
   below; otherwise, 'tis but to live invertedly, and with thy head unto
   the heels of thy antipodes. Desert not thy title to a divine particle
   and union with invisibles. Let true knowledge and virtue tell the lower
   world, thou art a part of the higher. Let thy thoughts be of things
   which have not entred into the hearts of beasts: think of things long
   past, and long to come: acquaint thyself with the choragium [165] of
   the stars, and consider the vast expansion beyond them. Let
   intellectual tubes give thee a glance of things, which visive organs
   reach not. Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; and thoughts of things,
   which thoughts but tenderly touch. Lodge immaterials in thy head:
   ascend unto invisibles; fill thy spirit with spirituals, with the
   mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion, and thy life with the
   honour of God; without which, though giants in wealth and dignity, we
   are but dwarfs and pygmies in humanity, and may hold a pitiful rank in
   that triple division of mankind into heroes, men, and beasts. For
   though human souls are said to be equal, yet is there no small
   inequality in their operations; some maintain the allowable station of
   men; many are far below it; and some have been so divine, as to
   approach the Apogeum [166] of their natures, and to be in the consinium
   of spirits.
     __________________________________________________________________

   BEHOLD thyself by inward opticks and the crystalline of thy soul. [167]
   Strange it is, that in the most perfect sense there should be so many
   fallacies, that we are fain to make a doctrine, and often to see by
   art. But the greatest imperfection is in our inward sight, that is, to
   be ghosts unto our own eyes; and while we are so sharp-sighted as to
   look thorough others, to be invisible unto ourselves; for the inward
   eyes are more fallacious than the outward. The vices we scoff at in
   others, laugh at us within ourselves. Avarice, pride, falshood, lie
   undiscerned and blindly in us, even to the age of blindness: and,
   therefore, to see ourselves interiourly, we are fain to borrow other
   men's eyes; wherein true friends are good informers, and censurers no
   bad friends. Conscience only, that can see without light, fits in the
   Areopagy [168] and dark tribunal of our hearts, surveying our thoughts
   and condemning their obliquities. Happy is that state of vision that
   can see without light, though all should look as before the creation,
   when there was not an eye to see, or light to actuate a vision:
   wherein, notwithstanding, obscurity is only imaginable respectively
   unto eyes: for unto God there was none; eternal light was ever; created
   light was for the creation, not himself; and as he saw before the fun,
   may still also see without it. In the city of the new Jerusalem there
   is neither sun nor moon; where glorified eyes must see by the
   Archetypal [169] sun, or the light of God, able to illuminate
   intellectual eyes, and make unknown visions. Intuitive perceptions in
   spiritual beings may, perhaps, hold some analogy unto vision; but yet
   how they see us, or one another, what eye, what light, or what
   perception is required unto their intuition, is yet dark unto our
   apprehension; and even how they see God, or how unto our glorified eyes
   the beatifical vision will be celebrated, another world must tell us,
   when perceptions will be new, and we may hope to behold invisibles.
     __________________________________________________________________

   WHEN all looks fair about, and thou seest not a cloud so big as a hand
   to threaten thee, forget not the wheel of things: think of sullen
   vicissitudes, but beat not thy brains to foreknow them. Be armed
   against such obscurities, rather by submission than fore-knowledge. The
   knowledge of future evils mortifies present felicities, and there is
   more content in the uncertainty or ignorance of them. This favour our
   Saviour vouchsafed unto Peter, when he foretold not his death in plain
   terms, and so by an ambiguous and cloudy delivery dampt not the spirit
   of his disciples. But in the assured fore-knowledge of the deluge, Noah
   lived many years under the affliction of a flood; and Jerusalem was
   taken unto Jeremey, before it was besieged. And, therefore, the wisdom
   of astrologers, who speak of future things, hath wisely softened the
   severity of their doctrines; and even in their sad predictions, while
   they tell us of inclination not coaction from the stars, they kill us
   not with Stygian oaths and merciless necessity, but leave us hopes of
   evasion.
     __________________________________________________________________

