A MISCELLANIA OF moral, theological, AND philosophical SENTANCES; Worthy observation.  
Printed for John Sweeting, at the Angel in Popes-head-alley, 1650.   

To the Right Honourable Henry, Earl of Dover, &c.  
Right Honourable Lord,  
IF the life of man were only intended but to eat, drink, compliment, and sleep; it might agree with that Epitaph of Heliogabalus, Ede, bibe, lude, post mortem nulla voluptas, and so become mere animal. But since th'Almighty and high disposer of this his clock-like frame of the macrocosm, whereto his blessed will is the weight and Cause of Motion, hath given to humans, Reason, as the key to wind up the small portative watch of our own microcosm, whereby we are apt still to turn the wheels of our Cogitations upon th'objects present themselves; be you pleased then (Noble Lord) that what I so here have done, I present to your Honour, beseeching your pardon therein if too bold; for, if you question why to you? I being a stranger, I humbly answer, though a stranger to your Honourable Person, yet not to the Fame of the worthy, love you bear to good Arts and Artists; which I know by many friends to your virtuous and Noble inclination. If therefore you please to deign the vacancy of your more serious affairs, to the view of these my short interviews, I refer them to your censure; and recreation, resting  
Your Honours Devoted Servant, John Done.   

To the Reader.  
Upon an unranckt regiment, it is no matter where you begin to look: neither upon these my Miscellanies, the first acknowledged thrust out issue of my brain.  
Here are of all sorts, moral, philosophical, theological, as amongst men diverse Complexions, Affections, Postures, &c.  
Some have dressed the like im Meetres, and curious laying of words together; but I only affect a full sense of meaning, not the trim; as many of our Pamphlet trickers attire the Bartholomew babies of their conceits, and the dress is all. rhyme, I hold a child's drum in a wise man's brain, and begets Poets (as Dr. Thomas Campion saith) like a hot Summer does flies.  
I neither care for Momus, nor Zoylous, they may find their humours here critized.  
My fantasy begat these upon object, and I fixed them in this paper field, and so they are yours as they were mine. They are not obscure, if you read, and then consider; and if you will not the last, breathe not the first.  
They are humble Teachers, if you be not too proud a Learner, says  
I Done.   

POLYDORON: OR A Mescellania of moral, philosophical, and theological Sentences.  
MAn is like a city.  
His skin the walls.  
His eyes and ears the Factors and Merchants.  
His hands the trades men.  
His legs the porters.  
His mouth the gate.  
His teeth the portculize.  
His appetite the Cater.  
His stomach the kitchen.  
His digestion the cook.  
His expulsion the Scavenger  
His soul the Church.  
His reason the Preacher.  
His fortitude the soldiers.  
His words the Shot.  
His understanding the Governor.  
His senses the Officers.  
His brain the statehouse.  
His heart the citadel or castle.  
Though a man hath no apparent or eminent virtue, yet if he die rich, his heirs will find good parts about him.  
Our life is like an hourglass, and the sand worldly riches, which runs with us but the time of our continuance here, and then is turned up by another.  
All our life is but a Childing or bearing for the other world.  
Historical Poetry, is a spruce dressing of Sense.  
Love Poetry, a loose Courtizane of the wit.  
Satirical Poetry, like a pair of snuffers snibbing● filth in others, but retaining it in itself.  
Physical Poetry, a perspective, to see remote things by.  
A man studious in Science, is oft poor outward, because his purchase is all inward.  
A man made of mere compliment, is like the shavings of horn made into flowers.  
He that thinks proudly of himself for speaking in a learned or foreign language, is like him that thinks himself rich, & fine, because in another man's ground or clothes.  
Grammar should not be so much studied for itself, as for the Arts founded in it; yet many think them very learned if they can speak Greek and Latin, and the vulgar hold them so; when language to a wiseman, is but as a dish to serve up the sense.  
He that meddles with false Arts, works in the shop of shame, and his journey man is repentance.  
In all professions, it is ignorance that strives for admiration.  
The last thing a wiseman leaves, is to love himself.  
The reason that virtue is in less credit than riches in the vulgar esteem, is, few know no other coin, most desire no other stamp.  
Lend not thy money to wine drinking and gaming; for the one causeth forgetfulness, the other repentance.  
It is a perfect mind Fortune hath no place in.  
