A SIXEFOLDE Politician.  
Together with a Sixefolde Precept of Policy.  
LONDON Printed by E. A. for john Busbie, and are to be sold at his Shop in Saint Dunstan's Churchyard. 1609.   

PHILODESPOTUS to his Naearchus.  
Loving and well-beloved Naearchus, being often & earnestly solicited by you, to set down a pattern of such discourses, as in private have past many times betwixt us, concerning several and distinct affects, and affectations of many usurping vainglorious Politicians, as also what my conceit and opinion was, and is of a perfect statesman most to be respected: And at this time finding myself deprived through sickness of other bodily functions, I have endeavoured to satisfy your request, so well as the daily encumbrance of so unwelcome and trouble some a guest, would give me leave and leisure; What I have set down will assuredly offend no creature that lives within the compass of right & perfect judgement: and if any thing herein may give you the least taste of pleasure and content, I shall think my travel richly rewarded, and be encouraged to supply your desires in the like succeeding motions.  
Ever under the arrest of your command. I. M.   

The Author to the Reader.  
PHrine a Harlot, at a public feast where many Ladies and Gentlemen were assembled, uncovering her painted face, took warm water and washed off her Fucus wishing all other Ladies there present to imitate her plainness. I suppose it was a grief to the Ladies to have that noted by public taxation, which was as publicly noted & observed by all men. If all ladies & gentlewomen should be so served at any public meeting, many would make (if it were possible) their natural red of blushing show through their painted red & overlaying mask of impudence & boldness. But women, poor souls that have nothing to be proud of but their outward beauty, may be pardoned, if they seek to maintain their best hold, with any devise and addition of Art, when as men who should glory only in their inward essence of worth and virtue, learning, providence, discretion, judgement, valour, and magnanimity, seek to lay such painted faces upon their ambitious desires they have to be thought worthy, in any to be admired or respected quality. Painting was in request in Iezebels time, and her example could not, nor ever will scare away either pride from the heart, or painting from the face. If I were of the noble science of painters, I would put up a bill against women, for their intrusion into the profession of facemaking and coulouring: but if I were a statesman, I would publish some severe law, against such bold intruding professors and shew-makers of such things, as many gain by boldness and impudence, among the world both respect and commodity. Hereafter I may happily take occasion to speak and set out your women painters, at this time you shall find some painted faces of policy, deciphered.  
As in meats, that which commonly liketh one doth distaste another: so may this work prove like meats or banket-made-disshes, rejected of some, and happily like Homer's Iliads be laid under other men's pillows. You rabble and ramping idle rout avaunt, the play-house-dores are now open for you, the Author doth not invite your company to his feast, for he knows you are apt to fashion strange interpretations, of what was never meant, then like civil guests cut fairly and respectively of his instructions. Howsoever he exposeth this his Philaitetes to his good fortune, & if any of the judicious rank taste of him with pleasure, he is filled up & regorged with satisfaction.  
Your friend that was betrayed to the press of your censures I.M.   

In due praise of the Author.  

THese speaking pictures of those Counterfeits,  
That would be statesemen, rather men of State,  
Are such as do their life delineate,  
By which the Drawer's fame, still life begets.   

But where he paints in Colours (rarely rich)  
though Picture of a perfect statesman, he  
Transcends himself, and makes each eye to see  
His darkest Veins with judgements clearest Touch.   

O near could words, though weighed in wisdoms schools,  
And measured by the squire of art, by Wit)  
But these alone, so right the spirit fit  
Of Statesmen that (obeying) all controls,  
Pass on, vive image, make all Times admire,  
How earthly hands came by such heavenly fire.   
Io: davis. Gent.   

In laudem Authoris.  
THy tun (dear friend) of wit & honey nows broke up,  
Too long from men of Art & judgement, though locked up,  
For men of Art do say, it tastes right sweet,  
And men of judgements, say it is right sound,  
And both a treasure, say of light is found,  
A treasure sure that in extremes will steed.  
And raise thee (have but patience) from all need,  
O pity it is such gifts and lights of mind  
Should be obscured, and die as men do blind.  
Some Scipio (or some Caesar) shade thy hive,  
That thou in spite of Wasps and Flies mayst thrive.  
I.S. Gent.   

De Authore. T. P.  
BLame not his pen, though wanton in his blood,  
Here vels like a Virgin newly married:  
Policy is his delight, his streaming flood  
To that he is married, in that he shall be buried,  
And though he buried were, this near shall die,  
And though he banished were, this near shall fly.   

The contents of this Book.  

IIgnorant Politicians.  
Paul's news carriers, and unlettered, but wickedly thrifty, merchants of worldly policy with their judgements.  
Usurping Poets of the title of Policy.  
Vain and ambitious travailers.  
Seminaries and jesuits.  
Cumbersome, Turbulent, and dangerous projectors.  
True Statesmen,   

In the second part is treated  
Concerning the secret trusts of the heart.  
Concerning affections.  
Concerning book trust in Policy.  
Concerning cunning operations, and formal ordering of wit and Policy.  
Concerning a Politicians Religion, how far he may wade therein.  
Concerning Religion, the best help of true judgement, and the true Religious politician.    

A SIXEFOLDE Politician.  
There be two sorts of Politicians.  
Politicians in show: and substantial complete experienced politicians. Otherwise called Statesmen.  
Politicians in show, and outward Ceremonious profession, are of many sorts, as you shall find them distinguished by their several employments and Chapters.  
Substantial Politicians, are such (for this Treatise extends only to a religious Common wealth) as are Divinely endued with a singular gift and blessing of wisdom & judgement, in all occurrences that may advance the glory of God & the common safety of that State, over which they are set as Governors.   

A SIXFOLDE POLITICIAN.  

THE FJRST SORT of vain Politicians are men void of all understanding, and like nature, and yet repute themselves wise and politic. CHAP. 1.  
THe accursed brood of CHAM'S generation, were not contented in the Land of Shinar, to make brick and mortar; but joining with NIMROD, said, Let us make us a SEM, which signifieth a name, even in despite of the blessing of NOAH bestowed upon SEM.  
All Nations, ages & States, have been, and are, much pestered with the poisonous humour of CHAM'S fugitive & unsettled seed, who shaking off all yoke of obedience, and prescription of painful travel in any peculiar calling, never think well of the ordinary blessings they reap or may reap, by their due & daily labours: but setting their wits beyond the pitch and model of their honest vocations, 
Idleness the mother of unprofitable & impertinent business.  aim at extraordinary matters, the building to themselves some SEM, or rather instead of a name, some BABEL or house of confusion.  
And of names, none can so much please them as the title and style of witty, crafty, politic trades, imitating herein the grand deluder: for as Satan of all names affecteth most the name of an Angel of light, 
They which have least wit affect most the show of the best wit.  & being worst of allthings, appeareth most in the show of the best: so the simplest and furthest from the light of true wisdom, desire most to seem (as Hypocrites in religion, being hollowest of hearty sincerity, affect most the show of holiness) and to be accounted wise.  
This maketh so many base mechanical fellows, to fall from their lasts and measures, to measure out in their conceits & trivial conferences, the scopes, purposes, & intents of the secretest & deepest mysteries of the most profound statistes, and not only to set a gloss and formal interpretation upon ordinary occurrences of the state, and to press out with them vain and idle additions & quotations, of their own addle & worm-eaten brains, but touching the very Edicts, Proclamations, yea, conclusions betwixt the State & foreign Nations, 
The judgement that falls upon pragmatique intermedlers with State affairs.  to distinguish & point out errors, to set upon them ominous predictions, and many times (which is the judgement, such pragmatique and Pythias like spirits fall into, as SENECA noted the improvidence and unadvisedness of such persons) Emittunt vices per iugulum reddituras, cast forth cut-throat words which cost them their necks, and utterly undo them.  

Idle Merchants of news.  The better to maintain this opinion of self conceited Policy and wisdom, among the simple sort, they must & will be the only intelligencers of all new accidents, Quelles novelles is the only orisons they use morning and evening: their only salutations, their only graces. They know all things, else how should they be accounted statesmen, both what is done and spoken in the court, & in the centre of the court, and which is wonderful, that which was never done not spoken, and that makes their news ever new and fresh, for it comes but from the gate of their own inventions.  
They are privy to the consultations of the Senate: embassages of Princes are familiar with them: intercourse of merchants affairs, scarce accounted matters worth the discourse: France, Italy, Spain, can keep no Parliament, without their intermixture of voices, nor this state hold any sect of Parliament, without their verdict: these are the inseparable companions of the realto pillars, the flies of the great feasts, Epicures third course to help digestion, superstitious idolaters of Saint PAUL (and yet never think of PAUL nor any Apostle) and many of them have that famous monument in that account as DIOGENES had JOVIS PORTICUS in Athens, who told them, which wondered that he had no house nor corner to eat his meat in; pointing at the gallery or walking place that was called JOVIS PORTICUS, said, that the people of Athens had builded that to his use, as a royal mansion for him, wherein he might dine & sup and take his repast.  
And so these make Paul's like EUCLIDES or PLATO'S school (as DIOGENES accounted it, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a misspending of much good labour & time, & worthily many times meet with DIOGENES far, and are faithful and frequent guests of Duke HUMPHRAY.  
And surely as that wise prince who adjudged his corrupt Servant who sold lip-labour and smoke at a dear rate, to be stifled with smoke; so might it be wished that these idle busiemarchants of air and ventosity of words, might be either pricked like bladders, with the sharp razor of some seveere law, 
What punishment is fit for sellers of smoke & liplaboured lies & tales.  or Chameleon like be forced to live without any other sustenance than air, the food of their delight.  
There are another sort of unlettered ignorants, who affect the title of politicians, and are so accounted of giddy muddy, and shallow conceits, who see no more than that is obvious to their outward eye sight: & judge all things by their effects consider not the means by which they were effected: 
It is an easy matter for a man most unlettered, by wicked means to compass great matters.  these are such as by wicked & indirect means, compass many times great matters, whereunto is required small store of learning and art: for it is an easy matter, for him to burn and make level to the ground, a famous city with a bal of wild fire, who never had skill to distinguish the matter whereof that ball was composed, or wit to contrive the like: and as a careless creature, that propounds only to praise his own humour, respecteth not the mischief may ensue, may with great facility, set fire to an exquisite piece of ordinance, and thereby beat down some famous objected building, who is utterly ignorant of any skilful part of artillery: so may one that fell from a cloud, a most stupid animal, by wicked means bring to pass with as much ease, his wicked purposes, and make himself powerful of his ungodly wishes, be they never so unlikely, who if he were set to manage any affairs, that might advance the common good, would bray like an ass, and (admitted to devising, advising, or contriving and putting in action, any commendable & deep designment) stand like an immovable statue, scarce reserving the image and representation of a man: For it is usually spoken of courtiers, and Orators, be bold enough, and Courtier enough, prate enough, & be lawyer (I mean cogging lawyer & cogging courtier enough) so may it generally be said, be resolved to be wicked enough, and fear not to be accounted crafty and worldly, politic enough, to prove an Eutrapelus, 
Apud. Horat.  a famous crafty companion, and to exceed others in a watch of worldly deceit, requireth only a resolution to be wicked, which will speedily enable any man to proceed Master in the art of subtlety, and cunning deceit: hence comes it to pass that many perifogging knaves, many rural satires, and untutered Hobgobling, applying their hearts to worldly wealth, and resolving to obtain by right or wrong what they so longingly covet & affect, prove suddenly rich, & in that respect the simple people term any, that by forgery, cozening, deceit, grow a little wealthier, than their honest neighbours, perilous heads, shrewd fellows, and (which without smiling I can never consider) politician's stand in this respect: 
Mischief hath swift wings.  mischief is well said to have swift wings; for when the will of man giveth consent to any evil, a very brute may quickly give fire to the powder, & matter of any mischievous purpose. Qui semel verecundiae fines transierit, in signiter esse impudentem oportet: So far the heathen could go, & surely we may add this, that he which hath cast away all care of conscience, 
Honesty and fidelity the chief pillars of all contracts  can have no feeling or respect of honesty and fidelity, which in all affairs, either public or private, foreign or domestic, hold up Atlas-like the heaven of all civil States, & these being not respected, with what facility and ease may the subtle Courtier deceive his brother, murder his father, if they stand in his way of some private respect, & make his dearest and bosom-friend, only an instrument to move forward his wicked purposes without any purpose to help him in his greatest necessities: nay, if he think he may prove any obstacle to his rising, or that he can stand no longer as a footstool for him to mount up to higher honour and dignity, or a close-stool to smother and convey with coulerable excuses his foulest and impurest Feces of cunning & deceit, even then perfideouslie to forsake him, when he is priest with most unresistible difficulties.  
Among the number of these (that I may not speak of nearer precedents) is ranked, that rank smelling Polecat of impure and profane policies, RICHARD the third, for it is well known, 
Rich 3  that not so much a supereminent wit & judgement in the truest strains of civil government, set the crown on that usurpers head, as a detestable resolution to compass the same by any means, by poison, murder, perjury, barbarous and unnatural cruelty, execrable slanders, put a regal Sceptre into his hand, and environed his temples with a glittering Diadeam.  
And a second to him may be (if not a brother twin, 
Alphonsus  ALPHONSUS that foul bumcard-playing Politician, and 100 like to these: those petty German state, afford plenty of examples to this purpose: what should I say when as the very Carter, under whose clouted shoes, 
Wicked Carters may be accounted politicianst  may be sowed as great craft when as firm a resolution to villainy and mischief, is settled in him, can entitle himself to his Uncles, brothers, nephews, land and estate, and obtain it to, by leading a morris dance or two to hell, with five or six forsworn good fellows, himself foreman, a corrupt lawyer or two, as many bribed witnesses, an overseer and a servant: which often tickles my diafragma, when I hear spruce-heere-at hands recount, conferring most secretly among their privatest & most hidden observations and court collections) the wonderful wisdom or policy of some great courtiers, in ancient time, what admirable matters they have effected by the deep reach of their all-peircing wits, when they were noted to have used more ounces of poison, than they had drams of true wisdom, and state learning, in the shutting up their conclusions: for thy consider not that which daily experience may guide their observation to, with what facility heathenish and seared consciences, 
The difference betwixt the proceed of a seered conscience and a Religious man  never so unlettered enter into and dispatch actions of such savage and abhorred qualities, as would make a man touched with the feeling of honesty and a good conscience, stand (were he never so politic & learned) at every step and progress of the like attempts, like a multitude of people when upon some sudden invasion of the enemy, all the Beacons of the country are set on fire round about their ears, all amazed, affrighted, bepusled, & distempered every moment in his mutinous and disordered thoughts, till his plots, his purposes, his proceed were discovered and betrayed, though to his own ruin and utter undoing.  
But herein consisteth the judgement such ignorant and unlettered affectators of the title of Politicians fall into: 
presumption the ground of ruin.  they many times presuming upon their own and other men's false and flattering opinions conceived of their great wisdom & policy, enter by degrees into matters of greater consequence than their slender apprehension s can digest, and wrestle through, not unlike the Mastiff, which because by chance he killed a Hare wearied to his jaws by quick scenting hounds, would after chase a fox, and so came home all be torn & rend with briers and brambles: or the ape which by imitation, having once set fire to a piece currently, came to enure himself in the like practice, and the piece being stopped & rammed hard of purpose that it might not go off, recoiled to the apes dismenbring: so these having encountered with poorer and weaker understandings to their worldly and evil good advantage, not contented to keep within the compass of their own element, stretch their skill & cunning to intermeddle with men of deeper reaches & more searching brains, whose foxlike windings and turnings, they have no skill to trace or sent out, and therefore return from their controversies and strifes, made with such worldly Mrs. of policy, all be scratched and pinched in their fortunes and effates. Yea, many of these foolish Idiots, having prospered and thrived in some domestic affairs, Apelike intermeddle with the fireworks of court business, and state occurrences, employ their wit and wealth in taking part & adhering to factions, & so many times, being ignorant to handle & finger as it were the cunning passages & stops of state-learning (which depends upon such exquisite skill and harmony, as the ripe students therein can discern (as the jews could by their skill in the Ebrewtung any escape concerning the history of the bible) if any one stroke be out of time or tune) through bold intrusions, disbowell and dismember themselves and their fortunes: and so much may suffice to have spoken of ignorant and unskilful Usurpers of the title & name of policy.   