   IF thou hast the brow to endure the name of traitor, perjur'd, or
   oppressor, yet cover thy face when ingratitude is thrown at thee. If
   that degenerous vice possess thee, hide thyself in the shadow of thy
   shame, and pollute not noble society. Grateful ingenuities are content
   to be obliged within some compass of retribution; and being depressed
   by the weight of iterated favours, may so labour under their
   inabilities of requital, as to abate the content from kindnesses. But
   narrow self-ended souls make prescription of good offices, and obliged
   by often favours think others still due unto them: whereas, if they but
   once fail, they prove so perversely ungrateful, as to make nothing of
   former courtesies, and to bury all that's past. Such tempers pervert
   the generous course of things; for they discourage the inclinations of
   noble minds, and make beneficency cool unto acts of obligation, whereby
   the grateful world should subsist, and have their consolation. Common
   gratitude must be kept alive by the additionary fuel of new courtesies:
   but generous gratitudes, though but once well obliged, without
   quickening repetitions or expectation of new favours, have thankful
   minds for ever; for they write not their obligations in sandy but
   marble memories, which wear not out but with themselves.
     __________________________________________________________________

   THINK not silence the wisdom of fools; but, if rightly timed, the
   honour of wife men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue of
   taciturnity; and speak not out of the abundance, but the well-weighed
   thoughts of their hearts. Such silence may be eloquence, and speak thy
   worth above the power of words. Make such a one thy friend, in whom
   princes may be happy, and great counsels successful. Let him have the
   key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own, which no temptation can
   open; where thy secrets may lastingly lie, like the lamp in Olybius his
   urn, [170] alive, and light, but close and invisible.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LET thy oaths be sacred, and promises be made upon the altar of thy
   heart. Call not Jove [171] to witness, with a stone in one hand, and a
   straw in another; and so make chaff and stubble of thy vows. Worldly
   spirits, whose interest is their belief, make cobwebs of obligations;
   and, if they can find ways to elude the urn of the Prætor, [172] will
   trust the thunderbolt of Jupiter: and, therefore, if they should as
   deeply swear as Osman to Bethlem Gabor; [173] yet whether they would be
   bound by those chains, and not find ways to cut such Gordian knots, we
   could have no just assurance. But honest men's words are Stygian oaths,
   and promises inviolable. These are not the men for whom the fetters of
   law were first forged; they needed not the solemness of oaths; by
   keeping their faith they swear, [174] and evacuate such confirmations.
     __________________________________________________________________

   THOUGH the world be histrionical, and most men live ironically, yet be
   thou what thou singly art, and personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in
   the stream of thy nature, and live but one man. To single hearts
   doubling is discruciating: such tempers must sweat to dissemble, and
   prove but hypocritical hypocrites. Simulation must be short: men do not
   easily continue a counterfeiting life, or dissemble unto death. He who
   counterfeiteth, acts a part; and is, as it were, out of himself: which,
   if long, proves so irksome, that men are glad to pull off their
   vizards, and resume themselves again; no practice being able to
   naturalize such unnaturals, or make a man rest content not to be
   himself. And, therefore, since sincerity is thy temper, let veracity be
   thy virtue, in words, manners, and actions. To offer at iniquities,
   which have so little foundations in thee, were to be vicious up-hill,
   and strain for thy condemnation. Persons viciously inclined, want no
   wheels to make them actively vicious; as having the elater and spring
   of their own natures to facilitate their iniquities. And, therefore, so
   many, who are sinistrous unto good actions, are ambi-dexterous unto
   bad; and Vulcans in virtuous paths, Achilleses in vicious motions.
     __________________________________________________________________