The hereditary diseases of the soul, are sorrow, love, anger; the accidental, covetousness, pride, envy.  
The best physician to a sick soul is prayer.  
He doth not truly love, that loves the body more than the mind.  
Truth needs not many words, but a false tale a large preamble.  
Good is that fear that hinders us from shameful acts, & makes a man circumspect.  
As the shadow follows the body going to the Sunward, so doth glory virtue going to Christward.  
He is nearest to the Divine nature, whom reason, not anger moves.  
We need not go far to seek a Temple to pray in, for ourselves are either a foul or clean one; but an Egyptian Temple should be cleansed first by repentance.  
Hard accidents darkens a weak mind, but an heroical soul than shines brightest.  
The wheel or vicissitude of earthly motions turns still: happy is he whose mind is not perturbated beyond his reason, that is, whose brains or affections are not turned from good actions thereby.  
He that strives to shake care from his life, is like one that knows his flesh from his bones.  
If there be no true comfort in this life but in God, how blind is he that gropes for it in these lower things?  
Since experience approves earthly things to be the worship of this world: may it not be justly said the world worship's the golden calf still?  
He that strives to show his wisdom, is like him that whiffles an ensign, delightful only to children and fools; but to do good by that one knows good, is carrying the colours quietly.  
There is a fashion in speaking and writing as in clothes; but it is easily perceived where a fool overlaceth it.  
He that lets lose his anger upon every occasion, is like him that lets go his hawk upon every bait.  
Roaring and drinking is the horse-way to hell, whoring and cheating the footway; but swearing and blaspheming follows Corah, Dathan, and Abiron.  
There are many use the word; God damn me, superflously, if they repent not.  
He that can make his passions stand about him bare, is a true master of his underhoushold:  
Passions are the overset of humours; they sink him that too constantly bears up with them.  
He that depends upon others, lets himself out ot farm.  
The best countenance of truth, is to be what we seem.  
To seem what we are not, is player-like.  
It is a passable virtue to speak well, a praisable to do well; the one resembles the shadow, the other the body: but wisely to hold one's peace makes a due Zenith.  
The censure of others, troubles not a well planted mind.  
To contend with fools, is to be in the same parallel.  
The blessing of God keeps company with virtuous actions; but that God's blessing many Rich-men brag of, is but eight in the hundred or worse.  
He who lives poorly in rich havings, is like him that's a cold in a furred gown, the cause only inward.  
An understanding soul in a gross body, is like a good leg in a winter boot; but a foolish spirit in a well featured body, is like a misshapen spindle shank, in a bombasted stocking.  
It is a rank courteosy, when a man is forced to thank for his own again.  
He that thinks too well of many, for the most part, betrays himself to the borrower.  
He that loves all alike, loves none well; and he that hates and suspects all, loves himself too much.  
What thou judiciously holdest laudable in others, seek to make real in thyself.  
Those who praise others thereby to be commended themselves, resemble horses when they knibble one another.  
A palpable flatterer is like a horstealer, that strokes the horse with sweete-gloves, & Whose end is to get up, and ride him out of his pasture.  
Craft reqvires more wit, than plain honesty doth: which makes knaves so nimble and officious.  
A liar without memory is like one has lost his purse to a reckonning.  
A young unthrifty heir that is green inward, black outward, is like a morning dream, wakes and finds all gone.  
He that oversets his confidence upon false projects, is like him that hands a loose haulser, falls overboard.  
He that delights in doing brave evil, as they call Swaggering, &c. is like him that swears vildly in some learned language.  
The first and last thing we should do upon sleep, is to pray to, and praise God.  
If the wine be good, be thou the more wary; for if thou drinkest drunk, thou defacest the Image of God in thee, (that is) thy reason.  
He that drinks drunk, Cudgels his own brain.  
To Swagger in drink, is to put a horrid visor upon an ill-favoured face.  
There is no cause why any man should be proud, be they Lords, Knights, Gentlemen &c. For if they consider themselves truly, they are but Millers, cooks, and Dungmen; Millers in grinding their meal, cooks in decocting it, Dungmen by carrying and expulsing excrements.  
He may well claim a boat-sons place in Barkley's ship of fools, that befools himself; and he than blows the whistle, when he proclaims his vain confidence.  
The difference betwixt Fortitude, & desperate daring, it is between the sun and common fire, the one produceth much good, the other consumes and destroys what is put into it, and at last goes out itself.  