CHAP. 2. A second sort are such as through the privilege of their learning and Scholarship, attribute unto themselves the style of Politicians.  

Abderitae people of Thrace, who were so foolish as they left their country through annoyance of Mice.  Aristippus' being demanded of some ABDERITAN in what respect his son should be the better, if he bestowed cost & charges on his learning? answered, though in no other behoof, yet that at the may-games & public sights there might not one stone sit upon another: and to this alluded Tully in his Oratore, making the same distinction in the degree of excellency, betwixt a learned man and an ignorant, 
A distinction betwixt a learned man and anignorant.  as betwixt an ordinary man and a beast: and questionless the benefit of learning and skill in arts and liberal sciences, is of great and unvaluable estimate, and bringeth to the enjoyers thereof, 
The benefit of learning.  many unspeakable & insencible helps and furtherances, which as it was well spoken of the benefit of health, Carendo potius quamfru endo distinguntur, their use is best discerned by their want. But learning is like to fire & water, 
Learning like fire and water for the use and abuse of it.  which are most necessary for the daily behoof of man's life, being moderately & descretly used, otherwise experience teacheth the simplest, that if they be applied to hurtful purposes, there are not more dangerous and dreadful Elements.  
That made Diogenes very justly (in my opinion) to affirm, 
Man the wisest and the foolishest creature.  that there was no living thing wiser than man, nor any living creature foolisher: for when he considered and thought upon the governors of Cities, physicians, and men excelling in several professions of learning, he concluded nothing to be more sapient than man; but when he considered in his mind men of little learning in any profession, professors of all learning, and not able to perform any one good, undertakers of all difficult and hard enterprises, when he considered the swarm of expounders of dreams, soothsayers, Impostors, and deluding artizants, he plainly avouched that nothing was more foolish then man. And surly as there are none wiser than Scholars, & none foolisher than such like scholars, so are there none more profitable to the Commonwealth nor any more cumbersome, noisome or troublesome in a state, than scholars: which infers well this janus-like position, Pessimi homines pessima animalia. pessimi Academici pessimi homines. Of all living creatures evil men are the worst, and of all men evil Schoolmen are the most disorderly and hurtful. 
The wit of man liable to good and evil   
For the wit of man is appliable, and apt to all goodness, if it be exercised and enured therewithal, but if it fall from his right kind to vice, then is a man worse than a brute beast in regard that a beast doth but beastly according to kind, 
A vicious man worse than a beast.  & a man's wit aplyed to a vicious & beastly custom trains up all the senses, as it were so many workmen, to the practising of naughty and lewd purposes: and if the wit of a witty man, well seen in arts, and helped and furthered to greater understanding by study, be applied to wicked and evil designs, 
A wicked witty man most dangerous.  it will always be sitting upon Cockatrice's eggs, & hatch and bring forth nothing but serpentine and poisonous effects. with both these sorts of scholars this state is much pestered, for it harbours many foolish, such as seem & are indeed wise in their own conceits (such as trouble a whole state with their conceits) & many naughty and lewd wits, that apply their cost & travel spent painfully and laboriously in liberal arts, to the contrivance of their country's massacre and ruin, and their own shame and utter demolition.  
That I may not of these speak confusedly & without order, I will reduce the first sort of them to these heads.  
Either vain phanaicall scribbling Poets,  
Or coney-catching & prating travailers.  
And the second sort to these heads.  
Either outlandish starters & Rovers from their obedience and loyalty usually called jesuits and Seminaries, or close housekeeping, either vainglorious or self pleasing, or malignant, envious, turbulent projectors, and plotters of policies and devices. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It was well noted of Hesiodus, 
Idleness abhorred.  that no course of honest travel was shame-worthy, but idleness, full of reproach and shame: and certes, if men of fashion and good bringing up, would duly examine themselves to what honest and profitable service and course of labour, they were fit, and accordingly would studiously endeavour themselves, they would make this state happy & flourishing, & their own lives comfortable to themselves and their friends: but the iniquity of these times is such, and so corrupted is this age with cimmerian darkness and self will, as many having any good parts, think scorn in Secundis tertijsque consistere. 
Ambition and aspiring, reigneth in all men most powerfully.  Every Crow will build as high as the Eagle, and thereby with Icarus, soaring to high, melt their waxy wings, with the Sunbeams of too lofty aspiring practices, which makes so many of them all their lives after, 
The fruits of aspiring.  sing Icarus his ditties, Propter humum volito lie groveling in a bare & base estate: for whilst they strive to run out of their father Adam's curse, and by him the curse which deriveth itself to all mankind (which was and is every man in his profession, to get his living by the sweat of his brows) they run into a greater curse, that is, either through idleness to get no living, or through some evil practice to beget a base living.   

Of Poets. CHAP. 3.  

Poet's lives compared to love.  TOuching POETS, their lives and business may be rightly compared, to the business of love: for love is noted to be the occupation and business of idle folks, that have nothing else to set themselves on work withal: for as the passion of love especially invades and possesseth such men as are altogether drowned in idleness, and so cometh it to pass, 
Otis si tollas periere cupidinis arcus.  that while they give themselves wholly to laziness, they stumble on a subject, that filleth their heads as full of cumbrous business, as ever they are able to turn themselves unto: so this frenzy of poetastring (for poetry and judicious poets, all worthy spirits allow and love) still invadeth the lovers of idleness, for, whilst that wit which is pregnant, 
A pregnant wit wanting employment takes hold of naughty courses.  wanteth all manner of employment, it falleth into a most troublesome, & inextricable maze of self-pleasing and deluding conceits: for it may & is generally observed, that they which once fall into the humour of vercifiing, their heads are always full of as many crotchets, as new strooken lovers, & surly for the respect & regard the most judicious have: of them, 
The regard the judicious have of vain poets.  they may be compared to instruments always out of tune, which yield but harsh and jangling accents, and to men duly conversant in weighty and profitable affairs, they are as flat and tedious, as jarchthange, which name is noted to be the harshest in all the Hebrew pronunciation, and the respect which the wantonest and vainest heads have of them, is as of fiddlers, who are regarded but for a bandy song, at a merry meeting, and when they have done, are commonly sent away with Butler's grace, when these writ best, they are but but busily conversant, and employed about some ill subject, which is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a juggling foolish play, 
Ill, the better acted, the worse liked of the good.  the better it is performed, the worse it is accounted: for: either they writ to please idle vain gentlemen and gentlewomen, and so may be placed among the number of shitle-cocks, tennis-balles, apes, monkeys, baboons parrots, puppets, 
Vain poets offices.  and such like (their office having correspondence to no other use & purpose) or else they fashion their wits to the pleasing of a vain multitude, and rabbell of lose livers, and prescribe to the ignorant and simple (very ill disposed of themselves) rules, and rudiments of worse living: and as the interludes may be termed, 
Vain poets and players agree in evil  the Schoole-houses of vanity, and wantonness; so these are the schoolmasters thereof: and me thinks they (who have tasted of the sweet fountain water, running from their Academic mother's breasts, by this, if nothing else) should be deterred from their scribbling profession, that they see their writings & conceits sold at a common door to every base companion for a penny. But most of their conceits are too dear at that rate, and therefore may well be had in the same request that Tobacco is now, which was wont to be taken of great gentlemen, & gallants, now made a frequent & familiar Companion of every Tapster and Horse-keeper. And their conceits are likest Tobacco of any thing: for as that is quickly kindled, makes a stinking smoke, & quickly goes out, but leaves an inhering stink in the nostrils and stomachs of the takers, 
Conceits savouring of no judgement or study like Tobacco smoke.  not to be drawn out, but by putting in a worse favour, as of Onions and Garlic, (according to the proverb: the smell of Garlic takes away the stink of dung hills, so the writing of ordinary Playbooks, Pamphlets, & such like, may be termed the mushrum conceptions of idle brains, most of them are begot over night in Tobacco smoke and mulled-sack, and uttered and delivered to the world's press by the help & midwifery of a caudle the next morning.  
They savour of no study, and less judgement, and leave to the hearers of them only, an infecting stink of some lewd practice or speech, set forth for the informing of such wits, as delight in no other study but folly or wickedness, 
How the common people delight in vile and vain sports.  and will not be drawn out of their mouths and maws (for iron would be sooner by some digested then a foolish ribbaldrie term by some lost) till from the like impure fountain, they have fetched some fresh mud-water of the like, 
Vain poets colour their evil purposes under the show of gravity and authority, wherein they approve themselves most Devilish and though most politic in their own opinions, yet most foolish in the true sense of understanding.  or worse (but better pleasing, if more obscure) speech or behaviour, to occupy and fill up that room.  
But some of these fanatical heads, to exempt themselves from the number of ballad makers, and ordinary writers of jigs and such like stuff, betake themselves to a graver and more satirical form of writing and therefore under the pretence of whipping the vices of people, with a pen fuller of gall, 
as Horace saith.  Sublimi flagello, they will either set out in most lively colours, 
with a winchester rod.  all the several impieties and impurities, which they have in their lives ran through (for it is impossible any should so exactly to a hair set out such bosom secrets of lewd practices, but such as have had a deep finger in the like) or else out of a desire to be accounted great politicians, fet their wits beyond the pitch of the ordinary tenters, and intermingle not only (as Horace saith) Sacra prophanis silver sacers, with dirty potlids, but (thinking that Pictoribus at que poetis quidlibet audendi is still in force, that painters may play with their pencils with great men's noses, and poets may pish in any man's face) intermeddle with the 2. edged sword of the state, 
Many had rather jest away their credits & lives then lose the opinion of a jest.  and contrary to Quintilians' precept (who placed it among the virtues and graces of wrighting, not to say all a man can) rather than they would be accounted ignorant of the state, & matters concerning the state, they will in their broad terms pull the greatest statists by the beards and rather than they will lose a jest in obscurity, fix it about the Prince's Diadem, that it may be known and seen of all men, forgetting what they learned of old Poet Homer, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is not safe drawing out of lions teeth. 
Both learning and observation teach the wise to hold their pens and their tongues from princes & potentates affairs.   
And if they had attained either learning or observation in state affairs, and true policy (the repute whereof many of them so much affect) they would hold their pens from the affairs and actions of statesmen, being indeed the Hectors and Hercules of the common wealth (according to that attribute which was given by Homer to Hercules) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 depulsors of evil, through their wisdom and careful watching over the quiet and welfare thereof, from the whole nation. For than they would have learned by their reading of histories, 
Both Augustus and Alexander hated to come upon the tongues & pens of trivial and common men.  (which is the best Booke-help for a student in policy) that both AUGUSTUS and ALEXANDER took very grievously that any thing should be made of them, and set forth in public, but after a substantial sort. And how AUGUSTUS to the officers of his time signified his pleasure, that they should not suffer any point of opprobry to come unto his name, by the meeting and coming together of jesters, Players, and Poets: and as well by observation in politic courses, they would have understood that it is as fit (and more necessary for the safety of any state) for the authority of Princes and Governors of the commonwealth, 
The authority of princes and governors may not safely admit any derogation.  every where to be maintained in their royal state, without any manner of spot or touch of derogation, either public spread, or closely insinuated (for in either consists laesa maiestas, or potestas Reipub: a high and capital offence, to the Prince or his potentates) as a virgin's chastity, 
libeling, and how far the offence thereof spreads itself.  and a great Lady's honour, which may not admit the least susurres or privy whisperings of stain or defamation, and as he that should be the first author of scandalising any great Ladies unspotted worth & reputation of chastity, would be adjudged by the parliament of women, to some infamous death, so were it fit that some seveere law might be enacted, 
Scandalous libeling & taxing of statesmen, deserveth the same punishment as the abusers of a chaste Lady's honour and reputation.  for the punishing of such scandalous libeling as is, or may be at any time coloured under the name of poetising, and playmaking, Sed reprimo me, only I cannot conclude this point without this ingenious and true apology in my own behalf, to show that my desire is, it may not be thought that I hold the skill & art of poetry in base account, 
poetry to be beloved▪ u● the abusers thereof to be punished  but only the abusers of it. Poetry may be both noblemen's & scholars afternoon, and successive exercises, & remission from the bent of graver studies and affairs.  

A special rule for poets to observe.  And if any will and must needs make it their profession, let them hold this comical rule concerning the state and statists, Sic haec misceant ut illa non immisceant, Let them so use their acquaint conceits as they may pick no qua rell with the counter.   

CHAP. 4. Concerning travailers.  
THat of Horace, Caelum non animum mutat qui trans mare currit, he that changeth his soil, changeth not his soul, was well noted of SOCRATES. For SOCRATES hearing a certain person complaining, that his traveling into strange Countries for learning & knowledge, had nothing availed him, answered that it chanced unto him very deservedly for that he either applied himself to the company of idle runagating fellows or else mewed himself up, and kept private, as if he took physic, thinking that the air of a strange country would infuse strange languages, riper Wit, 
What maketh a man's travel into strange countries profitable, and what unprofitable.  and judgement without conversing with such as were wise and judicious; or else wanted wit to observe such occurrences, as the conversation of wise and grave judgements did afford. For one of those three makes a man's travel fruitless, For whosoever in any ordinary profession intendeth to reap any skill and knowledge, by intercourse with other nations, must examine his own strength of wit, whether it be capable of the skill and art, he intendeth and desireth to attain, & must settle his affections, and bridle the appetites of pleasure and raging extravagant humours that rule in his nature, 
What general lie is to be observed of a travailer.  that thereby he may be able both to resolve himself to a studious and painful course of exercise and observation, and also to be wary and circumspect of the choice of his company, lest he light upon natures, not so skilful and well seen in the Art and mystery he covets to learn, as subtle and full of pleasing shows and delusions, which are by them made both cunning pursnets & hartnets, to inveigle and entrap young novices by.  
This have many jewellers, Physicians, young untamed Gentlemen, Scholars pregnant, but unskilful of the course of the world, had woeful experience of.  