   REST not in the high-strain'd paradoxes of old philosophy, supported by
   naked reason, and the reward of mortal felicity; but labour in the
   ethicks of faith, built upon heavenly assistance, and the happiness of
   both beings. Understand the rules, but swear not unto the doctrines of
   Zeno or Epicurus. [175] Look beyond Antoninus, [176] and terminate not
   thy morals in Seneca or Epidetus. [177] Let not the twelve, but the two
   tables be thy law: let Pythagoras be thy remembrancer, not thy textuary
   and final instructer; and learn the vanity of the world, rather from
   Solomon than Phocylydes. [178] Sleep not in the dogmas of the
   Peripatus, Academy, or Porticus. [179] Be a moralist of the mount,
   [180] an Epictetus in the faith, and christianize thy notions.
     __________________________________________________________________

   IN seventy or eighty years, a man may have a deep gust of the world;
   know what it is, what it can afford, and what 'tis to have been a man.
   Such a latitude of years may hold a considerable corner in the general
   map of time; and a man may have a curt epitome of the whole course
   thereof in the days of his own life; may clearly see he hath but acted
   over his fore-fathers; what it was to live in ages past, and what
   living will be in all ages to come.

   He is like to be the best judge of time, who hath lived to see about
   the sixtieth part thereof. Persons of short times may know what 'tis to
   live, but not the life of man, who, having little behind them, are but
   Januses of one face, and know not singularities enough to raise axioms
   of this world: but such a compass of years will shew new examples of
   old things, parallelisms of occurrences through the whole course of
   time, and nothing be monstrous unto him; who may in that time
   understand not only the varieties of men, but the variation of himself,
   and how many men he hath been in that extent of time.

   He may have a close apprehension what it is to be forgotten, while he
   hath lived to find none who could remember his father, or scarce the
   friends of his youth; and may sensibly see with what a face in no long
   time oblivion will look upon himself. His progeny may never be his
   posterity; he may go out of the world less related than he came into
   it; and, considering the frequent mortality in friends and relations,
   in such a term of time, he may pass away divers years in sorrow and
   black habits, and leave none to mourn for himself; orbity may be his
   inheritance, and riches his repentance.

   In such a thred of time, and long observation of men, he may acquire a
   physiognomical intuitive knowledge; judge the interiors by the outside,
   and raise conjectures at first fight; and knowing what men have been,
   what they are, what children probably will be, may in the present age
   behold a good part and the temper of the next; and since so many live
   by the rules of constitution, and so few overcome their temperamental
   inclinations, make no improbable predictions.

   Such a portion of time will afford a large prospect backward, and
   authentick reflections how far he hath performed the great intention of
   his being, in the honour of his Maker; whether he hath made good the
   principles of his nature, and what he was made to be; what
   characteristick and special mark he hath left, to be observable in his
   generation; whether he hath lived to purpose or in vain; and what he
   hath added, acted, or performed, that might considerably speak him a
   man.

   In such an age, delights will be undelightful, and pleasures grow stale
   unto him; antiquated theorems will revive, and Solomon's maxims [181]
   be demonstrations unto him; hopes or presumptions be over, and despair
   grow up of any satisfaction below. And having been long tossed in the
   ocean of this world, he will by that time feel the indraught of
   another, unto which this seems but preparatory, and without it of no
   high value. He will experimentally find the emptiness of all things,
   and the nothing of what is pail; and wifely grounding upon true
   christian expectations, finding so much pall, will wholly fix upon what
   is to come. He will long for perpetuity, and live as though he made
   haste to be happy. The last may prove the prime part of his life, and
   those his best days which he lived nearest heaven.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LIVE happy in the Elizium of a virtuously composed mind, and let
   intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists
   place their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let
   complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of delight.
   Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy Diana,
   life and profession. Voluptuousness is as insatiable as covetousness.
   Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent
   pleasure. Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of
   it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do
   clamorously tell us we come not into the world to run a race of
   delight, but to perform the sober ads and serious purposes of man;
   which to omit were foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to
   play away an uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the
   capital end, and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream
   not of any kind of metempsychosis [182] or transanimation, but into
   thine own body, and that after a long time; and then also unto wail or
   bliss, according to thy first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle in
   this world depends a long course of the next, and upon a narrow scene
   here an endless expansion hereafter. In vain some think to have an end
   of their beings with their lives. Things cannot get out of their
   natures, or be or not be in despight of their constitutions. Rational
   existences in heaven perish not at all, and but partially on earth:
   that which is thus once, will in some way be always: the first living
   human soul is still alive, and all Adam hath found no period.
     __________________________________________________________________

