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 Savour 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 foreknowledge of the deluge Noah lived many years under the affliction of a flood, and Jerusalem was taken, unto Jeremy, 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.

XVII. If thou hast the brow to endure the name of traitor, perjured, 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 bene

ficiency 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.

XVIII. Think not silence the wisdom of fools, but, if rightly timed, the honour of wise 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,* alive and light, but close and invisible.

XIX. Let thy oaths be sacred, and promises be made upon the altar of thy heart. Call not Jove 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, will trust the thunderbolt of Jupiter; and therefore if they should as deeply swear as Osman to

* Which after many hundred years was found burning under ground and went out as soon as the air came to it.

† Jovem lapidem jurare.

16*

Bethlem Gabor,* 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, and evacuate such confirmations.

XX. 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

* See the oath of Sultan Osman in his life, in the addition to Knolles his Turkish History.

+ Colendo fidem jurant.-Curtius.

actions, are ambi-dexterous unto bad, and Vulcans in virtuous paths, Achilleses in vicious motions.

XXI. Rest not in the high-strained 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. Look beyond Antoninus, and terminate not thy morals in Seneca or Epictetus. Let not the twelve, but the two tables be thy law; let Pythagoras be thy remembrancer, not thy textuary and final instructor; and learn the vanity of the world rather from Solomon than Phocylydes. Sleep not in the dogmas of the Peripatus, Academy, or Porticus. Be a moralist of the mount, an Epictetus in the faith, and christianize thy notions.

XXII. 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 forefathers, 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 thread of time, and long observation of men, he may acquire a physiognomical intuitive knowledge; judge the interiours by the outside, and raise conjectures at first sight; 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.