What particularly is requisite for him that intendeth by traveling to attain knowledge in state learning.  But they which intent to make progress by traveling in the study of state learning, must not only have a capacity fit for the entertaining all stratagemicall plots and devices, that may be offered to their consideration, and ability to quell, and suppress all disordered motions and affects, but must be thoroughly insighted both in the Theory of the principal and most substantial points of all policy, 
Cunning politicians are like true Alchemists not open or free to relate their mystical and well digested positions.  and also well experimented in the particular lives, qualities and policies of his own country chiefest and deepest Statists, that thereby in conversing with profounder judgements abroad (who use not in their discourses to make Academical lectures and comments, but mystically and as it were in a cloud to involve their acquaint conceits and purposes, they may be able in the turning of a hand, to unfold and discover, that which may be conveyed to their quick understanding, worthy observation, and give unto them they converse withal, a taste of the like judgement, 
The learned and skilful affect the conversation of their like.  and insight anto politic affairs, which breeds in great wits & men of deeper understanding mutual content and satisfaction, and works through the very marrow and pericran yond of the wisest and soundest heads, and lastly must be furnished with such judgement, as may make him able in a moment, to discern a red from a stammel, and not to spend either time or cost upon any vainglorious, frivolous, deluding mountebanks, and showemakers of policy, and state-learning.  
Now forasmuch as many have a good will to learn, and want wit to conceive, and ability to temper their affections, and master and overrule their unbridled parts, and many having a good and ready wit, and ability to fit their humours to all occasions, yet divert, and incline both their wit & will to sinister & buy courses, the former sort prove nothing wiser but in show, the other only wiser in wicked and crafty contrivances, and yet both must return great statesmen and politicians. 
V●ine and formal travailers compared to wanton and foolish academics.  The former like fresh gentlemen Academics, who after they have learned by heart, but Porpheries predicables, and predicaments, & by a sophisticated argument can include (scarce conclude) their father's scullion at their return home in Bocardo, think themselves learned enough, but more like base timorous motley Cross wearers (for they are not worthy the title of Soldiers) such as Alexander had at the siege or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or rock in the Indies, so impregnable as they admired, but feared to venture upon it) who having looked upon the country, 
A description of prating soldiers and Braggarts.  whether they were priest to wage war in, and gotten by heart the names of the chief Commanders, leaders, Captains, Leiftennants, and such like, return with as great a brag, as if by their virtue and prowess, Sa. Domingo, or some other hold of special note had been taken: and setting upon their faces some scurvy Devill-like vizards of sternness, & taking into their mouths canon oaths, will among the simpler upon their alebenches, be accounted the only powder and shot-men, & expertest martialists of ten thousand, being indeed as we commonly call them hot-shots, and have more skill in the letting off a duzzen rigglesworthes dags well filled with sack, then in discharging one Calliver, and know the way better, and had rather march by night to the Island of Cranes, then sail by day to the East or West Indies: so these first sort of foolish travelers, if they can but recite the names of many fair towns they have passed through, 
Bragging travelers desbribed.  give their friend at their return a french salutation (though it be with a french bow in the hams) and cut their meat after an Italian fashion, wear their hat & feather after a German hufty, tell with a good grace, or rather bold face, not a hundred & fifty merry tales, (for then they would take away the gentleman fools office) but five hundred lies, purchase with those lies and cogs good clothes, and alter the fashion often: they must and willbe esteemed the only wise, learned, languaged politicians: and great reason, for why, among men of the simpler and smother condition, who think any man (though but as wise as a Parrot, that can change his language very learned) they stick not to give out, that they are close and private, or rather privy intelligencers (and yet their continual prating & taking all occasions to keep their new found tongues, 
Continual prating, an argument of folly and small judgement.  in everlasting motion, shows that they do neither intelligere, nor can give any intelligence of worthy note) and that they may dispend of some worthy Senator's purse (who never heard of their names) so many Crowns per annum, and thereupon fill for more likelihood sake, their pockets full of amorous love lines, and tailors and taverns unpaid reckonings, and seal them up as if they were letters of special coherence and intelligence, lately posted, not sent, from some great outlandish favourites: 
Bragging travelers described.  and many times among weaker judgements (not unlike petty broking merchants that trade in the interchange of brooches, currals, hobby-horses, painted babies, and dogs, who when they come into the country give out they are substantial merchants, and so pass for currant, in the belief of the simpler (being where they dwell and are known, accounted and called but plain peddlers:) through such sleight delusions, they gain the opinion of wise and politic linguists; but when they meet with any of worth, judgement, and repute, they are held (as they are) base mimic antic affectators and mere fashion-mongers.  
But these affecting Politicians are least offensive to the state, being only self pleasers of their own vain & idle humours, except in this regard they be hurtful, that being like Cypress trees, neither good for building, nor bearing fruit: with their fair leaves they overshadow better men's rooms and places. 
Idle men in a common wealth like Cypress trees.  Fruges consumere nati, fruitless consumers of wealth and words.  
The latter sort of travelers are more troublesome and noisome to the common wealth, for they having both wit and ability to add to their study in state-learning good & profitable observations, by traveling into other countries and returning not only well furnished with many helps of learned and foreign languages, 
Discontented witty and politic travelers dangerous and noisome to any common wealth.  but with substantial matter of discourse digested out of such general occurrences as have happened in those parts, where they spent their time, think now there is but one step betwixt them and the chair of state: and therefore scorn to converse with Penelope's handmaids, will court none but Penelope herself, whereas if they were admitted to any high place of government, in the common wealth, and put to the test of true judgement and knowledge in the state, they would prove so far from Troy-weight as being balanced with a true, wise and experienced statesman, in any particular, great & weighty business, they would not prove currant to pass in any the least affairs of a thousand, that should be propounded. They imagine not what difference is betwixt Plato's cups and tables, and his cuppitees and tabletees, the one fit for every ordinary scholar to discourse of, the other able to confounded the deepest judgements and profoundest artistes.  
The ordinary and general propositions maximees, and enter course of state affairs, 
Only wise experienced statesmen to be admitted to the grave and weighty affairs of the commonwealth.  is matter of discourse for the travailer and Student in policy, but the cuppitees & tablettees as it were of particular I deas, and designments, in & belonging to a state, is only matter for the ripest and most experienced statesmen, to discover, intermeddle, & dispute of.  
Every man that can look (as DEMOSTHENES said to the ATHENIANS of PHILOXENUS his arrival) against a candle, may not think his eyes firm enough to gaze against the Sun: only of the deep discerning politician it must be said, tam cernit acutim quam aut aquila aut serpens Epidaurius, such as have such insight into the State as by indirections they can find directions out, though they were hid fathom deep.  
Every man can say that a good Chirurgeon must sometimes launch deep, sometimes infuse oil into a wound, but none but a perfect & skilful chirurgeon cantel when to distinguish those different times and seasons. Every Apothecary & hearbist can discourse that this herb is good for that grief, and that for another, but to draw poison from the root, and to make a pleasant salad from the upper part of one and the self same herb, belongeth only to a most skilful & experienced Physician: so these by reading, observation and conference, had with learned & wisemen abroad, can relate that it is prescribed sometimes to have as grave a countenance as Phoci on or Democritus, 
Not to know much, but to mode rate the knowledge of much, is true knowledge.  and that Lyourg us himself allowed, sometimes a merry and cheerful behaviour: but when to be sad of gesture, & when to smile, and give place to mirth, and laughter, they can hardly prescribe themselves that moderation. For their mirth and pleasant jocondnes most commonly tasteth of Scurrility, wantonness and apish effeminateness: & their sadness full of affectation and harbouring, not so deep, as dangerous matters touching the state.  
They have observed by reading good histories and conference, that JULIUS CAESAR said, that matters of high enterprise, 
He is truly wise that can distinguish rightly the times and seasons of using his theory in perti cular actions.  because they are subject unto great and uncertain dangers, aught to be executed and dispatched out of hand, and no advise and deliberation to be taken of them, in regard that to the going through with business of that nature, celerity doth greatly help: the casting in of many demurs to matters of great peril, doth pluck a man back from hardy & adventuring: and they have observed- & can discourse by the reading and conference on the contrary, that DOMITIUS CORBULO used much to say, 
Domitius Corbulo his opinion of war.  that a man's enemies in battle were to be overcome with a carpenters squaring axe, that is to say soaking lie, one piece after another, and by both these observations laid together, can perhaps at their return in their conferences draw out these conclusions, that a Statseman either in matters of war or employments of peace, must sometimes be sudden, sometimes full of deliberation, sometimes slow, sometimes peremptory, and resolute: but if they were admitted to particular designments of such or the like state difficulties, as often happen to the dividing judgement of grave & experienced Statesmen, either in matters of peace or war, they would be as far to seek when to cut with a common axe, which goes through at the first chop, & when to use the squaring axe, which worketh the same effect by little and little, as how to use the Carpenters Square, or Axe, without cutting their legs off.  
If therefore they would according to SOCRATES his precept, (who thought it most against reason for any man to set up any handicraft or occupation before such time as he had thoroughly learned the same, or for a Seafaring man to sit and hold the Stern of a ship, before he had full and perfect experience in the feat of Marinership) apply themselves to the skilful and expert Card-men of a state, 
Men that intent to prove skilful in any course must apply themselves to the most skilful & experienced in every kind.  and become as it wear their apprentices before they set their hands and heads to the contrivance and making of curious nests of boxes & exquisite drawers & cubberds, belonging to the secret learning of public government; observing PLUTARCH'S rule, videnntes sequi potius quam caecos ducere, follow the sound rather than like a lame cripple lead the blind, they might then happily attain in time, that which vainglory detaineth) profundity of judgement and expect skill in managing the weightiest affairs of the common wealth.  
Apothecaries have many bundles of most eccellent receipts hanging up in their shops, such as they know have cured many several maladies: and they understand which receipt cured one sick of a fever, which the stopping of the liver, which a cathare, but yet being not able to judge whether the cathare proceeded from a cold and humid flux, or a hot & dry distemper in the liver or lungs, or what original cause and predominant quality the Fever and other several diseases-did proceed, dare not presume without the special direction of the Doctor, whose approved skill and long experience hath attained to the depth of all causes, to minister any manner of Physic to patiented and ill affected bodies: and surely if these could observe the Apothecary's rule, 
Discontent & pride, overthrow many good parts.  to be contented to be ministering hands to the Doctors in policy and State-learning, they might then perhaps proceed in time to the pulse of the State affairs, a degree further than the discreet and wise Apothecaries ever aspire unto: or if not so, they may settle themselves in a commendable course of some honest and warrantable account, to their own comforts, and the good (in some measureand degree) of the common wealth. But when like quick-saluers they strive to be accounted doctors, because they have travailed beyond sea, and skimbd up two or three excellent receipts, they draw to themselves either by vainglory, such discredit as quicke-saluers have in all their undertakings, or run (through discontentment that they may not have such dignity and promotion as they desire, and they only think they deserve) into such base offices and courses, as discredits and disables all the worth and repute which either their travailing or study might bring unto them, and so become not as the other sort of travailers were, like timorous, but like lusty sturdy soldiers, who having been in many hot skirmishes, & behaved themselves by sea or land like gallant tall men, yet are far from true skill and military discipline, because they may not have that place and command which belongeth to a man, not only of a stout courage, but an expert and skilful commander, betake themselves to piracy or robbing by the high way, the high way to their undoing: so these (application I need make little) the meanest understanding and conceit can apply it, and I would they whom it most concerns, would apply it to their hearts, and prove wiser in their courses, not profusely and prodigally abusing those good parts, which if they were purged with the fire of staidness from vanity, would shine and glitter about them, like the purest armour, 
Learning well used brings both honour and defence.  both to their exceeding glory and exaltation, and also to the defence and propulsation of many indignities, which they through their own folly sustain; so these I say by failing of their underserued long, fall either to the secret profession and practising with young Gentlemen, such Aretin, or such coney-catching mountebancke-like-tricks, as they have learned beyond the seas, as drown and disappoint the fruits of all their travel and diligent observations, made about state business.   

CHAP. 5. Touching Seminaries and jesuits.  
NVnc venio ad gravissimam et atrocissimam querelam non meam sed reipub. gravissimam in respect of the folly and weakness of some, atrocissimam in respect of the obstinate perverseness and wilful resolution of others of this coat and profession: 
The unnaturalness of our countrymen which become jesuits.  It was said of Romulus, that he grew hardy, rough and stern, being cast out to be bred of hardy, fierce & savage beasts, and that was no marvel: and it is set down likewise that Methridates turned poisonous herbs and receipts into wholesome nutriment, by enuring his body to take and eat poison, & that was no marvel:  
But for men bred of the sweet milk of their mother country, to turn bloody and murderous cutthroats of her prosperity, and flourishing estate: for men trained up among the wholesome and pure nutriments of sweet and profitable instructions, to be either by vanity seduced, or through desperate wilfulness resolved, to excercise unrecoverably their wits and studies, in the contrivance of nothing but poison, and poisonous plots and devices, and Serpentlike to rip up the bowels of their own native parent and milke-giving soil: these are Execranda prodigia, & prodigiosa monstra, Execrable prodigies, & prodigious and fearful abbortive monsters of nature.  

2. sorts of monsters or monstrous Seminaries.  I have implicitively noted two sorts of these monsters: The former, of them are pregnant, but weak understandings, pregnant and appliable to evil, as wax in summer, ready of it own accord to stick to any matter: but to good, honest and profitable courses, either concerning themselves, or their country, 
pregnant but in constant & unsettled wits how affected.  as wax in winter, brickle and hard and of much difficulty to be wrought, with either alluring persuasions, or chafing enforcements, and like children to go from school; upon the report of many gay and pleasing sights to be seen beyond the seas they are won to leave the land with an apple, but to sit still at home in some stade and honest profession, like children hard to be won with gold to go to school, and sit all day in security and quiet, learning that which may advance their good for ever: and when they are drawn out beyond seas, and have pleased their eyes with the sight of such deluding masse-shewes, and such like trumpery, as are every where obvious, and have got a smack of that obsceene, impure, and lazy life, they prove like mongrel dogs, 
A description of a lazy life.  rather persuaded (according to that saying of the Poets Canis a corio numquam abster rebitur uncto, a cur cannot be whipped from the Curriers grease-box, lo lie knawing in a chimney corner of some Monestery or Abbey (sweeete bones) then like painful hounds to be regarded, & esteemed for their skill in scenting and laborious following and prosecuting of any commendable practice, and course of living.  
And surely I am verily persuaded, that neither the touch of conscience, nor the sense & feeling of any religion, ever drew these into that damnable and untwineable train and ouzel of perdition, 
Idleness and unlawful pleasures draw many to that wicked course of life, and the profession of being Seminaties.  but only a pleasing humour of delighting their senses with vain and foreign fashions, mixed with a most pernicious resolution, to stick only to that custom and habit of life, which they had found most , with oily, sluggish, monastical security. 
Discontent & overweening conceit of wit undoes many a worthy spirit.  The other sort are drawn out of this land and her obedinence, or with pleasing shows (for they well can distinguish shows from substance) but with a profane and envious discontent, to see some others (not so wise in their conceits, as themselves) mounted up to the seat of honour and preferment about the state; for being not able through rancord malice and swelling of heart, contracted and gathered by misconceit of their own worth and learning, in affairs of the state, 
The mischief of envy.  to subdue the insurging affects & inundations of pride, to that order and obedience as may make their good parts serviceable to men of higher place, and by degrees minister occasions by their dutiful and painful endeavours of their promotion & dignity, they will and must needs travail (because Nemo Propheta in patria no priest is long regarded (as they say) in his own pulpit) to the pope's grace, that only royal M. and sovereign lord & maintainer of learning, and learned, wise, politic artists. And will it please you in one view to see what preferment and reckoning this subtle painted sheath of scholarlike promotions bestoweth on such his followers as go out of this God's grace, into that warm sun? The account surely that Caesar had of Rhimerales, for Proditionem amo proditores odi is the pope's posy and position concerning English starters, from their loyal and natural faith & allegiance: he loves the Pies tales, 
Treachery loved, but the betrayers hated.  but the Pie is most bitter, distasteful & unsavoury. And therefore he regardeth them as men do poisonous Arrows, which they shoot at their enemies. 
Traitors regarded of their Masters as poisonous Arrows.  If the arrows hit the party they are shot at, they shall be surely broken, if they hit another standing by, they shall be surely broken: if they hit not the body but light on the cloak or hat of him they are shot at, they shall be surely broken: (unless happily they light upon such a fool as sometimes is reported when he was strooken through the nose, to have pulled out the man's Arrow patiently, and by the way of private counsel, to have told him in his ear, that if he shot so again, he would break his Arrow) but they meet with no such noses of wax as will be so jested with all; for the very aiming with their venomous and irrilegious purposes & plots, at the State's heart and peaceable government, layeth them open to utter breaking: and though they never hit (as I trust none of that abhorred, unnatural, & diabolical crew shall ever hit so fair a white) their very intent and purpose exposeth them to most mild and just punishment. Will you see yet further the account is had of them by the Pope, 
The pope a false diceplayer, with our poor countrymen's lives.  the same that debost Gamesters & deceitful dice-players, have of young novices newly come to their lands: they draw them in with a supper or two, let them win for their better encouragement three or four bowtes of small worth, & suddenly when they find that they are thoroughly tickled and pleased with their nibbling success, they let down the mouse-trappe, cog in two or three false and unlawful Dice, & wipe their young gallant of all his gold, and send him like Aristippus, his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 his golden sheep either to some jasons fleece, or desperate enterprise, or home into their country to unfleece his poor tenants for a new supply: In like manner dealeth the pope with their lives, as the false Gamesters deal with young gamesters gold; give them pleasing content for a time but with a purpose to make them by desperate adventure game away their dearest blood.  
Medea's Golden Fleece is feigned by the poets to have given many worthy and heroic spirits, occasion to adventure to their destruction; as being kept by Giants, fiery dragons, & such like horrid monsters, as may more at large in their poetical fictions appear but our English true Golden-Fleece, hath caused the pope's to send over more foolish hardy adventurers to the Stygian Lake of perdition; & yet could never get one lock of it through all their devices and demonical attempts. And can they think whom he useth in so desperate and unlikely adventures, that they are regarded of the Pope their M a. when he sendeth them to fight with Lions, and death-spitting Dragons (for such are, as every child doth note) the supporters of the peace & tranquillity of england) nay, with the Lion of the house of JUDA who hath so taken into his protection and defence, both the heart and the head of this state's welfare, with all her sweet and princely branches (which God for ever prosper & establish) as if legions of devils and devilish spirits should daily seek to overthrow them, they should not be able to pull one lock, nay to hurt one hair of her flourishing & peace maintaining Solomon, or any of his most religious & all religious heart's comforting-seed and issue.  