   SINCE the stars of heaven do differ in glory; since it hath pleased the
   Almighty hand to honour the north-pole with lights above the south;
   since there are some stars so bright that they can hardly be looked on,
   some so dim that they can scarce be seen, and vast numbers not to be
   seen at all even by artificial eyes; read thou the earth in heaven, and
   things below from above. Look contentedly upon the scattered difference
   of things, and expect not equality, in lustre, dignity, or perfection,
   in regions or persons below; where numerous numbers must be content to
   stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim
   in their generations. All which may be contentedly allowable in the
   affairs and ends of this world, and in suspension unto what will be in
   the order of things hereafter, and the new system of mankind which will
   be in the world to come; when the last may be the first, and the first
   the last; when Lazarus may sit above Cæsar, and the just obscure on
   earth shall thine like the sun in heaven; when personations shall
   cease, and histrionism of happiness be over; when reality shall rule,
   and all shall be as they shall be for ever.
     __________________________________________________________________

   WHEN the Stoick said that life would not be accepted if it were offered
   unto such as knew it, [183] he spoke too meanly of that state of being
   which placeth us in the form of men. It more depreciates the value of
   this life, that men would not live it over again; for although they
   would still live on, yet few or none can endure to think of being twice
   the same men upon earth, and some had rather never have lived than to
   tread over their days once more. Cicero in a prosperous state had not
   the patience to think of beginning in a cradle again. [184] Job would
   not only curse the day of his nativity, but also of his renascency, if
   he were to act over his disasters and the miseries of the dunghill. But
   the greatest underweening of this life is to undervalue that, unto
   which this is but exordial or a passage leading unto it. The great
   advantage of this mean life is thereby to stand in a capacity of a
   better; for the colonies of heaven must be drawn from earth, and the
   sons of the first Adam are only heirs unto the second. Thus Adam came
   into this world with the power also of another; nor only to replenish
   the earth, but the everlasting mansions of heaven. Where we were when
   the foundations of the earth were laid, when the morning stars sang
   together, [185] and all the sons of God shouted for joy, He must answer
   who asked it; who understands entities of preordination, and beings yet
   unbeing; who hath in his intellect the ideal existences of things, and
   entities before their extances. Though it looks but like an imaginary
   kind of existency, to be before we are; yet since we are under the
   decree or prescience of a sure and Omnipotent Power, it may be somewhat
   more than a non-entity, to be in that mind, unto which all things are
   present.
     __________________________________________________________________