A Gamester that depends his means on the hazard, is like the weather about Michaelmas, now fair, then foul; but in the adversity of loss, he's winter's fowl way to a lender.  
It is impossible thrivers by play should still prosper; for their best is loss waste of time, their thrift, undoing of others.  
Ordinary play is an ungodly exercise, for it is the whetsstone of anger, the father of Blasphemous oaths, the murderer of many men's estates; and the box an iron-faced bold pickpocket.  
An honest plain-meaning man amongst Cheators, is like one that sleeps on an Ant-hill.  
A noted coward is like a dog running through a town with a bottle at his tail.  
Esteem of thyself but justly as thou art, and no more; for the world will doubt thee in that, and strive to make thee less.  
It is a running plague to a horse, when a hasty ass rides him.  
You lame the nimble diligence of a tavern, when you come on the score.  
He who offers any thing to sale, diminisheth the estimation thereof.  
If you'll put a false friend on the Test, offer to borrow money of him, and he'll like lead and copper fly away; but his Silver shall still remain his own, on the coppell of excuses.  
A borrower is the veriest subject in a kingdom, if without a pawn, a mere slave to censure.  
He that goeth into a bawdy-house, putteth one foot amongst thieves, the other amongst murderers.  
A crafty fellow is somewayes profitable to a wise man, viz. makes him wary.  
Drunkenness loseth a man's reputation, as a bad gamester doth his money, both commonly either laughing, or quarrelling.  
He that is drunk finds always something in his way, because his fantasy is full of figures.  
He that is a true judge of himself, acquits him from the censure of others.  
Chemical philosophers say, Facilius est, construere, quàm destruere: But fools have experience to the contrary.  
There is a sport in recounting witty jests, which who so over-stretcheth, becomes Buffone to the Auditory.  
He that shows store of money amongst needy persons, whets a borrower to cut his courteosies purse, or a thief to steal it.  
Feigned excuses in a friend, are like false dice with a gamester.  
He that still talks for his own ends, should be worn by his Auditors, as women wear fringe (or lace about the tail piece.)  
Drinking friendship, is but drunken kindness.  
That is an idle tale that neither profits the teller; nor hearer: but a pernicious one, that benefits the teller, and hurts the hearer.  
He that over-feeds his senses, doth like him that feasts his enemies.  
He that hath good business to do, and wants means to effect it, is like a ship riding upon her Anchor in the wast of victuals.  
It is vanity to put more confidence upon this life, than on a wind at Sea: but it is wisdom to have tackling ready for all changes.  
Fools are like the Sea waves, flying from the breath of good counsel.  
We are apt to conceit of ourselves, far beyond the world's esteem, and to find repentance too late, with his servant had I wist.  
That poverty is justly contemptible, which is purchased by following vice; but that not shanefully, gotten by acquiring virtuous sense.  
Who give themselves to be the companions of vice, in the end become the slaves of it.  
When thou findest thyself apt to frailty, make the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ thy Looking glass.  
It is wisdom to be stayed by the advice of many wise man; rather than to run with thy fantasy in the field of opinion.  
Things out of the common course of trade, need have an extraordinary investigator.  
He that gives himself to ebriety, becomes the servant of lechery, and at last is attended on with poverty. Meditation of holiness is as glowing Cinders, but hearty prayer a flame reaching heaven, or Elias his fiery Chariot.  
If every one would mend but one, we should have the golden age again.  
Auxilliarie soldiers may be compared to gamesters, the Cheefetaines the Setters, the common soldiers the moneys, which for honour, or gain, the Captaihes will hazard.  
A poor man standing up on terms of Gentility, is like one clothed in silken rags.  
Gentility in the best definition, is but ancient riches; but where the King's favour gives Title, Office authority, or virtue ornament, to them rightly belongs respect.  
Suppose all thy auditors thy enemies, when thou dispraysestary.  