The pope's pity towards our countrymen when they are hanged for treason  Will you see yet further the regard is had of them by the Pope? they are trained up & nourished (as was noted before) as dogs, to make him sport by putting them upon Lions, and when their skins are pulled over their ears by the talents of upright laws and justice of the state, he gets (like a woman with child of two twins, laughter for the fall of them, whom he fed and fatted but to the shambles, and disdain for their ill success) into his groaning chair, and pitieth them, thus:  
I sent not for these English flies, their service was unsought for, and sought for only as flies seek after bloody meat; & now if they have met with the butcher's flap, Tomeris his reward is iustly-falne upon them: sanguine satiantur qui sanguinem sitierunt: they greedily hunted after a shameful service, and they are paid with the wages of a shameful and ignominious death and destruction.  
These and the like words have been noted to have proceeded upon the death and hanging of many of our Rooms dearest children, from the mouths of those bloodsucking antichristian tyrants: Will you see yet further (for I would gladly reclaim my dear countrymen that have entered into that exorbitant course the very Pinfould of dangers (and deter all others from entertaining the like discontents & seducements by unmasking & laying open the fruits & assured profits may be expected to arise to any of that sect) the best regard is had of them by the Pope, 
The pope useth English Seminaries as Courtesans do their loves.  even the same that courtesans have of young prodigals, who so long as their purses are filled with ducats, and spur-royals, shall want no royal entertainment, are made ducklings at their lips and laps; kissed, embraced, fed with all amorous musical sweet varieties of pleasures, and enchanting delights, Vbi caeperint esse inutiles, eijciuntur foras, when they have spent all, stand behind the door for a cipher or warning piece; & not only so, but upon the least displeasure, are thrust out of doors all betatterd and forlorn in their estates, smothered not with kisses but with grief, and besmeared with shameful reproaches, and disdainful terms, in stead of sugared and honey salutations: so these whilst their heads are full fraughted with damnable plots & practices to advance the Pope's supremacy & regality, they shall want neither gold nor golden words: nothing can be too dear or to dainty for them, till they are thrust into deaths snare: but if they miss of their wicked and unchristian like purposes, (as they have ever hitherto praised be the keeper of Israel, and ever shall while Israel praiseth the protector of jaccobs' house) their accounts shall be at their return (if ever they do return) as of old and over-spent horses turned to graze in some penurious pasture for breed and training up of others to the like offices, who if they boldly attempt and be intercepted of their most abominable and hellish undermining treasons, they meet with Dyricks diet, 
Dirickes diet prepared for Traitors.  a bitter Cup prepared and stilled out of the veneficall herbs of their own, either unsettled, or discontented and aspiring brains.  

Objections fond made concerning the death of Seminaries.  And here I must needs take occasion to answer the fond & frivolous objections that many idle & troublesome heads make concerning the death of Seminaries, and jesuits, casting out, that they die for the testimony of a good conscience, and their Religion sake, thereby taxing the cruelty of this state, & the late queen's rigour, and the severity of some, especially that most religious pillar of God's truth, the now defunct, 
L. B. The papists term our religion a new found & Cecillian Religion: because that worthy Senator under the late Queen was a most resolute defender of the same  wise and worthy Counsellor of this state, terming the Religion which we under her gratitious and soules-releeving government professed, a new found and Cecillian religion (O happy title, a title that will be recorded in the register of eternal memory aere plus quam adamantino to his, and his posterities everlasting fame.  
True it is which few do conceive or rightly understand (for to reason of the antiquity of our religion, 
The reason why the law take; the goods & part of the lands from Recusants.  is neither befitting my function nor scope) that the reason why any law was enacted, to take from recusants their goods, and 2-parts of their lands, derived itself from this palpable proof, that Recusants were not contented to enjoy the liberty of their religion and conscience, but most of them became buy Seminaries and mass-priests (sent over by their Cayphardicall M. to breed sedition and disturbance of this realms peace and quiet) revolters in heart from their sovereign allegiance, and were indeed flatly reconciled to the Pope and his jurisdiction, and supremacy.  
For the Romish Church hold an opinion, 
The opinion of the Church of Rome touching reconcilement to the pope.  that for a Catholic (as they term them) to come to Church before reconcilement to the Pope, was but schismatical, but to come to Church and to be intermingled with us in divine service & participating of the holy Sacraments, after reconciliation to the Pope, and his supremacy, (and to be so reconciled to the Pope) what is it by their own testimony, but preferring the pope's authority before their natural princes (which is treason in the highest degree) was plainly heretical, damnable, and utterly unpardonable; whereupon the wisdom of the state at that time (for huic illae lachrymae, the title of the Cecillian Religion came) perceiving, that howsoever by the private & secret absolution of the jesuit & house priest, it could not be challingingly proved and evicted, that they which refrained our Church, were reconciled to the Pope, and renounced her Majesty power and supreme authority, yet ex consequenti it was as clear as light at noon day, that all they which obstinate refused the holy communion and divine service, were directly reconciled to the Pope. And therefore her Majesty (as now our gracious & dear Lord and Sovereign stands affected) loath to shed the blood of so many subjects, held it sit in policy for the better and safer preservation of this Realm in peace and tranquillity, only to curb and keep down Recusants from growing mighty, powerful, and rich (being intestine ill willers to his royal person and imperial state and dignity) by the deprivation of their goods and loss of part of their Lands: and like a wise and religious Chirurgeon (ut metus ad omnes, animaduersio adpau●cos perveniret) to cut off only the infecting and poisoning parts and members, which are these jesuits and Seminaries, the seducers of the people's hearts not from Religion, but from their natural piety and sovereign duty & allegiance. Now let it be weighed in equal balance, whether those times and those courses then held, or which now under his majesties flourishing & succeeding (but more exceeding lie peaceable) government, are held against Seminaries and jesuits, Savour of cruelty or desire of blood, or any other humour then a religious policy, to keep in upright terms, & in perfect temper and tune, the sweet harmony of this states happy regiment. And thus much shall suffice to have spoken of Seminaries & jesuits, wherein that I have somewhat digressed, let no man marvel, it stands within the chief scope of my subject which is policy, and this is one point of policy, which is the most affected to Popery (for many of them are full of these kind of objections) would duly observe, they would answer by this their own weak, wanton, and very womanish objections, concerning these and the like cases.   

CHAP. 6. Concerning Projectors.  
Projectors! why, what are they? 
A Description of projectors.  I noted 2. sorts of them: they are your only, not only politicians, but directors & plotters of state-busines (or rather continual makers of business, and trouble to the state governors) without whom the state cannot stand (or rather for whom the state governors cannot stand or rest in quiet.  
If you desire to know them better, they are such as have not like Philosophers made a projection of gold, but cast away their golden thrift and estates through some lose and indirect courses; and to repair it again, take the direct lineway to the court, 
proiecters like fishermen-  like fishermen (because they have hard, there is no fishing to the Sea, nor service to the Court toicaste about with their hooks and nets for a new golden promised estate.  
If you desire to know them further, they are peddlers, or Peddling informers of the State, men that have lapped up from the vommit of other men's wits, some excrements of Court-phrases, and thereupon turn Factors about the court & contrive Projects and strange devices of tobaco-pipes, Cardas' finas, brown paper, french wares, dunghill shrids, and a thousand of the like conceits, to trouble the State withal, wherein they labour and troth up & down as busily as Bees, carrying all the world in conceit, that they have such special employments about the State, as will let them rest neither night nor day.  
And truly they are right Merchants, for the trading to the East and West Indies gets but a living, and their trading from their lodgings to the Court with a bundle of papers, and from the Court to their Lodgings begets them, like East and West voyages, a yearly, yea daily revennewe. For to the expectation of their prosperous and happy success, many healths are drunk, and much good cheer daily tasted: Their Mercer, their Tailor, their Shoemaker, their ostes, their patients, are drawn by hoops of their court adventures, & fair shows and pretences to trust and furnish them with all necessaries, ad victum et vestitum, and are induced to let their fingers be keys of their coffers while all is spent; but when their patients and their Creditors through overlong deferring (for their projects are like the hour Saturn, that finisheth his course but once in three years, nay these scarce one of them thrive or come forward once in three lives) are rubbeth to the quick; either a new nail must drive out the other, or else being known to be silemced and their projects ejected as matters unworthy to pass the Seats of grave Audience, much less the seats of allowance, they spitefully fret and fume, and in their secret corners mutter, that few or none of the state were able to understand, or sound to the depth of their projects.  
Will you now know who are their retainers? Lice and Mice are said by DIOGENES to be poor men's retainers & followers, 
Vain & troublesome projectors retainers.  but these have lieutenants, captains, cavaliers, gentlemen of the sprucest stamp & edition to attend them early and late, whereby the grave & ponderous affairs & business of the state is very intolerably many times cumbered and tediously wronged.  
The second sort of projectors, are such as the Philosopher spoke of, but to a better end; who were ever towards wiving and yet married not, that were always in a readiness to sail on the sea, and yet took no Ship, that addressed themselves to enter into the business of the common wealth, & yet entered not into any honest employments at all, that had prepared and framed (but like women dumb moliunter et comuntur annus est, while they are a dressing and a drawing, one may ride to york) themselves to be in the Court, and to live in household with men of high State & great power, and yet were loath forsooth to be tied to subjection, & daily attendance.  
And yet notwithstanding they will be daily Courtiers and Politic directors too. For either they will frame & apply themselves, though in no wise to be daily attendants and servants (for that's too gross, and too abhorring from the french strain) but to be followers and directors, Tutors and Instructors of young noblemen, such as are raw and untrained in the subtle courses of this age, preferring always matters of pleasures and delight to their pitchy aprehensions, & in that respect prove no better many times than their panders, or if they cannot thrive so to their full content, they vulturelike seek out the cadavera, and cease upon the sores of discontented nobles, and prescribe them lessons & precepts of more discontentment and envy.  
And to gain nearer engagement with them, 
Dangerous & mischievous projectors  they will be ever feeding their humours with the pleasing Siren songs of their good parts, & extraordinary skill and dexterity in state business, and setting before them their admired valours, their worthy and highly extolled-bounties, & lyberalities, and so by degrees draw them with the twine threads of their own delights, (for these projectors are casters of their nets, always into troubled (waters) into an overweening conceit of their own worths, and unreverent and undue regards of other their equals, honest, studious, and faithful endeavours about the state's welfare, and never leave, making them like Fish, catch at the baits of dishonourable and ignoble misconceiving, till they are struck with the deadly hooks of their own, too to much, but over late pitied and lamented destruction and ruin.  
These are the very viperous Phalangia and Cantherides of Nobility: The Philosophers called such men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the little bushes and pimples of glory, and rightly: for as they through their continual itch bred perpetual unrest, and unquietness to such as were affected with them, so do these preceptors of vain glory and discontent, beget in noble and free spirits nothing but an itching humour of putting them forward to desperate and Polipus-like practices, being made by their plotters, & instructors but the stages and actors of their wickedly contrived, either malicious or vainglorious or ambitious purposes, and like bushes they in the end prove unto them, for when they break out into public note and view, the filth and matter of their long harboured & hidden hearts motions, runs about the unspotted & unblemished faces of their fames, & honour, and so infects them, that the scars & Cicatrices thereof can hardly ever be salved & healed up again: but I rather liken such men to impostumes in the throat or stomach, which as experience teacheth us, are not seen nor discerned, but take a man suddenly when the world thinks all sound and healthful within the party diseased, and break out in a moment, with such abundance of corruption, as dispatcheth him before his friends, who stand all amazed at the sudden mischance, can conceive which way to seek remedy, or what remedy to apply.  
So these harbouring and settling by their false surmises, and crude and imperfect suggestions, within the stomachs and maws of noble Gentlemen, corrupt impostumes of envy and rancour, apply phlegmatic matter and daily formentall exasperations of indisgested misprisions, and unkind aspersions, which being suffered to feed within them to a ripeness, break forth suddenly into such disorder, (even when all is thought sound at the core of their firm and faithful allegiance) as irrecoverably casteth them away, & leaves their friends, to utter amazedness and discomfort. Hos tu roman caveto, God keep all true and Noble hearts from such projectors, plotters & Politicians.   

CHAP. 7. Concerning substan tiall Statesmen.  
THere are many can talk very freely of encountering with Lions, and wrestling with Bears, who dare look neither in the face. And as many that vainly will predicate and boast of great learning and understanding in the deepest affairs of the State, who can not guide the Triremes much less the Quinquiremes of of any weighty employment. The overweening conceit whereof, maketh some who have read over a piece of Aristotle's politics, to deem it no usurpation, to ascribe unto themselves the title of Politicians. And if they have turned over some few leaves of ISOCRATES short precepts, or but 4 sides of SEXTUS JULIUS FRONTINUS, his four books of Stratagems, superciliose contrahunt frontem, They cast their heads over the left shoulder, they think themselves seated and enthroaned in the breast of MINERVA, bred in APOLLO his brains, and able to manage any public affairs: very substantial Statesmen.  
But little do they know what deep and secret mysteries, are to be found in Court-learning, and how different from School terms.  