   IF the end of the world shall have the same foregoing signs, as the
   period of empires, states, and dominions in it, that is, corruption of
   manners, inhuman degenerations, and deluge of iniquities; it may be
   doubted, whether that final time be so far off, of whose day and hour
   there can be no prescience. But while all men doubt, and none can
   determine how long the world shall last, some may wonder that it hath
   spun out so long and unto our days. For if the Almighty had not
   determin'd a fixed duration unto it, according to his mighty and
   merciful designments in it; if he had not said unto it, as he did unto
   a part of it, hitherto shalt thou go and no farther; if we consider the
   incessant and cutting provocations from the earth; it is not without
   amazement, how his patience hath permitted so long a continuance unto
   it; how he, who cursed the earth in the first days of the first man,
   and drowned it in the tenth generation after, should thus lastingly
   contend with flesh, and yet defer the last flames. For since he is
   sharply provoked every moment, yet punisheth to pardon, and forgives to
   forgive again; what patience could be content to ad over such
   vicissitudes, or accept of repentances which must have
   after-penitences, his goodness can only tell us. And surely if the
   patience of Heaven were not proportionable unto the provocations from
   earth, there needed an intercessor not only for the sins, but the
   duration of this world, and to lead it up unto the present computation.
   Without filch a merciful longanimity, the heavens would never be so
   aged as to grow old like a garment. It were in vain to infer from the
   doctrine of the sphere, that the time might come, when Capella, a noble
   northern star, would have its motion in the Æquator; that the northern
   zodiacal signs would at length be the southern, the southern the
   northern, and Capricorn become our Cancer. However, therefore, the
   wisdom of the Creator hath ordered the duration of the world, yet since
   the end thereof brings the accomplishment of our happiness, since some
   would be content that it should have no end, since evil men and spirits
   do fear it may be too short, since good men hope it may not be too
   long; the prayer of the saints under the altar will be the supplication
   of the righteous world that his mercy would abridge their languishing
   expectation, and hasten the accomplishment of their happy state to
   come.
     __________________________________________________________________

   THOUGH good men are often taken away from the evil to come; though some
   in evil days have been glad that they were old, nor long to behold the
   iniquities of a wicked world, or judgments threatened by them; yet is
   it no small satisfaction unto honest minds, to leave the world in
   virtuous well-temper'd times, under a prospect of good to come, and
   continuation of worthy ways acceptable unto God and man. Men who die in
   deplorable days, which they regretfully behold, have not their eyes
   closed with the like content; while they cannot avoid the thoughts of
   proceeding or growing enormities, displeasing unto that Spirit unto
   whom they are then going, whose honour they desire in all times and
   throughout all generations. If Lucifer could be freed from his dismal
   place, he would little care though the rest were left behind. Too many
   there may be of Nero's mind, who, if their own turn were served, would
   not regard what became of others; [186] and, when they die themselves,
   care not if all perish. But good men's wishes extend beyond their
   lives, for the happiness of times to come, and never to be known unto
   them. And, therefore, while so many question prayers for the dead, they
   charitably pray for those who are not yet alive; they are not so
   enviously ambitious to go to heaven by themselves: they cannot but
   humbly with, that the little flock might be greater, the narrow gate
   wider, and that, as many are called, so not a few might be chosen.
     __________________________________________________________________

   THAT a greater number of angels remained in heaven, than fell from it,
   the school-men will tell us; that the number of blessed souls will not
   come short of that vast number of fallen spirits, we have the
   favourable calculation of others. What age or century hath sent most
   souls unto heaven, he can tell who vouchsafeth that honour unto them.
   Though the number of the blessed must be complete before the world can
   pass away; yet since the world itself seems in the wane, and we have no
   such comfortable prognosticks of latter times; since a greater part of
   time is spun than is to come, and the blessed roll already much
   replenished; happy are those pieties, which sollicitously look about,
   and hasten to make one of that already much filled and abbreviated list
   to come.
     __________________________________________________________________

   THINK not thy time short in this world, since the world itself is not
   long. The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity; and a
   short interposition for a time between such a state of duration, as was
   before it and may be after it. And if we should allow of the old
   tradition, that the world should last six thousand years, it could
   scarce have the name of old, since the first man lived near a sixth
   part thereof, and seven Methuselahs would exceed its whole duration.
   However, to palliate the shortness of our lives, and somewhat to
   compensate our brief term in this world, it's good to know as much as
   we can of it; and also, so far as possibly in us lieth, to hold such a
   theory of times past, as though we had seen the same. He who hath thus
   considered the world, as also how therein things long past have been
   answered by things present; how matters in one age have been acted over
   in another; and how there is nothing new under the sun; may conceive
   himself in some manner to have lived from the beginning, and to be as
   old as the world; and if he should still live on, 'twould be but the
   same thing.
     __________________________________________________________________