There was great difference between the Stoics and Epicures, and likewise betwixt the Sadduces & Pharises. viz. Whether austerity or the full use of plenty was the way of man's life. The Epicures and Sadduces held Post mortem nulla voluptas, the Stoics and Pharises that by voluptillity here, we lost the future joys of the other life. I would leave the judgement to my Masters the Sorbonists, but that I read of many of the Jews Prophets, and best men in all nations, as S. John the Baptist, and above all our Saviour Jesus Christ, who both could and did choose and take the best course; for he sayeth, He that is curious to please himself, is less careful to please God; but he that is curious to please God, doth little care to please himself: but the Peripatetique or indifferent man says, they were choice and exemplar persons, but the vulgar may take the free use of things with moderation. I could hold well therewith, but that our Saviour saith, Blessed are they that mourn, hunger, weep, &c. for they shall be comforted; These sayings were practised by the ancient Hermits, but are abused in these sensual times; for surely there be not two heavens for them; make one here, with all mundane delights and deserve nothing of the other, which they scarce reckon of. I can laugh at Chaucer's wife of bath, that would be content to eat brown bread in heaven for a little toleration of her will, here in earth.  
Why should a man think himself better than an other (Unless he be an Epicure and Saducee) because he hath the benefits of some earthly goods connexed to the cherishing of his frail and earthly body? when the devil offered our Saviour all the earth to worship him.  
We see God as it were through a Cloud or veil, for all the world is but his curtain.  
Names were first questionless given for distinction, faculty, consanguinity, desert, quality: for Smith, tailor, joiner, Sadler, &c. were doubtless of the trades; Johnson, Robinson, Williamson, of the blood; Sackville, Saville, names of honourable desert; Armstrong, Shakespeare, of high quality: and turd, porridge, Drinkall, ridiculous in condition: but the best appellation (in my judgement) that can be, is good man, good wife; but pride hath almost brought it in contempt, for a City woman told her neighbour, none was good but God, and therefore she would be called Mistress.  
It is worth the noting how about the suburbs and confines of a great and populous city, the Victuallers and houses of recreation, lie at advantage to catch the city flies humming about their traps: and how the Citizens hang out their shop-Cobwebbes, to catch the country flies; so Spider turning fly, and fly Spider.  
The expression of our inward good conceits hath two reasons, one is to benefit others thereby, the other still to remember ourselves therewith.  
A wise man's thoughts walks within him, but a fools without him.  
Wisdom is foolishness to them understand it not, as playing on Instruments, fencing and wrestling; his blood having lost the vigour.  
Amongst fools and worldlings there is nothing so valuable as wealth, whereof they neither have, nor can enjoy (without Surfeyt) more than a single part, rightly considered; and some by their miserable penury scarce that.  
He is of a poor and superficial judgement that esteems the dress of words, more than the substance or matter.  
I have seen and noted some, that being followed with too much wine, would become humorous; but fools are always so.  
Nothing now pays scores for estimation amongst the vulgar sort, as wealth doth.  
It is an exceeding misery to a free mind to be depended upon an all undertaking man that is a break-word or promiser, unless he'll turn parasyde which is worst of all.  
The dress of words is but as the dress of women to a wise man; for be the fleeve of what fashion soever, yet the arm is still the same.  
It is folly for any to write of that he discovers not plainly; for it draws his reader to think, he understands not what he writes, because all men prefer their own judgements.  
Absurdity hath but two partakers or foolish friends, viz. Ignorance, and opinion.  
If a Stoic should see us whiff, Tobacco, drink healths (as the phrase is) play the merry greeks still &c. He would fall with Cato, to question and read, whether the soul were immortal or no?  
In my judgement, the clergy should not follow the laity in idle fashions of clothes, as the broad hat, ruffled Boötes and Stockings, &c. But the laity ought to follow the clergy in good life and manners.  
I could more willingly hear and read the learned Controversies of these times, if the great scholars on both sides, were not so envious to one another; But where envy dwells, charity hath no Chamber to lodged quietly in.  
Observe regularly the speech of man, and there is nothing almost spoken but by figure; as one says, this is my hand, for his hand writing: this is my deed, when it is but his consent thereto.  
The best observation in changing Religion, is to observe yourself in your new course, viz. doth this make you pray more? love goodness better? contemn mundane delights and vain things more? be more charitable, love God and his goodness more fervently, respect his Priests and Prophets, and husbandmen more lovingly? Then have you changed well; but the contrary is fearful.  
I find many times I overset myself by supposing too much, and well of others; but seldom deceived by thinking too little and ill, for they in their actions (for the most part) approve it.  