The difference betwixt court learning and School-learning.  Scholars in their professions are all of them to be reverenced & respected in their several degrees of excellency, yet they must understand that they who wade into the depth of generalities, cannot be fit instruments of particular employments, especially concerning worldly affairs, much less the occasions and occurrence; of the commonwealth. For although in the Theoric they understand, & can out of their understanding discourse at full, many of them, of many things that occur in their printed Authors touching Peace and War, yet the want of experience depriveth them of that fitness and agility in the performance of those matters, which to some by a secret instinct of nature, helped with continual practice, comes so ready, as when they are conversant in state-imployments, seem to be like fish in the Sea, In loco proprio, as contrary wise mere professed scholars admitted to any courtly function, 
Why mere professed scholars are not fit for public action and employment.  about a Prince and his state, bewray most of them a sheepish stupidity, the best of them a want of spirit and dexterity, which adds to all actions in every outward profession such a grace, as they who are admitted to any public designments without it, seem but Sutores ultra crepidam: and I must make bold to say (though I wish aswell to letters and the Muses as any unlearned well-willer of them can) that if Princes in their behaviours & causes politic, should stand to school arguments, 
Prince's behaviours & actions must depend upon laws, not arguments.  order (the strict observation whereof makes a Prince most eminent, especially in his court) would often times beg at his gates and wander like a banished vagabond.  
For howsoever the government of court and commonwealth came from the rules of philosophy, & to them must indeed refer their offpring, yet because the treaties of Philosophers consist in a general consideration of things, they leave to every one that readeth them a scope of his own opinion and interpretation, whereas the Laws and particular observations confirmed and established in either court or the universal state, make them cease as Philosophical discourses to be adjudged opinitively true or false, for they set down positively this is granted and approved by general consent of the wisest and profoundest Statists good or bad, and so folds us within assured bounds, which if we might pass in breach, as scholars turn them up and down in the uncertainty of their opinions & argumentations, our natures would range infinitely into all enormities, and disorders.  
Prince's affairs must not be ordered by a free discourse of reason, but the government of their estates must be tied, either to the customs, Laws, & municipal statutes of their countries already established & ratified; or to the profound and discerning judgement of discreet, wise, and experienced rulers, which being granted, they whose skill consists more in what they have read, than what they have with a digested judgement observed convenient for every function and office of public government, cannot be reputed fit for the managing of Court business, being indeed deprived of the chiefest help of their several employments, which is a judgement priest & always provided, distinguishingly to order, settle and dispose all affairs and occurrences of a State, which cannot be in him that is continually encumbered, and enfolded within the multiplicity of contemplative studies.  
For though variety of reading and turning over many learned authors, is a great help to all other scholarlike professions; as divinity, 
Socrates' his opinion of book learning how hurtful to the judgement of great statesmen.  physic, law, yet nothing hinders more a statesman's attaining of perfection in the skill & mystery of state-learning, than the confounding himself & his judgement, with multifarious intricateness of book conceits: for if the light of judgement (which in all conclusions and negotiations, is most prevalent) be inveloped & inclouded within the mists of many diverse, scattered & uncollected opinions, and opinitive says & sentences, what can it publicly produce, or perform worthy the repute of a perfect and all sufficient Statist? I do not exclude all Scholars from the business and affairs of the State, but my reason chiefly importeth, that every man who is well seen in STRATAGEMICALL discourses, and the study of State-learning, may not think that sufficient to enable him in the excecution of public affairs, but an exact examination must be had of the strength and ability of his judgement, who intendeth to apply himself to grave and weighty causes in any public function and duty, for surely it cannot be imagined that any man who is not most plentifully inritched, 
A discerning judgement. principally to be required in a statesman.  and endued with this most unvaluable treasure of a discerning, observing and applying judgement (which seldom possesseth men overbusied and out-spirited in contemplative studies) can be fit for the trading and negotiating in public affairs of the commonwealth.  
For, as DEMOSTHENES said of pronountiation in an Orator, so may I say in a Statesman, that judgement is the first, the second, and the last, yea all in all requisite, without which no man, never so well seen either in booke-learning, or observations in any public business, can be able to prove excellent, or almost fit to rule the Horses of the sun, or pull in and let out, as the necessity and circumstance of time, place, and persons do require, the rains of any state government. 
Many by the very help of nature without any great insight of School-learning, have proved throughout all ages worthy and excellent Statesmen   
There have been many noted in all states, even by the instinct and help of Nature and experience, to have proved most excellent and worthy common-wealths-men, having had small or little furnishing of book learning.  
And questionless a man may well applying himself to the study of State-affairs, be furthered by conversing & reading of Historical and Stratagemicall studies, that hath an excellent wit and judgement to apply and make use of the same in his particular affairs, without much expense of time; but it is impossible for any Man, never so much backed with the instructions of politic Authors, without this special gift of judgement, in observing every fit & convenient Particular, touching his several employments, to prove excellent in the study & profession of perfect State-knowledge: and whosoever shall be admitted to state employments rawly upon book rules, without long experience & observation, shall be found to sink under the burden of their deep undertakinges, & make themselves & their lives both a perpetual slavery & vexation, & a continual mockery & scorn. For like rash and heady captains employments (that may be said rather cursibus quam victoriis nationes peragrare, course through, rather than conquer many nations) so will all their actions appear, & be approved to the wisest & experiencedst Statists most slightly performed. For how is it possible for a man that intendeth to learn & draw out the situation of any country, to take a perfect and exact description of the particulars, by making certain sudden ranging, sleight & cursory notes of the same? no man of sense or judgement doth conceive it possible.  

What to be considered in plotting, describing, and setting forth several countries and soils  For there is required to the exact Cosmography of any country, a due and careful observation of many particulars in particulars, which cannot be had by running, but by walking stayedly and steadily throughout, and by resting & residing sometimes, thereby to gather and distinguish to his conceit the several groves, the Paludes, the valleys, the mountains, the campestrian and siluestrian soils and situations. No more is it possible for any man to prove an exact Map-man, in the perfect skill and understanding of the several affairs of any State, except by the pencil of his observation and experience, he have chauked & pointed out the mountainous occurrences, of and concerning the Princes & nobles behaviours, the valleys of the people's orders, and disorders, with fit preventions and advisements concerning all, both Siluestrian, and Campestrian, rural, and urbane occasions, as also have a full and general insight, into all the particular veins and mines, as it were of foreign and hom-bred customs and commodities.  
And who can recollect and draw all these accidents and a thousand more, properly and most necessarily belonging to a perfect & complete substantial Statesman's understanding, to their several lines and places, without an extraordinary reach and applying judgement, which must be the hand to direct the pencil of every necessary and fit occurrence. It is the heat of clear and pure burning judgement, which like fire severeth & divideth upon all occasions the dross from the pure gold, which distinguisheth  pearls from liquid hailstones, manacles from bracelets, business of encumbrance and ensnaring designments from employments full of honour, credit, safety, and reputation. It is judgement, which maketh a man admitted to the state absolutely powerful, like a perfect Physician, instructed with all manner of perfect skill, to apply a sovereign and precious salve, to every particular sore of the commonwealth. This discerning judgement, will teach and instruct him infallibly that hath obtained the same, how to behave himself in all the courses and affairs of his life, in such sort, as he shall most easily distinguish errors from truth, and divide that which is profitable and convenient from that which is hurtful and offensive to his future and present estate.  
This will inform him, when all school-points will fail him (like false friends in adversity) how to bear himself in the most dangerous & doubtful times, that his life shallbe subject unto. 
Good precepts and instructions of Philosophers, necessary rules for ordinary conversations.   
For although good precepts of wise men, and learned instructions of philosophers, are firm grounds to set a civil man in the right way, for his ordinary conversation, and the directions of profound Politicians may very well, (by adding thereunto his own wary observations) point out a fit and correspondent behaviour for all sorts of people, and which in gesture, speech, and outward graces and compliments, may sufficiently warrant his carriage to Prince, to Parents, to friends, to servants, to superiors, to inferiors, yet let him know if ever he shall be admitted to the managing many doubtful & scrupulous points of a public state, wherein shall depend either the ruin or the preservation of the weal public, or if not so, a great rent or stroke may be given by ill advise, as contrariwise a great heap of honour may arise to himself, and good to the commonwealth, by wise and well succeeding counsel, therein to have a clear judgement, far surpassing all others, whereby he may be able to understand, of many courses, which (according to the diversity of many men's opinions) shallbe propounded: which is not only the likeliest, but certainly the best, argues not a man well red in books, or studiously conversant in other men's directions, and observations, (for many accidents fall out and are offered to the consideration of a man occupied in the deep designs of the commonwealth whereof he shall find no likelihood of example, or pattern to cut out his present actions by) but a singular eminency of wit and judgement, divinely inspired from God above. And whosoever can be able to cast, not only an eyesight but an insight into the behaviour and carriage of such a man, upon whom God hath bestowed this discerning and all-deviding judgement, his several actions and respects shall not seem to him actions smelling of lantern and candle, or savouring of learned authors & discourses (for many, yea most who can say much more (as I noated) out of ancient histories & booke-obseruations, often see less in diiudicating particular state-cases) but the behaviours respects & carriages of a man through his quick and Eagle-like-sight of judgement, firmly resolved in all doubtful causes, to stick to one course: for that is the very life of all State-wisedome, suddenly and in a trice, to attain to a resolution in all determinations propounded. For many are in show very wise, in conference very profound, in matters of difference very acute & subtle, banding to and fro now one reason, than an other, and those very plausible and likely, but for want of this judgement or rather judicious resolution (which in a statesman hath the prime and principal seat, when sentence definitively is to be pronounced, cannot so easily stick to one course and project, as find out many.  
And yet many of these nimble-headed and quicke-conceited wisemen, (which I never marvel at, because I know by experience that the greatest hindrance to perfect wisdom is to be puffed up with a high conceit of ones own wit and proper understanding) having inflamed brains and heated imaginations, to a promptness and volubility of speech, account, in respect of themselves, all others fools: so excellent seems to them the lightning (for I cannot call it light) of their wit and reasoning (for I cannot call it reason and judgement) and half drunken faculty of belching out at their ordinaries & pots, ordinary & trivial conceits: and happily (that I may give the best of them some respect) for the invention of many plots and stratagems, these hot brains, are far excellenter, then judicious and deep reaching and experienced Statists, but when they come to the execution of weighty causes: such as may either help or hinder them for ever, either in public or their own private negotiations, such a dizziness, and dim darkness overshadowes the true light of judgement (which is by them seldom exercised) as you may observe them (like birds in Snow) fall when the Sun is at the highest of his strength, into most apparent dangers, and run with fierce speed into their adversaries nets. And thus much may suffice to have spoken as well of the painted professors of State-learning, as of the true and perfect Statistes of any religious commonwealth, with their several habits, shows, offices, & distinctive faculties, wherein if (according to the little skill and perspection, which by God and nature is infused into my understanding) I have shot near the mark of your content, my content and satisfaction superaboundeth.  
Howsoever, the errors I have committed you must attribute to my distractions, the fruits of a weak & sick body, which according to the rules of philosophy, many times alter the temperature of the mind, & where any thing doth either deesse in necessariis, or abundare in superfluis, want in matter or abound in form, you must supply with the swift wings of your love, the defects of the one, & prune of, with the skilful knife of your discretion & applicatory judgement, the sarmenting & overspreading boughs of the other.  
With these I commend my love to your loving entertainment, wishing that (although they are but Pans-reade and rurall-songes, they might (as matters set down by the pen of APOLLO) sound sweetly in your apprehension, & give to your conceit most consenting music, pleasure, & delight.  
In my next (so you shall be pleased to accept these in good worth) I will strain the strings of my best wits, to give you a relish of sweeter harmony.  
Your Philodespolus. I. M.    

A Sixefold precept, of Policy.  

NEARCHUS to his PHILODESPOLUS.  
I Have received from your hands the harvest of your approved love, your sixefoulde discovery of Policy, whereby I have conceived both plaustrum lubentiarum, a carrefull of pleasing, and yet most true and uncontrowleable descriptions of such vanities and absurdities as are hourly practised in the course of the world, and march under the Silken Banner of outwardly professed Titles of vain gloriously frivolous, or maliciously turbulent Politicians; And in your sixth and last discovery fully perceived your judgement in setting down, (be it spoken without flattery) such exact, prepended, and ponderous descriptions of perfect Policy and State-learning, as was not expected from your Pen. Veterem ferendo Inturiam, invitas novam: The pleasure and profit I have drawn from your precedent Politic discourses, emboldeneth me to enjoin you to a new trouble, before I have given you any content or repayment for your former manifold courtesies.  
Your pen hath led my conceit into a grove or thicket of many use-ful but general observations, but if you leave my tender years, without your Ariadne's thread of conduction, your love will prove wrongful distraction, and an exposing of my unsettled thoughts, to the wild beasts of disturbance. Therefore I must entreat your loving Convoy, for the settling me in the safe and plain way of some particular precepts: and as you have set down the ground work of a true and perfect Statesman, as also the Cyclopaedia which most powerfully ruleth and must be made the chief and principal workman in all affairs of civil & politic government, by him which intendeth to be regarded for his wise carriage in any religious commonwealth: so you would take pains to add to those general propositions, some few particular precepts, which as sea-marks may enable me in this infidelious age, to shun & avoid such rocks & quicksands of treachery & deceit, as high fortunes & estates are ordinary subject unto.  
For like as such persons as have to do in the game & feat of wrestling, have in a readiness certain sure points & ways both to catch hold, & also to wind out of their adversaries foil & grapple: so must they who intent to travel in the business & occupations of peace & war, of necessity have in readiness (according to Erasm. his admonition) sure rules, by which they may be put in remembrance what is in many doubtful particular cases, needful to be done, or omitted, Show therefore without any subterfugie, your ability & propense readiness, go give satisfaction to this my request.  
You shall add hereby to mine & other my good friends opinions now had of your sufficiency in politic observations, a large and locuplete increase of your repute, and show me an infallible argument & consignation of your undoubted love, and lastly set upon the Talley of my respect, and Love, such debts of your deservings, as shall make me carefully studious & studiously careful to repay them with triple satisfaction and remuneration.  
Your loving Nearchus. C. S.   

