When thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow one eye for
what is laudable in them, and the balance they have from some
excellency, which may render them considerable. While we look with fear
or hatred upon the teeth of the viper, we may behold his eye with love.
In venomous natures something may be amiable: poisons afford
anti-poisons: nothing is totally or altogether uselessly bad. Notable
virtues are sometimes dashed with notorious vices, and in some vicious
tempers have been found illustrious acts of virtue, which makes such
observable worth in some actions of King Demetrius, Antonius, and Ahab,
as are not to be found in the same kind in Aristides, Numa, or David.
Constancy, generosity, clemency, and liberality have been highly
conspicuous in some persons not marked out in other concerns for example
or imitation. But since goodness is exemplary in all, if others have not
our virtues, let us not be wanting in theirs; nor, scorning them for
their vices whereof we are free, be condemned by their virtues wherein
we are deficient. There is dross, alloy, and embasement in all human
tempers; and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find ophir or pure
metal in any. For perfection is not, like light, centred in any one
body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables at the
creation, scattered through the whole mass of the earth, no place
producing all, and almost all some. So that 'tis well if a perfect man
can be made out of many men, and to the perfect eye of God, even out of
mankind. Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others. Could
we intimately apprehend the ideated man, and as he stood in the
intellect of God upon the first exertion by creation, we might more
narrowly comprehend our present degeneration, and how widely we are
fallen from the pure exemplar and idea of our nature: for after this
corruptive elongation, from a primitive and pure creation we are almost
lost in degeneration; and Adam hath not only fallen from his Creator,
but we ourselves from Adam, our Tycho and primary generator.
If generous honesty, valor, and plain dealing be the cognizance of thy
family or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such inclinations
sucked in with thy first breath, and which lay in the cradle with thee.
Fall not into transforming degenerations, which under the old name
create a new nation. Be not an alien in thine own nation; bring not
Orontes into Tiber; learn the virtues, not the vices, of thy foreign
neighbors, and make thy imitation by discretion, not contagion. Feel
something of thyself in the noble acts of thy ancestors, and find in
thine own genius that of thy predecessors. Rest not under the expired
merits of others; shine by those of thine own. Flame not, like the
central fire which enlighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most
men think there is no such thing to be seen. Add one ray unto the common
lustre; add not only to the number, but the note of thy generation; and
prove not a cloud, but an asterisk in thy region.
Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast, which tells thee thou hast a
living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away
thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To
strenuous minds there is an inquietude in overquietness and no
laboriousness in labor; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a
snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring
penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympics. The
rapid courses of the heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our
thoughts than our corporeal motions; yet the solemn motions of our lives
amount unto a greater measure than is commonly apprehended. Some few men
have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many, in the set locomotions
and movements of their days, have measured the circuit of it, and twenty
thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move circumspectly, not
meticulously, and rather carefully solicitous than anxiously
solicitudinous. Think not there is a lion in the way, nor walk with
leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but in all virtuous motions let
prudence determine thy measures. Strive not to run, like Hercules, a
furlong in a breath: festination may prove precipitation; deliberating
delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness.
Despise not the obliquities of younger ways, nor despair of better
things whereof there is yet no prospect. Who would imagine that
Diogenes, who in his younger days was a falsifier of money, should, in
the after course of his life, be so great a contemner of metal? Some
negroes, who believe the resurrection, think that they shall rise white.
Even in this life regeneration may imitate resurrection; our black and
vicious tinctures may wear off, and goodness clothe us with candor. Good
admonitions knock not always in vain. There will be signal examples of
God's mercy, and the angels must not want their charitable rejoices for
the conversion of lost sinners. Figures of most angles do nearest
approach unto circles, which have no angles at all. Some may be near
unto goodness who are conceived far from it; and many things happen not
likely to ensue from any promises of antecedencies. Culpable beginnings
have found commendable conclusions, and infamous courses pious
retractations. Detestable sinners have proved exemplary converts on
earth, and may be glorious in the apartment of Mary Magdalen in heaven.
Men are not the same through all divisions of their ages: time,
experience, self-reflections, and God's mercies, make in some
well-tempered minds a kind of translation before death, and men to
differ from themselves as well as from other persons. Hereof the old
world afforded many examples to the infamy of latter ages, wherein men
too often live by the rule of their inclinations; so that, without any
astral prediction, the first day gives the last: men are commonly as
they were; or rather, as bad dispositions run into worser habits, the
evening doth not crown, but sourly conclude, the day.
If the Almighty will not spare us according to his merciful capitulation
at Sodom; if his goodness please not to pass over a great deal of bad
for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us in the lump, there is
slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption of fulfilling half his
will, either in persons or nations: they who excel in some virtues being
so often defective in others; few men driving at the extent and
amplitude of goodness, but computing themselves by their best parts, and
others by their worst, are content to rest in those virtues which others
commonly want. Which makes this speckled face of honesty in the world;
and which was the imperfection of the old philosophers and great
pretenders unto virtue; who, well declining the gaping vices of
intemperance, incontinency, violence, and oppression, were yet blindly
peccant in iniquities of closer faces; were envious, malicious,
contemners, scoffers, censurers, and stuffed with vizard vices, no less
depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion of man. For envy,
malice, hatred, are the qualities of Satan, close and dark like himself;
and where such brands smoke, the soul cannot be white. Vice may be had
at all prices; expensive and costly iniquities, which make the noise,
cannot be every man's sins; but the soul may be foully inquinated at a
very low rate, and a man may be cheaply vicious to the perdition
of himself.
Having been long tossed in the ocean of the world, he will by that time
feel the in-draught of another, unto which this seems but preparatory
and without it of no high value. He will experimentally find the
emptiness of all things, and the nothing of what is past; and wisely
grounding upon true Christian expectations, finding so much past, will
wholly fix upon what is to come. He will long for perpetuity, and live
as though he made haste to be happy. The last may prove the prime part
of his life, and those his best days which he lived nearest heaven.
Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let
intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place
their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let
complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of delight.
Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy Diana,
life, and profession. Voluptuousness is as insatiable as covetousness.
Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent
pleasure. Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of
it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do
clamorously tell us we came not into the world to run a race of delight,
but to perform the sober acts and serious purposes of man; which to omit
were foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play away an
uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end,
and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of any kind
of metempsychosis or transanimation, but into thine own body, and that
after a long time; and then also unto wail or bliss, according to thy
first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle in this world depends a long
course of the next, and upon a narrow scene here an endless expansion
hereafter. In vain some think to have an end of their beings with their
lives. Things cannot get out of their natures, or be, or not be, in
despite of their constitutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not
at all, and but partially on earth; that which is thus once, will in
some way be always; the first living human soul is still alive, and all
Adam hath found no period.
Since the stars of heaven do differ in glory; since it hath pleased the
Almighty hand to honor the north pole with lights above the south; since
there are some stars so bright that they can hardly be looked upon, some
so dim that they can scarcely be seen, and vast numbers not to be seen
at all even by artificial eyes; read thou the earth in heaven and things
below from above. Look contentedly upon the scattered difference of
things, and expect not equality in lustre, dignity, or perfection, in
regions or persons below; where numerous numbers must be content to
stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in
their generations. All which may be contentedly allowable in the affairs
and ends of this world, and in suspension unto what will be in the order
of things hereafter, and the new system of mankind which will be in the
world to come; when the last may be the first, and the first the last;
when Lazarus may sit above Cæsar, and the just, obscure on earth, shall
shine like the sun in heaven; when personations shall cease, and
histrionism of happiness be over; when reality shall rule, and all shall
be as they shall be forever.