Put no more trust upon mortal man, neither stretch him further in thy hopes, than to his own ends, for he is a frail Creature, and to trust unto, but a rotten reed; whom the upper Spirits know to be every minute Changeable, and uncertain in himself, almost even to himself: and the lower find him often so in his actions, if his profits be not therein throughly interessed.  
We have by instinct a veneration of nature's operatitions in somethings, but to a wise man Idem is Idem.  
Of all manner of People I hate the paradoxion babbling wit showers; & those place, good and better, in the rank of one esteem.  
He is a fool that offers to give the paring again, if one will give him an Apple; but he an ass worthy to eat thistles; that takes it: for I hold (be it spoken with reverence to holy writ) Esau was a notable hangman, that sold his birthright for a mess of pottage.  
Blame not men because they are variable and humourous; for we by nature are so, & as the humour predominating governors, and encounters occasion, so we seem to ourselves or others. If otherwise better, the let us acknowledge with Socrates, Philosophy & God his goodness and grace makes us so, but a man drowned in the lethargy of his vice oft makes himself so, by launching or wading too deeply into the sensual and tickling pleasures of the flesh.  
Teach me thy knowledge in this or that thing says one, you thereby lose not your own share, your fire will warm us both &c. but who shall pay me for spoiling my clothes in fetching of the wood, says the fire maker; or feed my hungry stomach and radical moisture spent thereby? Had mere thanks! Magner fed his hens with mere thanks, and they laid no eggs. O unconscionable coveteousnessel O blind self lovel nothing is a man's own truly, that he comes not by duly.  
The world accounts him a gentleman that can live of his revennewes without doing any thing: but he is the true gentleman, that doth the bravest and best actions.  
The Ocoult Philosophers in their books do tell there is such a thing that you may have, but tell not plainly how to come by it. For how ever ignorants, covetous & idle persons prate; If so sovereign a knowledge were to be purchased, by the buying and reading of a twelvepenny book, the course of man would be in confusion; wherefore one sayeth Deus celavit Apollo ne mundus devastaretur. And old English proverb, viz. I stout and thou stout, who shall carry the dirt out? The children of this art understand the Language of the parents; only, to the rest they speak in obscure riddles: for as cocks the birds of the Sunno crow and are only answered by other cocks, so in this divine mystery the intelligent must be a bird of the sun also.  
In all thy merrie-makings and feastings, take heed of embracing Crapulae.  
Be still most wary and suspicious of thyself and actions; but to consider the various conditions of Man, is a judgement necessary in these times of liberty.  
Laughter is the hickock of a foolish spleen, but he notes himself judicious, or stupid, that changeth not his countenance upon his own talk.  
A Puritan seeks reputation more by words then by deeds, and supposeth more of God's hearing then his seeing.  
Storm not too much when thou art standred by some evil and envious tongue, but think how the sun curtaind with clouds, yet in time strips: and dissipates the congealed vapours, and gets the victory, and brings those veils into thinness, and so to nothing, but air; so Magna est veritas & praevalet.  
It it an Arcanum almost, to knows men's dispositions, by nothing their affections in diet: for the melancholy and earthly, loves to feed on gross and great substances, hunts with slow hounds, the ill digesting hare; The phlegmatic on broths, eats butter, cheese, roots, cabbage, pornpions, melons, cucumbers; drinks whey and four shillings canary. The airy, climbs at dainty fowls, delights in hunting the roe buck, fowling, fishing and hawking, and esteems more of the sport then the prey. The fiery and high constitution cares rather for that is spiritual then corporal, drinks wine largely, loves hot spices: and as Natura Natura gaudet, so he to cherish his fire, loves the Quintessence and heat of things, as the Pigeon (a hot bird) loves salt, and so did Alexander the Great wine; the spirit whereof, was food to his fiery spirit: and not (as many will mistake,) his delight was in ebriety, for Nature many times makes (tacitly) our appetites servants to her ends. To this may be objected; Then all your ale-houses knights, & domineering drunkards, are his kinsme; Answer, No, they are led to guzzell by their ebrious voluptibility, not by their natural inclination: witness the weakness of their spirits, when with a small charge they go reeling and stumbling in the streets, a vice most punishable for misusing God's good gifts, and defacing his Image in themselves. viz. reason. So the sedulus glutton and the gouty lecher, not provoked by the surcharge of the third concoction; unable, except only to groap, talk bawdely and so obsceanly, &c. is very reprehensible, as rebels in nature, and mutineers against order.  