PHILODESPO US his answer to Naearchus his request.  
WHat you have received (dear sir) was your own. For whatsoever gifts of art or nature wear my inheritances, are by adoption your appropriations, for I have long since in heart bequeathed and designed all the faculties of my mind and ability of body to your command and disposing. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉  
I have wiped away from the Table of my remembrance all forms and effigies, that first, middle and last, at all times, & above all things I might prescribe fresh in my memory your faithful favours, so liberally and so freely expended upon me, a man of so little worth and respect. If any thing in those weak judgements, proceeding from weakness itself every ways, did sit smiling at your heart, & conveyed to your thoughts either pleasure or profit, I care not what displeasure or diseaseful unquiet they brought upon me. Concerning your request, it was Brut. his saying (as plutarch in his lives maketh mention) that it argned a great want of wit, not to be able to deny any thing requested. And surely though their breatheth not on earth that man, that might leave me sooner void of wit or power, to deny or excuse whatsoever you should by request command (for I have ever accounted your requests, as powerful and absolute commands) yet lupum auribus teneo, through this your motion I am driven into such commotion, as my sickness more disquieteth not my body, than this demur & dependence disordereth my thoughts. To deny you, the sense of gratitude, of civility, debarreth me; to yield, the weightiness of the imposure, a burden which I am no way able to discharge with any warrantable account of credit, and the quality of the suit, and business propounded, utterly deters me.  
For to take upon me to point out particlar lessons, & instructions, such as may be directors to a man of that state and fortunes, (as both by your noble order and rank, and much more by your diligence and study in liberal Arts and faculties of the deepest mysteries of learning, is likely, and altogether hoped and expected to be derived upon you) were to note out a Caesar-like ambition in my thoughts and would certainly lay my folly and weakness open to much scorn and derision.  
And again, (beloved Sir) the government of a public State, you must consider is like to a ship at sea, continually tossed with uncertain waves and surgees, even as the more uncertain winds and State-tempests of sudden motions and accidental alterations, and diwlsions daily arising one in the neck of another, shall affect it: and therefore no sure or certain directions can be prefixed and Prescribed to draw the particular lines of a statesman's life and actions by, your own daily observations, when you shall be admitted to action, willbe surer and perfecter Preceptors unto you, than any the most experienced statesman's rules and precepts: and from me, how can you think (being never admitted to the practive part of policy & public government) that any note of worth or regard can be drawn? therefore I pray you unbend the strength of this your request which I know was made by you with no other purpose then to try & feel the forwardness of my inclination, least running into a rash and precipitate intrusion of weightier undertakings, then either my ability could bear up and support, or the fitness and congruity of this function & performance bear out, you shall (God willing) if herein I have not satisfied you (as I trust I have) at my next meeting and conference, be with more surcharging reasons sufficiently resolved to content touching your request. In the mean time I will think of something more fitting, and I hope as fully satisfactory, which I may offer as an appeasing sacrifice to your consideration, and so for this time I commend your diligent and Belike studies to Gods all prospering favour and blessings.  
Yours not as he would but as he may I. M.   

Naearchus, his reply.  
GOod friend (by the name of friend and servant both I kindly conjure you) that you would not use me as Vetronius Thurinus used Alexander Severus his poor suppliants, to smother me with lingering excuses and delays, nor make use of your wit in putting off and declining the force of my most necessary requests. What Brutus his conceit was, concerns not particular; you shall by your denials but set me into more longing, and with more forcible pursuit, make me to arietate & press forward womanlike against all objected allegations. In this one conclusion I will drown all your doubts and demurs, your weakness and imbecility (if it shall commit any errors) shallbe poyzed within the balance of my love and kind acceptance, and within the curtains of most bosom secrecy, shall they be entombed. And although I cannot deny but that when dangerous tempests suddenly arise at Sea, prayer & resolution to death is most available, & that in a tempestuous state, where all things are continually in an uproar, & disorderly confused, through daily and intestine war, politic precepts do as little avail, as astronomical observations at sea, in rough, and all skill-drowning storms: yet it were madness for men that are to travel by sea, utterly to neglect the due & exact observation of several sands, gulffes, cliffs, rocks, reatches, and shores; so were it a plain madness, for him that endeauoreth to pass through the straits and difficulties of deep and dangerous employments, to commend his actions to the wind, and weather of every accident, without any due and diligent consideration what he acteth, or which way his purposes shall arrive at their propounded ends, and be crowned with his desired and expected respects.  
For certainly in the most troublesome confusion of tempests, though a good spirit and resolution hath the principal place, yet ordinary rules are not by seafaring men altogether omitted, but in a calm they are preferred before the courage and desperate resolution, of the most undaunted hearts: so when any state is most distressed with garboils, Politic governors omit not the ready and necessary windings and craning about of the people's inconstant & weathercock affections, to contrary time-pleasing points, nor any such rules and ceremonious instructions, as experience & that present occasion shall find most behoveful: but in a peaceable, tranquille, and well governed state (such as we converse in) (happy are the governors, but more happy the people that possess by such wise and worthy governors uncessant care and vigilancy, so great happiness and prosperity) wherein no turbulent motions of civil & domestic broils daily arise, the well digested rules of expert statesmen may stand one, that is to launch into the deep of deep & sealike affairs in stead, as wary card-cautions, to know how to beware of the manifold and diverse tumults, and conflicts of envy, that shall be laid in the channel ways of integrity and harmless innocency, and such infinite inconveniences as imprudence, temerity, or improvidence, may expose a man's life and fortunes unto.  
And therefore be not nicely obstinate in yeeleding to this my so much desired requests, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. you shall perform to me a most kind office, and no ways (I will undertake) wrong yourself, and although that gold which is digged out of the earth by us with greatest travel is best regarded; and benefits hardly obtained, are usually best beloved; yet think you shall unmyne your minds golden collections to a heart that can distinguish the quality of gifts, and the natures of the givers. And be most assured, that your free & unforced oblations, shall never pass without their most valuable and weighty acceptance, from the Altar of my heart: so hoping that I shall not need by any further second, and begging interpellations, to set Mindus his gates before the town of your discharge & performance I leave you like a town, as I hope conquered by the powerful charge of this my rebesieging solicitation.   

An answer to the replication.  
XENOPHANTUS, (right worthy sir) customably used by certain measures, which he exercised and played upon a Flute, to set ALEXANDER foorthward to battle.  
Xenophantus might have been accounted an exquisite physician, if he could by his skill have drawn Alexander from war: for to martial affairs, he was naturally of himself inclined, and needed no provoking incitements, to stir his warlike spirit to battle, where in he so much & so inordinately delighted. Your persuasions have ever had as powerful operation in my breast, as ever either Xenophantus or Arion his music had to delight & draw the senses of any mortal. But surely in this kind, your importunate requests, rather ravish & enforce my will & consent, then like Xenophantus measures persuade my affections. For Alexander was never so willing to take an occasion to march against his enemies, as I am unwilling to put in battle array such distracted precepts, as sickness, and sorrow thereof conceived, shall be composers and prepositors of: you should have needed small store of conjurations in any other procurations. But howsoever, you must not be denied, & your sweet and delicate conditions have been to me in all your requests, like CAIUS FURIUS CRESINUS his field-instrumentes, powerful, and unresistible bewitchings, and therefore I will make use of that politic rule, Sapere est id sponte amittere, quod tenere amplius non poteris, a woman were as good yield that to a man at first, which she finds by love to be once conquered, and by Cupid's battery beaten down and subdued: & I finding a weak heart, set against the most powerful & puissant forces of your virtuous love, and most to be beloved virtues) will most cheerfully recollect and erect my fainting and languishing spirit, with the comfortable consideration of your promises, & hope and desire to give unto your undeniable requests, all serviceable and satisfying content and the rather for that I assuer myself, that your sunshining and supporting favour, shall not be wanting to my weak & infirm supplies, as I shallbe enabled to digest and recover them, to your sight and use.  
And because (to cut of all further ambages) all rivers are said to flow from the sea, and thither to return again, and all Actions to be measured out by the affects of the heart, which is like the fathomless and unfoundeable sea, to the plummets of any outward appearance, I will in the first place prescribe you Sea-rules for the sound of your heart & affections, how far you may flow over, and how much you must restrain your surging & inundating appetites thereof, as the necessity of special occasions & occurrences shall require.   

Concerning general and particular trusts.  
LEt Therefore your heart be generally affected as Chemical glasses, or poor men's christmas Boxes are framed & fashioned: Let down many men's hearts and secrets into the deep bellied Glass of observations, but let the mouth thereof be narrow and open but to a few, parcè desumpta, use them pinchingly and sparingly, as Gentlewomen use their secretest convaiances (not as Clowns their trumping alarms) as necessity shall extract & wrest them out from you, for some further ease or advantage: use them as grave counsellors smiles, not as rude Hobbinolds ger-laughters, who think they are never merry, except they cast the house out of the Windows with extreme security, and forgetfulness of all humanity and ceremony of civility, as Usurers, not as Prodigalles use their Purses, Let your heart stand, concerning the drawinges and withdrawinges of your trusts and employments, as your Cabinet is furnished with several and close drawers & boxes.  
Your Cabinet hath a general drawer below all the rest, for your lose & idle papers, which is without any special lock or Bar, only the general door being opened, you may with ease and no further labour draw out and admit such general conceits as are cursorily to be used.  
All the rest of your Cabinet drawers are discreetly and with good judgement distinguished to particular secrets, some to the receipt of your jewels, some to one private and peculiar use, some to another, all which are restrained from any others eye or view, being with several Keys and wards barred & debarred your best and most endeared friends. In like manner fashion all your both private & general demeanour & conversation.  
For your ordinary followers & suitors, men of lower state & condition, let your heart be free and open to them, by one general Key of admittance, to the discretion of your outward carriage, which without any intricateness of study, will be apted and enabled by general observations to shape every man an answer, according to his propounded ends, desires and deserts. For matter of deeper consequence, keep a particular Key to eue●… several designment, trust ●…ve and occasion.  
Let not in any man of note and worthy estimate, (either for honourable place or respective quality) through your hearts secret closet, and particular drawer, which may concern another's (as worthy to be respected) affairs or trusty reposements, nor any to any private drawer of your hearts secrets, but with the right Key, that belongeth properly and essentially to his own particulars. So shall you in the first place, gain the hearts and understandings of most men of special worth, note and respect.  
Secondly you shall add to ingenious men's labours & painful endeavours, continual encouragement, and make them willing without jealousy (jealousy which burdens and oppresseth free spirits and deep reaches) to unseam and unrip their expensive & elaborated observations, to your discreet and concealing apprehension.  
Thirdly through this your discreet carriage, and concealing conveyance (which will speedily be discovered in a great statesman) you shall breed and ingendor in the hearts of every wise and approved statist, that converseth with you, a wonderful and unremooveable conceit, of your high and admired wisdom, which by a spreading fame, begets an entire respect and inducing opinion of worth, and an opinion of worth & wisdom must not, in a statesman be neglected, (especially among men of wisdom) and (though of lower fortunes, yet of deep and discerning judgements) for that being lost, a statesman ceaseth (even as a father ceaseth after the death of his children, to be accounted a father) to be reputed & esteemed for a grave and well deserving statist.  
Fourthly and which is most in yourself, and for your own good to be respected, it will derive to your judgement an excellent method and order in all your several carriages, and free you from such inconveniences, and encumbrances, as an inconstant behaviour, unsteadines, and an ordinary custom of dispersing and communicating many several men's business, coherences, and judgements, freely opened to the hearts private reservation, will throw any man, seriously occupied in diverse and deep designs, into. For as in a library of many of the most exquisite and profoundest treaties of plots & conveyances of or belonging to a state, except every work and plot concerning merchants affairs, every several accident and negotiation of french occurrences, every project of spanish, every scope of embassages, and intercourse of Barbary business, and so of the rest, both domestic and foreign occasions, be not methodically distinguished, and neatly delineated into their special quincunces, and proper and peculiar places & orders, (whereby upon a trise a man may find by the cast of his eye, whatsoever the necessity of present use and employments call for) breeds more encouragement to have such a library (though of the most excellent manuscripts) than the benefit thereof can give contentful satisfaction: so doth the conferences had with many wise & expert men who have laboriouslie and profitably traveled at home or abroad, in several and distinct courses of state-busines, as also the particular secrets of your equals, attending near about a Prince's person, offered to your hearts trust (as in the court an eminent person for favour or respect of wisdom, shall want no private proffers, and insinuations of service, so long as his wisdom and fortune supports that well begotten grace and favour) if your heart be not able to clap a special key to every several men's discourses and secrets (such as carry no matter of danger, or distaste of the princes behaviours, courses, or affects, (for with the concealing of such secrets never let your heart participate) they will bring, by a confused intermingling of one man's secrets with an others, a general distrust and hatred of all your followers and acquaintance, and make your judgement utterly unapt, and uncapable to make particular use and profitable application, of such conclusions and experiments, as from time to time have been offered to your pre-eminence by private notice and conference. For your thoughts will be evermore disorderly disposed and appointed, betwixt trust, fear, and jealousy, and when upon any state accident, you should be admitted to action or public advise, you will be cast into strange & extravagant doubts, how far the revealed trusts of this Noble may prejudice, and open your slender and inconstant behaviour to another, and how far another man's conceit (by promise and the law of courtiership, to be locked from all others ears) & commonly may tax and justly condemn your levity and double neutrality to a second, and a second give taste and relish to a third of your uneeven and unsquare and unskilful handling of your court-cariages: which can never suffer a statesman to thrive or prosper, but sets by degrees in short time (time the discoverer of all men's hearts) a daily and hourly curb and bridle upon the mouth of all his sayings and proceed, and in continuance makes him of a free man and resolute, a very bond slave, and in all occurrences of special moment, to cry mumm, standing rather like the superficies, following the lines of other men's directions, than a rule & mathematical line, to draw all other ciphers and superficies of a state, after his prefigured and deciphered orders & orderings.  
And as in your Cabinet you have one special drawer, which hath a triple lock not to be picked open by the cunningest juggler: so let some secrets of your heart be unpassable, and inviable to any trust whatsoever. Admit neither father nor brother, wife nor mother, friend nor familiar, to keep the golden key of those mystical and deeply digested treasures of your heart's inclination, or your life's conversation, let them be as your life blood, revealed upon no occasion, where it pricks, or where it tickles, or where it settells, for you may have some such secret griefs, some such secret delights, and some such secret unquenchable flames, either of honour or pleasure, as may not with safety be made known or conveyed to the most secretest trust and discovery of any man living. So shall you make good in your own precedent that Italian proverb, La lingua del savio è ascosta nel suo evore. The tongue of the Wiseman is hidden in his heart.   