   LASTLY; if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation.
   [187] Reckon not upon long life: think every day the last, and live
   always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his expectation
   lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his
   days. Time past is gone like a shadow; make time to come present.
   Approximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them: be like
   a neighbour unto the grave, and think there is but little to come. And
   since there is something of us that will still live on, join both lives
   together, and live in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth the
   purposes of this life, will never be far from the next; and is in some
   manner already in it, by a happy conformity, and close apprehension of
   it. And if, as we have elsewhere declared, [188] any have been so
   happy, as personally to underhand christian annihilation, extasy,
   exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into
   the divine shadow, according to mystical theology, they have already
   had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the world is in a manner over,
   and the earth in ashes unto them.

   CHISWICE PRESS:--PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS,
   TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [136] Salmoneus.

   [137] Exaggerations.

   [138] Speculations which open different tracks to the mind.

   [139] Linea recta brevissima. First edit.

   [140] In Short-hand.

   [141] Pride, covetousness, lull, envy, gluttony, anger, sloth.

   [142] Arbor Goa de Ruyz, or Ficus Indica, whose branches send down
   shoots which root in the ground, from whence there successively rise
   others, till one tree becomes a wood. First edit.

   [143] Epikairekakia. First edit.

   [144] See note 1, page 16.

   [145] The Ram, Lion, or Bull, signs in the zodiack.

   [146] "In the compass of thy own little world."

   [147] Sapiens dominabitur astris. First edit.

   [148] Adam, thought to be created in the state of man, about thirty
   years old. First edit.

   [149] Attalus made a garden which contained only venomous plants. First
   edit.

   [150] Alluding to the story of Theseus, who had black sails when he
   went to engage the Minotaur in Crete.

   [151] Pompeios Juvenes Asia atque Europa, sed ipsum Terra tegit Libyes.
   First edit.

   [152] Any thing worn on the hand or body, by way of monition or
   remembrance.

   [153] Don Sebastian de Covarrubias, writ three centuries of moral
   emblems in Spanish. In the 88th of the second century he sets down two
   faces averse, and conjoined Janus-like; the one a gallant beautiful
   face, the other a death's-head face, with this motto out of Ovid's
   Metamorphosis,

   Quid fuerim, quid simque, vide.

   First edit.

   --You discern
   What now I am, and what I was shall learn. Addis.

   [154] See page 31, note 1.

   [155] "With shadows all round us." The Periscii are those, who, living
   within the polar circle, see the sun move round them, and consequently
   project their shadows in all directions.

   [156] Which being a light fluid, cannot support any heavy body.

   [157] "In the expanses of the highest heaven."

   [158] A book so intitled, wherein are sundry horrid accounts. First
   edit.

   [159] When Augustus supped with one of the Roman senators, a slave
   happened to break a glass, for which his master ordered him to be
   thrown into his pond to feed his lampreys. Augustus, to punish his
   cruelty, ordered all the glasses in the house to be broken.

   [160] Anaxarchus, an antient philosopher, was beaten in a mortar by a
   tyrant.

   [161]

   Tu miser exclamas, ut Stentora vincere possis,
   Vel potius quantum Gradivus Homericus. Juv.
   First edit.

   You rage and storm, and blasphemously loud,
   As Stentor bellowing to the Grecian crowd,
   Or Homer's Mars.--
   Creech.

   [162]

   ----Minuti

   Semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas,

   Ultio----Sic collige, quod vindictâ

   Nemo magis gaudet, quam foemina. Juv.

   ----Revenge! which Rill we find

   The weaken frailty of a feeble mind.

   Degenerous passion, and for man too base,

   It seats its empire in the female race.
   Creech.

   [163] A soft tongue breaketh the bones. Prov. xxv. 15. First edit.

   [164] See page 65, note 2.

   [165] Dance.

   [166] To the utmost point of distance from earth and earthly things.

   [167] Alluding to the crystalline humour of the eye.

