ness cracks the finews of faith, numbs the apprehenfion 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.

IX. Perfons lightly dipped, not grain'd 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 upon that axis, when prudent fimplicity hath fixed there; and let no attraction invert the poles of thy honesty. That vice may be uneafy and even monftrous unto thee, let repeated good acts and long confirmed habits make virtue almoft natural, or a fecond nature in thee. Since virtuous fuperftructions 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 feeds 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, will be no fatisfaction unto them.

x. Make not the confequence

of virtue the ends thereof.

Be not bene- St. Matt. ficent for a name or cymbal of applause;

nor exact and juft in commerce for the advantages of truft and credit, which attend the reputation of true and punctual dealing for these rewards, though unfought for, plain virtue will bring with her. To have other by-ends in good actions fours laudable performances, which must have deeper roots, motives, and instigations, to give them the stamp of vir

tues.

XI. Let not the law of thy country be the non ultra of thy honesty;

vi. I. 2.

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 St. Matt. v. the Sermon on the Mount be thy Targum unto the law of Sinai.

vi. vii.

Ex. xx.

iii. 82.

XII. Live by old ethicks and

Cf. Thucyd. the claffical 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 feal 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 folEx. xxiii. 2. low a multitude to do evil, ftand like

Pompey's pillar confpicuous by thyself, and fingle in integrity. And fince the worst of times afford imitable examples of virtue; fince no deluge of vice is like to be fo general but more than eight will

escape; 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.

XIII. Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy cheeks; be content to be envied, but envy not. Emulation may be plaufible 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 abfurd depravity, sticking fast unto corrupted nature, and often too hard for humility and charity, the great fuppreffors of envy. This furely is a lion not to be strangled but by Hercules himfelf, or the highest stress of our minds, and an atom of that power which fubdueth Phil.iii. 21. all things unto itself.

XIV. Owe not thy humility

unto humiliation from adverfity, but look humbly down in that state when others

Think not

look upwards upon thee. thy own fhadow longer than that of others, nor delight to take the altitude of thyfelf. Be patient in the age of pride, when men live by fhort intervals of reafon under the dominion of humour and paffion, when it is in the power of every Hor. Ep. i. one to transform thee out of thyself, and run thee into the fhort madness. If you cannot imitate Job, yet come not short of Socrates, and those patient Pagans who tired the tongues of their enemies, while they perceived they fpit their malice at brazen walls and ftatues.

ii. 62.

Juv. Sat.

xiii. 185.

Eph. iv. 25.

xv. Let not the fun in Capricorn* 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,† and let them be as

* Even when the days are shortest.

† Alluding unto the Tower of Oblivion mentioned by Procopius, as a place of imprisonment among the Perfians: whoever was put therein was, as it were, buried alive, and it was death for any but to name him.