The second Precept. Concerning the tempering of affections.  
Every man doth wonder at an Eclipse of the Sun or Moon, and gazeth at a blazing Star, but few men regard to understand the motions and exhalations of their own affections & eclipses of either that he avenly instilled light of nature, infused into the soul of man; or the wild estranginge and aberrations from reason, appareled & instructed divinely, many times and in many men, with the supernatural precepts and instructions of religion.  
Two reasons may be yielded why we too negligently pass over and suffer to grow to a head of dangerous and mischievous custom, any vice or disorder, Lordlike predominating or rather tyrantlike lording and triumphing, in our natural dispositions and inclinations. The one a powerful and overweening desire, we have by nature, to pry into other men's faults, and so overslip the sight of our own slimy & defiling filth of foul enormities.  
The other, is a natural fearfulness, to rip up Chirurgian-like with the instruments of severity, our hidden and inwardly putrefying sores and corruptions, to the core and bottom of them, and to make often & privy search into the closet rooms and angles of our flattered and over-sliked & smoothed follies, reigning within us.  
For daily experience teacheth us, that every Comet or escape in an other man's digressions, from the perfect and exact prescript of human civility, or other customary rites and ceremonies, is wondered at like a blazing star, and aswell the pure as the impure sighted, are called out to gaze and behold with scorn and disdainful reproach, our friends or Neighbours slips and falls, and are by us (even many times, where there is greatest profession of kindness and entire familiarity) exposed to the attrectation of every passengers scandalising and detracting tongues, when as the Eclipses of our own most unnatural and foulest abuses and misdemeanours, cannot with any patience abide the blinde-mans' eyes to be lifted up against them.  
And therefore these two reasons may be well said to be like HIPPOCRATES his twins unseparable; they kiss, embrace, & nourish each other.  
For questionless the reason why we so much delight like flesh flies, to converse in the suck and contemplation of other men's errors, and like Noah's ungodly childr●●, to take such pleasure in discovering the nakedness and deformity of other men's imperfections & weaknesses (be they either by natural or religious combination and conjunction as near to us, as Noah was to his children) is, that we seldom throw open and discover our own hidden & lurking vices, & vicious humours, or look back upon the wallet of our several transgressions & transmigrations from either reason or religion: for the due consideration of a man's own follies, is a respective cause, & continual motive, to draw him to a sober, discreet & charitable consideration, and interpretation of other men's digressions or relapses.  
For than our Friends or Neighbours lives and conversations, for offences and errors committed, could no sooner sing that forrowefull note of commemoration Infandum regina, jubes renovare dolorem, but our reecchoing accents of the like well noted, and in ourselves, so often observed aptness and proneness to boulder and more over-daring presumptions, would bear the doleful ditty of this commiserating reply, haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disco; we would be readier to pour oil, and throw sugar upon our friends griefs conceived for any fault or miscarriage, then with Salt and Vinegar rub the gauled & green wounds of their penitent and much to be bemoaned afflictions: For by a daily and continual conflict had with our overmastering affections, and untameable rebellions of nature, we shall find more passion from the heat of the like fires vented to compassion, and less leisure and scope, to score upon the daily count-book of our idle apprehensions and wantonly strict observations, the marks of other men's follies.  
Therefore, first like a natural man, I advise you to enter into a serious and sober consideration with yourself and your privatest thoughts, and to discover to the blockhouse, and beacon of your reason, and best discerning faculties, what main tops of assaulting and outdaring enemies of passion, outbrave your Capitols best ward, or what Serpentlike affections lie hidden in the grass of your all-pleasing & delighting humours, and having discovered the one, & uncovered the other, to employ your best volley of reasons shot, to blow of the one, and to bestow your daily and hourly endeavours, to kill and wound the other.  
And because the secret and privy bosom vices of Nature, are most offensive, and though least seen, yet most undermining enemies, you must redouble your endeavour, not with a wand to alapat, and strike them only as lovers loath to hurt, so as like a snake they may grow together, and get greater strength again, but (according to the Italian proverb, Sel'albero ha fecca la radice, è Impossibile che possa haver foglie verde. If the tree have his root dried up, it cannot possibly shoot forth green leaves) to dry up the venomous juice and roote-sap of them, and to strike them through the head and very life strings, that they may never knit again to your offence, lest like a Snake laid warm to your bosom, they sting you with some deadly and Irrecoverable inconvenience, and by giving life and warmeth to them, to deny to you all life of true and essential liberty & freedom, utterly captivating your senses to their slavery, and eternal subjection.  
For as the Moon being lowest of the Planets, doth coveigh and transport their operation and force through her Orb into all Elemental creatures, causing alteration and change of humours, times and seasons, yea, perturbing and distempering man's body, the Air, and all other things under her Orb:  
So do our affections, (being but the lowest and ministering servants to reason) unmastered and not set by the quartile or Opposite aspect of true moderation and discreet and well disposing order and government, carry and convey disturbance and distemperature through the Orb of all the senses, and leaves all a man's actions, subject to such alteration and change, as breedeth nothing but either fiery and violent motions, or frivolous and fantastical inflations.  
And that you may the better and more powerfully subdue, by your daily conflict had with them, these so troublesome & so opposing enemies to reason and perfect judgement, you must vigilantly and exactly, labour to detect and find out the means, that so often betray your reason to the subjection of your affections, and having discovered them, presently to discard them (as most treacherous and false Pirates, to the flourishing welfare and safety of your credit and estimation) be they never so dear or beloved of your nature, and been never so long had in request of you, for their old acquaintance and familiarity.  
For else like private Postern doors, they will continually be ready to let into your heart such thieves, as in time will spoil and rob you of all your richest ornaments, of either spiritual or natural gifts and graces, and like Dalilahes flattering enticements, deprive your mind of all her Sampson-like locks of resistance, and strength, and power of judgement and discretion.  
And by the way I hold it not amiss, that when your mind is lost in your affections you may the speedier meet with her again, to point unto you affections seats.  
Love hath his proper place in liver, which till it exceed, is an affection most commendable, but when it swells over the banks of reason, it begets the name and title of vice, and is endorsed with additions of vanity, wantonness, treachery.  
And so likewise joy which dwelleth in the spleen, if it exceed not, cherisheth the heart, relieveth the blood, quickeneth all the sensitive & intellectual parts, to a promptness and agility in any honest and virtuous function, but if it exceed and get the rule and dominion of reason, and true temperance, it begets the name of wretched and disorderly security, dissoluteness, scurrility, incivility, and such like.  
Anger, which dwelleth in the gall, the most noble and heroical affection, that is according to the phrase of the scripture, Be you angry, but sin not) the fitting●st help and instrument of public government, the most sensiblest and severest corrector of vice, & all vicious outrages, yet if it be suffered to exceed, it begets the name of overmuch hastiness, temerity, & sometimes frantic madness, according to that of the Poet, Irafuror brevis est. Fear is the child of safety, according to that saying, matter timidi nunquam plorat, The mother of a fearful man never weary, the forerunner of wisdom, according to that of Solomon, Ante ruinam exaltatur spiritus, the spirit of a man is lifted up before a fall: but the beginning of wisdom is fear, the truest and faithfullest companion of thrift, but if it exceed, it begets the name of weakness, of womanish and harelike timidity, of irresolution, and cowardly phlegmatic sloth and idleness. Other gross and foul enormities, your breeding will not suffer you to be acquainted with, therefore like Licur gus I hold it fit to be unmentioned, than precept wise to be enlarged. Now forasmuch, as I right well have tried, that nothing may avail a politic man more then to subdue & master these affects, nor any thing will, being unmastred, more annoy, disturb and disable a civil & public man, I am forced to reinforce this my admonition touching your affections, as you mean to prove a politic man. When therefore by a due & impartial examination and discovery, made of your most impotent (& yet most potent) imperfections, you shall find your reason & true light of judgement, most eclipsed by the overshadowing power of any particular, either earthy airy, or choleric interposition of appetite and humour, & the wall of your defence by any of them, made weakest & most subject to daily invasion, there, I advise you to watch & ward, night & day, and to stand continual centinel, with your guarding and defensive fortification of reason, for that with in a private man would be & is commonly termed but an odd conceited humour, admitted or committed by a public man makes odious & insupportable such actions as are therewith intermingled. And questionless, no actions of a natural man, much less of one that professeth himself a moral man, but least of all, of one that propoundeth to atain to high & eminent place of public government, can have his proper demerit & estimat of praise or warrant of security, that is glued in with any powerful passion, or overflowings of natural affection: for affections are noted by the philosophers, to be but alienations of the mind, judgement, and reason. And a mind alienated from judgement and reason (the true and only distinguishers of wise men and fools, yea brutes & men's actions) what can it produce, persuade, act, advise, contrive or prosecute, void of palpable and manuable errors? Infinite fogs, and gross mists of darkness, are affections inseparable and most adhering companions; Affections unbroken & unbackt are our enemies free passagewindowes, by which they may shoot in all their Arrows of malice, envy, spleen, sport scorn and derision.  
They are the general forerunners and praeparatives of every common man's woe and misery, but Politicians & Statists particular halters of ruin and perdition.  
Therefore, as the Moon at any time being in conjunction with any of the Stars or planets in either of the 12. constellations or signs, then do astronomers say that the sign is in that part of the body, over which such a constellation Sign or Star doth rule, at which time it is very dange rous to make incision, or to open any vain in any part of the body, but especially in that part of the body, which is governed of such a sign or star, wherewith the moon is then joined: so of your affections, and the particular predominate passions of your nature, either of choler and anger or desire & concupiscence (for I fear not any other in you) if you intent to proceed to the managing of many, or any weighty causes, you must most warily provid & most cautiously recollect your best strength of understanding, by restraining yourself from such actions, and dealing with such subjects in the execution of any public function, as by your former prescribed observation, you shall perceive to stand in conjunction with any your present overdaring appetites and affections, and never to trust and admit your wit or will to be actors on the stage of the world's view, in any open place, part or duty, until that fit that ruleth be fully over past, & allayed. Imitate here in the dolphin's who (according to philosophy at the beginning of any tempest, (such as doth arise from the bottom of the Sea) are troubled with certain hot exhalations and vapours) mount up to the top of the water, to seek for cool refrigeration (which is the reason why Mariners say, that when your Dolphins appear above water, it signifieth some storm or tempest to be nigh) so when you shall find yourself by any, either natural or accidental disturbance & heat of passion, subject to any disorderly motions and perturbations, lie not swelling in the heat of that passion: but get up to the top of your wits, (before any tempest arise) your best reasons directors, from them to take water and air of composure, and (according to Lycurgus his observation, who commended them vines most, by the which the sweet fountains of waters ran continually) to assuage the heat of any superfluous humour, that you shall observe most ranging & overruling in your nature, with the fountain water of some contrary qualification, Hoc amo, quod possum qualibet ire via: This is true policy to be able to make all a man's affections subject and serviceable to any propounded advantage.  
A true Statesman's love is, and aught to be tied with a slip-knot, never knit with any of his heartstrings.  
He must only embrace the use of men's virtues, and officious serviceableness, with outward graces, favours and rewards, proportionable to their deserts, not single out any outward affectation to any worth, nor lay open any inward breast-detection of singular and entire devotion, to any special quality. He useth the benefit of his friends and followers, labours, gifts and endeavours, so long as they may be used upon good terms thankfully & respectively, but he will, nor may vail bonnet to his honour, for the retaining any men's loves or labours: for to do so, would argue a weakness, and seem to spring from a rankness of some unsubdued affection, which exposeth a statesman to much inconvenience.  
So likewise a statesman's hate is nothing, but a wise aversion of favour and grace, befitting some present advantage, not a settled & digested disturbance of spleen & choler, yea moste of their wrongs received, are but referred to the brains most familiar counsell-conference, not to any deep or serious overcharging of the stomach, for so they would multiply his wrongs.  
First distract the judgement when it should be exercised in more proper and necessary occasions.  
Secondly being admitted to lie boiling about the heart like rust and canker, would fret and eat up the minds marrow of truest and calmest composition.  
thirdly, being suffered to fester about the heart, would bubble up at one time or another such lunatic aspersions and words offensive, as deprive him of such ready & easy means of crying quittance for any wrong sustained, as shallow conceits would, of their own accord fall into, according to that true politic rule, professa per dunt odia vindictae locum.  
And lastly open to the world such an impotency, as neither policy, nor courtship can admit, for if a man wronged debar mutual intercourse of phrase and familiarity, he shall be counted and marked by saying nothing, that the breast is ulcerate & foul with rancour, and in court men say, he that professeth to catch at every Fly, seeks but matter to choke himself withal, an error flatly forbidden by SALOMON himself, the wisest Politician fatuus statim Indicat iram, qui autensapiens est dissimulat iniuriam. The Fool kicketh as soon as another wincheth at him, and they which are over hasty to kick often, light upon a sharper spur. I have dwelled the longer upon this point, because I know your tender and springing years, shall meet oftenest with such oppositions, as unbridled affections will offer to your waryest observation and discovery.   

The third precept.  
thirdly, if you desire to attain to this true wisdom and judgement, fitting him that shall sit at the stern of the commonwealth, and so sit as he may stand fast in all storms, abandon from your conceit this deluding opinion, that to be furnished and formally provided (either by the help of your own industry and study, or daily conference with masters of policy living or defunct) to speak and discourse pleasingly and plentifully of business and affairs, of many several nations, and to know 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ulysses like, the fashions, habits and behaviours of Rome or Rheims, as we commonly say, may make you wise enough to govern the chiefest and secretest designs of a state. For this over-greedy desire to be acted upon vulgar tongues, for excellency in tongue, skill, and variety of eloquence and book discourses, begets a singular pride in the heart, which is only delighted in an outward show of seeming wise, never suffers a man to attain to the true and perfect knowledge of any deep or profound mystery: or as we may commonly observe in proud women, that so their outward habit be geerishlye and wanton set out to the pleasure of the world's appearance, and their own excessive lust, they care not how poorly and beggarly all things are furnished within the house, either for dietical or costly, & rich supellecticke appendance; whereas on the contrary, wary & provident wise Matrons, care not how homely (so correspondently) their outward habiliments fall out, so as the inward furnishments of their purse and substantial lyninges of their house and estates be richly and repleatly contentive and comfortable to their private thoughts: So fareth it with men that are carried away and puffed up with an extraordinary vain glory of being accounted rich in time pleasing, and unprofitable titillations of liplabored eloquence or time-spending discourses of strange and foreign accidents; they little respect, not can through pride & desire of ostentation, sound the depth of any grave or weighty skill, or express in any particular inploiment, any profundity of judgement, or true insight in any weighty and public negotiation, only they attain to the parings & excrement of state-learning, the pith & marrow they leave behind for sapient and well tasting palates, and you shall never see any such formalists (as most of them will be very forward in that kind) intermeddle with deep reaching Statists, but you shall suddenly have them come hovering down the wind, & struck dead to the ground, like some haggard and kestrill brood, with the sharp talants of such jerfaulkon-like politicians well watched blows and unavoidable counterbuffs.   

The fourth precept.  
FOurthly cast from your opinion, that through your own witty devices (for against this rock, many great men & highly esteemed for their skill & knowledge in policy, have run) and certain cunning motions and operations of your brain, you are able to turn about the wheel of fortune & all felicity, as it were with certain skrues and machinations, to what point you please: for certainly (as I partly noted of the judgement of the unlettered self-pleasing politician, so may I affirm of the most edocte & ripest courtier in the subtle skill of cunning contrivances) that whosoever is at any time so foully abused by the delusion of his self conceit of wisdom, let him know that howsoever he may imagine himself to stand in a fair and goodly pasture of delightful and Oxe-like security, through some few good successes had in particulars, he is then nearest the slaughter, and environed with most fearful gulfs and quicksands; and although the ground on which he stands may seem firm to his shallow judgement, because it shows fresh and fair, yet he hath set his stand indeed but upon a quagmire, covered over with grass (and that only green and high in show, but not deeply rooted) which if he persist long in, and wade with all his strength, the harder he treads, the deeper he is like to sink.  
For this politic guidings of things by rule and line of booke-cunning, are but like eternal motionworks, if any one piece be disjointed with a greater reach, or through some negligence, forgetfulness, or oversights (as who can so live in a Daedalianlaborinth of cunning, but he shall be forced to make some in his life) all the structure of his imaginary Policies comes down together, and throws the engine Master of the work, even when he is got up in his conceit, to the top of his promised felicity, into the mire of all misfortune, or like an unskilful alchemist, who having by his study and reading found out many worthy & excellent means and medicinable receipts, puffed up with the pride thereof, falls to a degree further, the practising & finding out the so much sought-for Elixir, which his conceit and skill is not able to apprehended nor digest, & so after many months, yea years travel, cost, and charges, failing either in his due proportionable stint, and moderation of fire, imbition, nutriment, concoction, and such like, leaves to himself and others, that stood in expectation of his producements, stupefied to behold the same, a mere lump of dross, for their hopeful and longing desires, or by too much speed, negligence, or oversight in the least particular, breaks asunder his work before it come to hatching, and thereby sends such a sulfurous & noisome stinch into his brains, as makes him never able to recover his perfect senses again: so these unskilful practisers by book and rule of all politic foils that depend as it were upon their Puncto, reverso, stockado, and such like observations of cunning booke-policie, failing (that I may make no further application hereof) of some out blunt and plain down thrust offered them, stand stabbed at the heart, in their several hopes, and leave themselves a public spectacle of scorn and defamation to the view of the whole world.   

