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 his 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 non-existent.

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 inferiours, 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 he imitated not Jupiter who counterfeited thunder. Where 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. Trismegistus his 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.

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, and 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.

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 a rule; the sacred writ in stenography, and the Scripture in a nutshell. To 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 Magdalene had more than seven devils, if these with their imps were in her,

*Linea recta brevissima.

and he who is thus possessed may literally be named Legion. Where such plants grow and prosper, look for no champian or region void of thorns, but productions like the tree of Goa* and forests of abomination.

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 displacences 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 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

* 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.

EE