   [168] The great court, like the Areopagus of Athens.

   [169] Original.

   [170] Which after many hundred years was found burning under ground,
   and went out as soon as the air came to it. First edit.

   [171] Jovem lapidem jurare. First edit.

   [172] The vessel, into which the ticket of condemnation or acquittal
   was cast.

   [173] See the oath of Sultan Osman in his life, in the addition to
   Knolls his Turkish history. First edit.

   [174] Colendo fidem jurant. Curtius. First edit.

   [175] The authors of the Stoical and Epicurean philosophy.

   [176] Stoical philosophers.

   [177] Stoical philosophers.

   [178] A writer of moral sentences in verse.

   [179] Three schools of philosophy.

   [180] That is, according to the rules laid down in our Saviour's sermon
   on the mount.

   [181] That all is vanity.

   [182] See note 2, page 65.

   [183] Vitam nemo acciperct, si daretur scientibus. Seneca. First edit.

   [184] Si quis Deus mihi largiatur, ut repuerascam et in cunis vagiam,
   valde recusem. Cic. de Senectute.

   [185] Job xxxviii.

   [186] Nero often had this laying in his mouth, Emou thanontos gaia
   michtheto puri: "when I am once dead, let the earth and fire be jumbled
   together."

   [187] Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum,
   Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur hora. Hor.

   Believe, that ev'ry morning's ray

   Hath lighted up thy latest day;

   Then, if to-morrow's sun be thine,

   With double lustre shall it shine.
   Francis.

   [188] In his treatise of Urnburial. Some other parts of these essays
   are printed in a letter among Browne's posthumous works. Those
   references to his own books prove these essays to be genuine.
     __________________________________________________________________
     __________________________________________________________________

                                    Indexes
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Greek Words and Phrases

     * eusarkos: [1]1
     * Emou thanontos gaia michtheto puri: [2]1
     * Epikairekakia: [3]1
     * Ho tuchon : [4]1 [5]2
     * Th: [6]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Latin Words and Phrases

     * ----Minuti: [7]1
     * Ho tuchon : [8]1
     * Accusatori nollet dare.: [9]1
     * Caldæ gelidæque minister: [10]1
     * Cannarum vindex, et tanti sanguinis ultor, Annulus.: [11]1
     * Census: [12]1
     * Cerebrum Jovis: [13]1
     * Colendo fidem jurant: [14]1
     * Demito naufragium, mors mihi munus erit: [15]1
     * Dulcique fenex vicinus Hymetto,: [16]1
     * Foenerator Alphius: [17]1
     * Hic niger est, hunc to Romane caveto: [18]1
     * In Tiberim defluxit Orontes: [19]1
     * Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempore belli Panthoides Euphorbus
       eram.: [20]1
     * Jovem lapidem jurare: [21]1
     * Judice nemo nocens absolvitur: [22]1
     * Laquearius: [23]1
     * Linea recta brevissima: [24]1
     * Nihil agis dolor.: [25]1
     * Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum, Grata superveniet quæ non
       sperabitur hora: [26]1
     * Optimi malorum pessimi bonorum: [27]1
     * Plaudite: [28]1
     * Pompeios Juvenes Asia atque Europa, sed ipsum Terra tegit Libyes:
       [29]1
     * Primusque dies dedit extremum: [30]1
     * Quætrit calendis ponere.: [31]1
     * Qui nescit dissimulare nescit Regnare: [32]1
     * Qui partem acceptæ sæva inter vincla cicutæ,: [33]1
     * Retiarius: [34]1
     * Sapiens dominabitur astris: [35]1
     * Se: [36]1
     * Si quis Deus mihi largiatur, ut repuerascam et in cunis vagiam,
       valde recusem: [37]1
     * Suam religit Idibus pecuniam: [38]1
     * Tu miser exclamas, ut Stentora vincere possis, Vel potius quantum
       Gradivus Homericus: [39]1
     * Virtute et literis ornatissimus: [40]1
     * Vitam nemo acciperct, si daretur scientibus.: [41]1
     * Voluptates commendat rarior usus: [42]1
     * aucupium: [43]1
     * hic niger: [44]1
     * in coagulato: [45]1
     * in soluto: [46]1
     * magnæ virtutes nec minora vitia: [47]1
     * non ultra: [48]1 [49]2
     * piscatio: [50]1
     * plaudite: [51]1
     * verba ardentia: [52]1
     * verum certè verum atque verissimum est: [53]1
     __________________________________________________________________