The fift precept.  
FIftly, let him resolve himself to be immooveably fixed (for in this quicke-sand likewise the greatest Cedars of the state have been swallowed up) in his religion, if he be touched with the feeling of any. For though it may not be denied, but that in many matters a wise Statesman hath liberty to change his opinion, as reason & the discretion of present ocasions, shall guide him, yet in such actions and accidents as shall touch the trial of a good conscience, in relinquishing the same, for any present advantage, is not only very dangerous, and seldom admitted, but it returns in the issue much inconvenience, & irrecoverable loss of honour and reputation; but by degrees deprives a man utterly of his perfect judgement and distinguishing knowledge in affairs and business of the State. Machiavel therefore (whether men term him Hatchevil, or not to be matched in evil, it boots not) in this respect persuades his scholars wisely (in my poor conceit) either not at all to devote himself to any religion, or else never to forsake their conscience; either to be absolutely good or absolutely ill, not to hang in uncertainty, sometimes inclining to good actions, sometimes to ill, as they best seem to further their present use & employment.  
For he which is marked with God's signet, and privatest stamp for his own, by inclining to evil motions & lose digestions (the lime-twigs of honour, safety, and reputation) is drawn by degrees into desperate attempts, which when he hath entered into, and waded chin-deep therein, is suddenly recalled by a better spirit to a consideration of his folly, whereby it happeneth that plunged betwixt two extremes, he can neither get forward nor backward, and so become a ridiculous obloquy to his enemies, a confusion to his friends & followers, a perpetual sore & ulcer to his family & posterity, whereas if he were absolutely resolved by wicked means to go through all his purposes, he should find no interruption in his courses, to countercheck his ungodly proceed, whereby he might effect more with greater felicity & admiration, than any man, partly religious & indifferently affected to piety and godliness. This made the ancient Romans Brutus, Cassius, Deccis, and many more of that rank, to deserve so well in the opinion of those times for their fortitude and magnanimity, showed & approved in many desperate & dangerous attempts. For they being touched with no relish of religion, made fame and glory the chief scope, and aim of all their adventures, and engagements, to the attaining whereof they resolved their reason to fear nothing that could happen within the compass of mortality.  
To this agrees all their heathenish positions and maximees. Aut dignitatem retineamus, aut vitancum dignitate amittamus, and such like, whereby it appears, that they held true valour, and Magnanimity to consist in avoiding of subjection, and that the quiet and patiented toleration of adverse fortunes, drawing under the yoke of obedience, and subscribing to domination, rule, and superiority, was baseness, & brutishness, and therefore the desperate, and indeed (in the true sense of reason) more brutish attempting of any thing might tend to their self promised liberties, being restrained by any law, power or sovereignty, to proceed from a brave spirit, a high and generous resolution, and not only murdering of others, that stood in the way of their wishes & aspiring hopes, to deserve immortal praise & glory, but the cutting of the thirds of their own lives, their children and posterities, in matters that might carry show of public reformation, or preservation of their accounted honours or their Wives and children's chastities, to be actions not only to be dignified, but to be deified. And questionless, in these ages and times, and in these parts, where religion most flourisheth they who never had any sense or feeling of Religion, (whether they bend their minds to the compassing of high and weighty matters, in or belonging to a public state, or contriving any extraordinary plot in their private affairs) they may with a nimbler & prompter dexterity, pass through all their purposes, than they which are clogged and fettered with rules and restraints of religion.  
For as the profession of piety, and religion, to a man thoroughly exercised therein, and resolutely bend to forsake any pleasure or worldly profit, rather than to admit the least disparagement or impeachment to the same, furnisheth him with a thousand helping hands, in the profecution of any propounded employments: So, to his purposes and projects, that professing feligion, hath, or shall dispute within the secret closet of his thoughts, this is proper to the furtherance of my particular, howsoever irreligious, treacherous, dishonest, unfaithful, rebellious, and yet admits the good of his preferment and advantage to high and great places and pre-eminences, before the good warrant of his conscience, nothing is or can be imagined more interposing or diameter like opposing, than religion. For such a man shall find, let his project seem in the beginning never so currant, the means in his conceit never so clear, a thousand scruples and unexpected countermands, that religion & the destruction of his unsettled resolution will cast, as so many clogs & fetters into the midway of his hasty-pac' de-intentions. For as a man that leapeth from a high bank, over a narrow pit or deep ditch, to follow some may game, by reason of his easy and speedy descent (for Facilis descensus averni) is flatteringly pleased with his smooth & current passage, but considering not how he shall recover the hold of his sure feeting, and the firm and known ground of his security, is forced at his returns either by venturing to fall into the midst of the miry ditch; or to go many miles about, or to continue as a man outed of his confines: so fareth it with them, who for the compassing any private respect, leap over the known bounds & pales of virtue and Religion, whereby they have been directed in their former courses. For they behave themselves in all their actions, & enterprises, either like an army out of rank and order, still resolved to some desperate inroads, & so be come like a ship without his Pilots and fails, fitted for confusion, and prepared to run into the ditches & shelves of all dissasters, or striving to go a nearer way, either to thrift, preferment or dignity, being leapt from their own well known & trodden paths of upright dealing, to a self conceited course of cunning and irreligious policy, stand like men, who have forsaken those trades and exercises they were trained up in all their lives, for some new fangle devices and inventions, a mazed, and to seek in every particular, and so after much labour, vexation of spirit and anguish of mind, return by weeping Cross to their former stands; or if they rest contented to run on in their approved & propounded determinations of folly, (which is the worst degree of all) in the end having outed themselves of their means & hopes, pass by their friends like a ship fallen into the hands of Pirates, weather beaten and despoiled of all his brave array and furniture, which is as ruthful a spectacle, as the eye of man can behold. Therefore I wish him (unworthy to advise) that desireth to approve his wisdom, either in not failing in his attemp 'tis, or not falling by his attempts into any gross and palpable error, never to dispense with his religion, in any matter of weighty consequence and moment, but to make that the touchstone of all his proceed, so shall he be sure both to undertake & entertain nothing, the issue whereof may prove dangerous, and also to add like a staid proficient, a daily increase and ripeness of judgement, to his skill & knowledge in weighty affairs and occurrences of the state.   

The sixth precept.  
Sixthly and lastly, let your endeavour chief & principally, be exercised in such actions as may advance the glory of God's truth, and forward by all possible means, the peace, the quiet, and the prosperity of the Common Wealth, For surely he that is so affected and resolved to God & his country's good, he may assure himself that he is in a right way to the attaining of a sound and exquisite judgement in all weighty determinations, and the more this resolution groweth up in any man, the greater increase and growth shall he find daily in state-learning and wisdom, for the spirit of understanding, the spirit of Counsel, the spirit of knowledge, are inseparable companions of the fear of God and the love of his name, neither shall we find far from these companions a good estimation grace and favour with all men, as well Prince and Peers, as the better sort of the commons. For that man winneth most inward credit and opinion of wisdom, and most outward regard and honourable respect with all men, whose sayings and doings carry most opinion of virtue, religion, & honesty among men; as if he shall speak or promise any thing, men will not doubt of his truth, if he doth any thing (whereof public notice is taken) men will applaud & account it for right, and to a right and even end: if he command any thing, men will most willingly obey it; if he give counsel men will respectively embrace and entertain it, and have evermore in high account his judgement in all causes. But vain are they who think this estimation to be compassable, or if compassed to be durable & permanent, which is gotten by palpable and gross flattery, by dissembling, or deceit, yea by any other means then by virtue in wisdom, and wisdom in virtue often showed with good success, for all men's hearts are kindled with admiration of virtue, and a supernal help and divine assistance, yea the very wicked dissemblers, & cunningest temporizers themselves, hold such men, who are accounted truly religious, & religiously prudent and provident for the common good & safety, in great reverence, and fear to displease them, whereas they make no great reckoning of such statists, whom they know to live by the like cunning & deceit, as themselves do, for cunning they know may be met withal by the like cunning, and apelike deceit may be overthrown, and caught by foxlike craft and subtlety, but they know not what shoes to provide for the feet of this religious statesman, nor what cunning devices they may hammer out of their forge of knavery, strong enough to encounter with him. For he goes on forward in a plain, even right way of honesty and fidelity, never or seldom but upon great and urgent necessities, digressing into any by-ways, of sly, crafty, under-mining Policies, so as if any man studies to overthrow him by devilish plots, and circumventions, he tires himself in his own devices, and the more he busieth himself in envious practices, the more he lymeth, like a bird in a Snare by struggling, his own wit, and yet meeteth not with him, because he runs not up & down through briers & lurking holes, like a fox or a wolf, where the gins & nets are set, but keepeth the road highway of upright dealing, and having fixed his resolution in the purchase & increase of his prince's favour, to use no indirect & sinister means, hath confined and circumscribed himself within the bounds of certain faithful religious rules and propounded ends, from the which he will not start or stray, for either the love of his own private profit or pleasure, or else for fear of purchasing any other subjects displeasure, whereby it cometh to pass, that as in warfare, when other fresh water Soldiers upon any sudden and unexpected skirmish, are to seek of their office & place, he presently claps to his station and is prepared to all accidents: he meddleth neither with ambitious motions, to overthrow his Prince, nor stealeth by indirect shows and pretences of public good, the favour of the people from him; his heart, against the false alaruns of such privy thoughts and suggestions, is ever set as a Tenniswal, which no sooner receiveth but at the very same instant and moment of time returns & reverberates the ball back again, and if any lose bend novices (as it seldom happens) for they rather seek out mud-walles, to fasten their wicked plots upon, strive to racket the same, or the like motions, through the countermure of his conceit, in a trice before any chase be made in the firm and fair Tennis-court of his consenting will, he bandees them over the wall of his heart, so as they never return or take further fixation. He profusely rioteth not his own, to wring and wrest away other men's estates, nor deviseth over-greedye taxations and penalties to pinch the poor commons with all, he is not heart sick nor head sick, nor stomach sick, for his adhabitants vineyards: he envies nomans' prosperity & honourable purchases of his prince's favours, he is not pragmatically scrupulous, nor too inquisitively prying into other men's escapes and errors, such as hurt not, or disturb the quiet of the state, thereby to purchase himself hatred, but is sorry when any garbage of foul and treasonable actions is thrown in to the privy chamber of the states welfare, & removes the stench & poisonus infection thereof from the prince's perfon, & the pure life blood of the commonwealth. He makes the laws the bounds, by which he limits all his actions, he trusteth not upon former deserts, thereby to presume to run into any dishonourable breach of Statute or his allegiance, he liveth not voluptuously, nor effeminately, thereby to give, not only mean men example to imitate the like vices, & occasions to base & ignoble spirits, to vilipend and neglect him, & that reverent regard ought to be preserver in men of high place and dignity: but to put into his equals hands, such as are his adversaries, a fit weapon to wound his credit, & to diminish the opinion the prince hath of his virtuous inclination, which being violated, there lies a free passage to infer by suspicions, jealousies, informations, any mischief may be imagined, upon him.  
And this is that true wise statesman or Scipio of perfect policy endued with this heavenly judgement, and thus have ever lived the worthy supporters of plenty and state, making virtue and religion the bases, whereupon they set the firm building of their worths and honours, whereby they have been enabled to keep between all rocky extremes, a middle channel of steeled temperance, and by an even poising of all their actions to stand fixed and stable in the greatest conflicts of envy, & long may they so live, that favour in this, or any state, Religion and piety, to the comfort of theirs, and true Religion's friends, and the confusion of all malignant, discontented, and profane spirits. Much more I would have added, but an unusual accident forced me abruply thus to break of.  
By the imitation of Silenus there wear devised to hang up in the Galleries and closerts of Noblemen, certain strange pictures, so wrought and shut up in private Tables, as if you viewed but the outward side of them, they set forth nothing but little small ill-favoured misshapen Images, but being unfolded, they represented some high and mystical matter: So in these precepts, although you shall find no pictures worthy the hanging up in Princes or noblemen's galleries, but rather at the first conceit they may seem idle, & of small worth and regard: yet if you can wisely unfold their several shut-vp, and enclosed leaves of state-learning to your secret consideration, you shall find some things in them worthy the hanging about your heart, as necessary Mementoes to put you in mind of many useful observations in state business: Use them not as your studies, but as your watch at study, when your watch is out of time, you repair to your key to wind up the several wards, that are therein amiss, and when your study touching State affairs are out of time, and equipage, have recours to this watch, & in it happily you shall find some key that may enable you to set all even, & in good temper & order again: What is herein wanting may be supplied, but never commended to writing, for the next particular instructions of state-busines, which I must unfold to you, may not be admitted to any other bosom trust. Farewell.    
FINIS.  

Errata.  
Fol. 3. l. 7 read literature for like nature f. 6. l. 21. voces for vices read nor for not, fo. 7● line. 17. read there for the f. 8. l. 5. please for praise, fol. 11 l. 8 for as fol. 12. l. 11 reach for watch, l. 1. foe 13. and for stand, fol. 13. l. 21. read not the 100 fol. 16 l 15 states for state, fol. 16 l. 17 artizants for artiants. fol. 26 l. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fol: 29. line. 4 in reading 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lean out the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. fo. 33. l 17 piss for pish fo. 38. l, 14 and fo. 30 should be 38. read 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉. thus not as it is printed foe 39 l 9 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thus, not as it is printed, read prericraneum for pericranium. fol 49 l 16 read a dussen of R. fol. 53 l 11 read & the casting, fol 61 l. 10, read not &, l. 13 eiusd. fol. read there for the, l 15 eius fol. read staid for state fo. 72. l. 7 sweet bones leave out the parenthesis. fol. 73. li. 6. read to for so, line 4 eiusd. fol, read not for oc, fol. 74. l 7 and for or, fol. 78. l▪ o● the for their line 12. eiusd. fol read paucos for paulcos fol. 89. l 13 and those, leave out those, fol 90, l. 1. if for is, fo: 90. l, 20 seals for seats, fol, 97. l 5 & 6. and for or fo 102 l 16 darkness for darnes fo 130 l 4 consenting not with an 8 fol 132 l 9 Philodespotus, not lus fol. 123 l 4 preserve for prescribe, foe 149 l 8 and for least, foe, 344 l 10 concerns not my particular, fol, 147 li, 15 of your obs fol 161 l 10 read discouragement for in couragement, fol 169 l 9 community for commonly, with a parenthesis not at ears foe, 172 l 2, they for to deny foe 126 l 6 pyroters for pirates fol 128 l 10 in the liver fo, 129 l 18 lechery for treachery, 130 fol & li 2, such as doth arise from the bottom of the sea, read after vapours, so 137 & l 21 22 23, read for for or, foe, 147 l: 3, some for such fo 149 l 9 themselves for himself, fo: 159 l 1 suggestions for digestions, fol 159 l 15 employment for employments, fol, 164 l 11 distraction for destruction fol, 165: l 9 but for pit or fol 165 l 15 read after welfare, that it is so necessarily joined with his place and office, to remove folio, 146 lin 18, read preserved for preserver.