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's rod. The Turkish emperor,* 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 some 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 inseparable from their calamities; and, therefore, they everlastingly struggle under their angustias, and bound up with immortality can never get out of themselves. PART THE THIRD. SECT. I.-'Tis hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to propose for example. Some have been far more approvable than others; but virtue and vice, panegyrics and satires, 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 7 rod.] Which procured sleep by a touch.-Dr. J. Sangustias.] Agonies.-Dr. J. length of days made virtuous habits heroical and immovable, vicious, inveterate, and irreclaimable. And since 'tis said that 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 unparalleled world, we might have been acquainted with wonders; and have understood not a little of the acts and undertakings of Moses's 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 nonexistent.9 : SECT. II. 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 he1 imitated not Jupiter, who counterfeited thunder. Where 9 non-existent.] This sentence concludes thus :-"The world is not half itself, nor the moiety known of its occurrences, of what hath been acted."-MS. Sloan. 1848. 1 he.] Salmoneus.-Dr. J. 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.2 Trismegistus's circle, whose centre is everywhere, and circumference nowhere, 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. SECT. III. In bivious theorems, 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, 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 dimsighted as to some perceptions. 2 exuperances.] Exaggerations.-Dr. J. and 3 bivious theorems.] Speculations which open different tracks to the mind; which lead two ways.-Dr. J. SECT. IV. To be honest in a right line,* 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 sacred writ in stenography,+ and the Scripture in a nut-shell. То 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 Egyptian river into the sea, by seven principal ostiaries: the mother-sins of that number are the deadly engines 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 Magdalen 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,t and forests of abomination. SECT. V.-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 displacencies 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 * Linea recta brevissima. + 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. 4 stenography.] In short hand.—Dr. J. 5 mother-sins.] Pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, sloth.-Dr. J. : 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 inhuman vice,* 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, though 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. SECT. VI.—Grain not thy vicious stains ;7 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, deepeneth 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! SECT. VII.-Burden not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus,8 with thy faults; nor make Saturn, Mars, or * Επικαιρεκακία. • below.] The following passage occurs here from MS. Sloan. 1847 :— "So mayst thou carry a smooth face, and sit down in contentation, without those cancerous commotions which take up every suffering, displeasing at things successful unto others; which the arch-disposer of all thinks not fit for ourselves. To rejoice only in thine [own] good, exclusively to that of others, is a stiff piece of self-love, wanting the supplying oil of benevolence and charity.” vicious stains.] See note 5, p. 91. 8 Aries, &c.] The Ram, Lion, or Bull, signs in the Zodiack.-Dr. J. |