concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip in, to prevent the identity; without which, two several things would not be alike, but the same, which is impossible.

III. But to return from philosophy to charity; I hold not so narrow a conceit of this virtue as to conceive that to give alms is only to be charitable, or think a piece of liberality can comprehend the total of charity. Divinity hath wisely divided the act thereof into many branches, and hath taught us in this narrow way many paths unto goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many ways we may be charitable; there are infirmities, not only of body, but of soul, and fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our abilities. I cannot contemn a man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his body, than apparel the nakedness of his soul. It is an honourable object to see the reasons of other men wear our liveries, and their borrowed understandings do homage to the bounty of ours; it is the cheapest way of beneficence, and like the natural charity of the sun illuminates another without obscuring itself. To be reserved and caitiff in this part of goodness, is the

sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible than the pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I am obliged by the duty of my condition; I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure of knowledge; I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head than beget and propagate it in his; and in the midst of all my endeavours there is but one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among my honoured friends. I cannot fall out or contemn a man for an errour, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection; for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity: in all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the

question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined; for though they be amply proposed, they are scarce at all handled, they do so swell with unnecessary digressions, and the parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject. The foundations of religion are already established, and the principles of salvation subscribed unto by all; there remain not many controversies worth a passion, and yet never any disputed without, not only in divinity but inferiour arts. What a βατραχομυομαχία and hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in Lucian. How do grammarians hack and slash for the genitive case in Jupiter! how do they break their own pates to salve that of Priscian! Si foret in terris, rideret Democritus. Yea even amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given, and credits slain, for the poor victory of an opinion or beggarly conquest of a distinction! Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actus his razor; their pens carry farther and give a louder report than thunder; I had rather stand in the shock of a basilisco, than in the fury of a merciless pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the

muses, that wiser princes patron the arts and carry an indulgent aspect unto scholars; but a desire to have their names eternized by the memory of their writings, and a fear of the revengeful pen of succeeding ages; for these are the men, that when they have played their parts, and had their exits, must step out and give the moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal of conscience to the compiling of an history; there is no reproach to the scandal of a story; it is such an authentick kind of falsehood that with authority belies our good names to all nations and posterity.

IV. There is another offence unto charity, which no author hath ever written of, and few take notice of; and that's the reproach, not of whole professions, mysteries, and conditions, but of whole nations; wherein by opprobrious epithets we miscal each other, and by an uncharitable logick, from a disposition in a few conclude a habit in all:

Le mutin Anglois, et le bravache Escossois;

Le Italien, et le fol François ;

Le poultron Romain, le larron de Gascongne;
L'Espagnol superbe, et l'Aleman ivrongne.

St. Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but indirectly and upon quotation of their own poet. It is as bloody a thought in one way as Nero's was in another; for by a word we wound a thousand, and at one blow assassine the honour of a nation. It is as complete a piece of madness to miscal and rave against the times, or think to recall men to reason by a fit of passion; Democritus, that thought to laugh the times into goodness, seems to me as deeply hypochondriack as Heraclitus that bewailed them. It moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours, that is, in their fits of folly and madness, as well understanding that wisdom is not profaned unto the world, and 'tis the privilege of a few to be virtuous. They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. Thus virtue (abolish vice) is an idea; again, the community of sin doth not disparage goodness; for when vice gains upon the major part, virtue, in whom it remains becomes more excellent; and being lost in some, multiplies its goodness in others which remain untouched, and persists intire in the general inundation. I can therefore behold vice without a satire, content only