Index of Pages of the Print Edition

   [54]i  [55]ii  [56]iii  [57]iv  [58]v  [59]vi  [60]vii  [61]viii
   [62]ix  [63]x  [64]xi  [65]xii  [66]xiii  [67]xiv  [68]xv  [69]xvi
   [70]xvii  [71]xviii  [72]xix  [73]xx  [74]xxi  [75]xxii  [76]xxiii
   [77]xxiv  [78]xxv  [79]xxvi  [80]xxvii  [81]xxviii  [82]xxix  [83]xxx
   [84]xxxi  [85]xxxii  [86]xxxiii  [87]xxxiv  [88]xxxv  [89]xxxvi
   [90]xxxvii  [91]xxxviii  [92]xxxix  [93]xl  [94]xli  [95]xlii
   [96]xliii  [97]xliv  [98]xlv  [99]xlvi  [100]xlvii  [101]xlviii
   [102]xlix  [103]l  [104]li  [105]lii  [106]liii  [107]liv  [108]lv
   [109]lvi  [110]lvii  [111]lviii  [112]lix  [113]lx  [114]lxi
   [115]lxii  [116]lxiii  [117]lxiv  [118]lxv  [119]lxvi  [120]lxvii
   [121]lxviii  [122]lxix  [123]lxx  [124]lxxi  [125]lxxii  [126]lxxiii
   [127]lxxiv  [128]lxxv  [129]lxxvi  [130]1  [131]2  [132]3  [133]4
   [134]5  [135]6  [136]7  [137]8  [138]9  [139]10  [140]11  [141]12
   [142]13  [143]14  [144]16  [145]17  [146]19  [147]20  [148]21  [149]22
   [150]23  [151]24  [152]25  [153]26  [154]28  [155]30  [156]31  [157]32
   [158]33  [159]34  [160]36  [161]38  [162]39  [163]40  [164]41  [165]42
   [166]43  [167]44  [168]45  [169]46  [170]47  [171]48  [172]49  [173]50
   [174]51  [175]52  [176]53  [177]54  [178]55  [179]56  [180]57  [181]58
   [182]59  [183]60  [184]61  [185]62  [186]63  [187]64  [188]65  [189]66
   [190]67  [191]68  [192]69  [193]70  [194]71  [195]72  [196]73  [197]74
   [198]75  [199]76  [200]77  [201]78  [202]79  [203]80  [204]81  [205]82
   [206]83  [207]84  [208]85  [209]86  [210]87  [211]88  [212]89  [213]90
   [214]91  [215]92  [216]93  [217]94  [218]95  [219]96  [220]97  [221]98
   [222]99  [223]100  [224]101  [225]102  [226]103  [227]104  [228]105
   [229]106  [230]107  [231]108  [232]109  [233]110  [234]111  [235]112
   [236]113  [237]114  [238]115  [239]116  [240]117  [241]118  [242]119
   [243]120  [244]121  [245]122  [246]123  [247]124  [248]126  [249]127
   [250]128  [251]129  [252]130  [253]131  [254]132  [255]133  [256]134
   [257]135  [258]136  [259]137  [260]138  [261]139  [262]140  [263]141
   [264]142  [265]143  [266]144
     __________________________________________________________________

            This document is from the Christian Classics Ethereal
               Library at Calvin College, http://www.ccel.org,
                   generated on demand from ThML source.

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