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LVII

Of Anger

Ta Bravery of the Stoickes. We have better

"O seeke to extinguish Anger utterly, is but

Oracles: Be Angry, but Sinne not. Let not the Sunne goe downe upon your Anger. Anger must be limited, and confined, both in Race, and in Time. We will first speake, How the Naturall Inclination, and Habit, To be Angry, may be attempred, and calmed. Secondly, How the Particular Motions of Anger, may be repressed, or at least refrained from doing Mischiefe. Thirdly, How to raise Anger, or appease Anger, in Another.

For the first; There is no other Way, but to Meditate and Ruminate well, upon the Effects of Anger, how it troubles Mans Life. And the best Time, to doe this, is, to looke backe upon Anger, when the Fitt is throughly over. Seneca saith well; That Anger is like Ruine, which breakes it Selfe, upon that it fall's. The Scripture exhorteth us; To possesse our Soules in Patience, Whosoever is out of Patience, is out

of Possession of his Soule. Men must not

turne Bees;

Animasque in vulnere ponunt.

Anger is certainly a kinde of Basenesse: As it appeares well, in the Weaknesse of those Subiects, in whom it reignes: Children, Women, Old Folkes, Sicke Folkes. Onely Men must

beware, that they carry their Anger, rather with Scorne, then with Feare: So that they may seeme rather, to be above the Iniury, then below it: which is a Thing easily done, if a Man will give Law to himselfe in it.

For the Second Point; The Causes and Motives of Anger, are chiefly three. First, to be too Sensible of Hurt: For no Man is Angry, that Feeles not himselfe Hurt: And therefore Tender and Delicate Persons, must needs be oft Angry: They have so many Things to trouble them; Which more Robust Natures have little Sense of. The next is, the Apprehension and Construction, of the Iniury offred, to be, in the Circumstances thereof, full of Contempt. For Contempt is that which putteth an Edge upon Anger, as much, or more, then the Hurt it selfe. And therefore, when Men are Ingenious, in picking out Circumstances of Contempt, they doe kindle their Anger much. Lastly, Opinion of the Touch of a Mans Reputation, doth multiply and sharpen Anger. Wherein the Remedy is, that a Man should have, as Consalvo was wont to say, Telam Honoris crassiorem. But in all Refrainings of Anger, it is the best Remedy to win Time; And to make a Mans Selfe beleeve,

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that the Opportunity of his Revenge is not yet come: But that he foresees a Time for it; And so to still Himselfe in the meane Time, and reserve it.

To containe Anger from Mischiefe, though it take hold of a Man, there be two Things, whereof you must have speciall Caution. The one, of extreme Bitternesse of Words; Especially, if they be Aculeate, and Proper: For Communia Maledicta are nothing so much; And againe, that in Anger, a Man reveale no Secrets: For that makes him not fit for Society. The other, that you doe not peremptorily break off, in any Businesse, in a Fitt of Anger: But howsoever you shew Bitternes, do not A♬ any thing, that is not Revocable.

For Raising and Appeasing Anger in Another; It is done chiefly, by Choosing of Times, when Men are frowardest and worst disposed, to incense them. Againe, by gathering (as was touched before) all that you can finde out, to aggravate the Contempt. And the two Remedies are by the Contraries. The Former, to take good Times, when first to relate to a Man, an Angry Businesse: For the first Impression is much; And the other is, to sever, as much as may be, the Construction of the Iniury, from the Point of Contempt: Imputing it, to Misunderstanding, Feare, Passion, or what you will.

LVIII

Of Wicissitude of Things

ALOMON saith; There is no New Thing

SAL

upon the Earth. So that as Plato had an Imagination; That all Knowledge was but Remembrance: So Salomon giveth his Sentence; That all Noveltie is but Oblivion. Whereby you may see, that the River of Lethe, runneth as well above Ground, as below. There is an abstruse Astrologer that saith; If it were not, for two things, that are Constant; (The one is, that the Fixed Starres ever stand at like distance, one from another, and never come nearer together, nor goe further asunder; The other, that the Diurnall Motion perpetually keepeth Time:) No Individuall would last one Moment. Certain it is, that the Matter, is in a Perpetuall Flux, and never at a Stay. The great Windingsheets, that burie all Things in Oblivion, are two; Deluges, and Earth-quakes. As for Conflagrations, and great Droughts, they doe not meerely dispeople, and destroy. Phaetons Carre went but a day. And the Three yeares Drought, in the time of Elias, was but Particular, and left People Alive. As for the great Burnings by

Lightnings, which are often in the West Indies, they are but narrow. But in the other two Destructions, by Deluge, and Earth-quake, it is further to be noted, that the Remnant of People, which hap to be reserved, are commonly Ignorant and Mountanous People, that can give no Account, of the Time past: So that the Oblivion is all one, as if none had beene left. If you consider well, of the People of the West Indies, it is very probable, that they are a Newer, or a Younger People, then the People of the Old World. And it is much more likely, that the Destruction, that hath heretofore been there, was not by Earth-quakes, (As the Ægyptian Priest told Solon, concerning the Island of Atlantis; That it was swallowed by an Earthquake;) But rather, that it was desolated, by a Particular Deluge. For Earth-quakes are seldome in those Parts. But on the other side, they have such Powring Rivers, as the Rivers of Asia, and Affrick, and Europe, are but Brookes to them. Their Andes likewise, or Mountaines, are farre higher, then those with us; Whereby it seemes, that the Remnants of Generation of Men, were, in such a Particular Deluge, saved. As for the Observation, that Macciavel hath, that the Iealousie of Selts, doth much extinguish the Memory of Things; Traducing Gregory the Great, that he did, what in him lay, to extinguish all Heathen Antiquities; I doe not finde, that those Zeales, doe any great Effects, nor last long: As it appeared in the Succession of Sabinian, who did revive the former Antiquities.

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