It is a pusillanimous and mere womanish weakness of the judgement to dissesteeme any excellent thing offered, for the poverty of the offerer.  
A resolved greatness of the mind stands firm against the event of a doubtful cause.  
A drunkard's love is as brittle as glass mettle: for a slip, or fall of a word, breaks it in cutting pieces.  
Make thyself sure of nothing without the power of thy action, (that is not wholly in thy hands) for inter Poculum et labra, chance is a dicer.  
when I consider maturely how life in these lower things is disposed and retaken by the Almighty Creator and ordainer of all things; I find in the most central and terrestrial, (that is) the metalline bodies their life is termined, shut, and imprisoned within themselves; in the vegetable, that they have their spring, station, and dissolution. And then their life is breathed up into the common air, the instrument from whence it came, insused by the sun, moon, and stars &c. In the animal, that they eat, drink, steep, move, and die; and their lives are given up into the general spirit of the world; But in mankind, that he hath a reasonable soul, and according to his desert, is adjudged by him that infused it. O then, how precizely ought we to consider our courses here!  
If there were not a hope for us in the goodness of God, the better sort of Men which are most afflicted in this life, were more wretched than either vegetable or animal creatures.  
The prosperity, and sensual felicity of this life, is but animal happiness.  
Few men attain true wisdom here in this world; that have not seen Fortunes both faces, that is, adversity before a rich estate.  
Riches is a muffler, and makes many in this life, play at blindman buff with their souls.  
The mind that looks too vehemently upon the goods of this world, makes its thoughts a slave; yet we ought not to let pass an honest necessary care, or due occasion.  
Those Arts wherein young men most excel by their agility, should not be an old man's practice or election; for it fits age to excel in wisdom & judgement, not in delights and pastimes, but as a moderate hearer and beholder.  
The earth even to our comprehension is but a point or central prick in regard of the universe, a molehill in God's sight, and we thereon Ants, to whom he hath given a spark, drop, or portion of reason, thereby to discern his Almighty greatness, and praise his holy name; The rest are but as creeping vermin in his sight; the difference is, of us he will take a severe account, as of those to whom he hath given that talon of understanding, how we have disposed of it.  
When I consider the great, good, & general providence of the Almighty, who hath opened his hand of abundance, and thrown down his goodness upon the earth, for every man by his endeavour to obtain; some I see flourish and wallow in all fullness and plenty; others by labour gain a mediocrity: many are poor, indigent, and miserable; and which is notable, none fully content, as if they all had too short measure; then in my thoughts I say; O you full and rich in these earthly blessings, have you quails and Manna, and yet do you murmur? You that labour, do you not see you are well and happy? for man is borne to labour, as the bird to fly, the fish to swim, the horse and ox to bear and draw. And you poor and indigent, consider how your poverty comes, or by your sloth, or love of idleness or vice; blame not then the bounteous goodness of God. And to you lame, blind, deformed, and diseased, repine not, O do not; for the punishment falls justly upon you, if you do well and wisely weigh it, viz. either for your parents, or your own sins; for God is goodness itself, and cannot join with evil.  
A forced conceit is like a pressed soldier, who for the most part serves not so well as a voluntary.  
Most men being arrived into years, by experience see many of their youth's actions appear in fool's habits.  
To be rid of many knawing thoughts, it is not amiss to imitate old Raynard the Fox, that by standing in the water by degrees, drove all the fleas nipped his pelt, into the lock of wool he had in his mouth, and then left it in the river; so when thou art oppressed with biting worldly cogitations, take some good book or holy meditation, and therein drown all thy worldlings.  
He that is over careful; shows distrust in God's providence; and he that is too careless, shows an idle mind.  
It is not well spoken to say, I will do this or that, because thou canst do nothing of thyself, neither art master of one minute of thy time: but better to say, by God's leave and permission I will, &c. which if thou utterest not, yet at least think.  
To truly Sabbathize is not only to keep reverently to God his service the seventh day or Sunday, but every minute to retire thy thoughts from these worldly occasions to himwards: as to consider thy frailty, his almightiness; thy poverty in all good actions, his bounty in all good blessings, &c. And this is true Sabbathizing.  
In God his Speculum all men are alike, only those who truly & heartily love & serve him, are taller & fairer than the rest. But in man his glass, there are many differences in estates, and the respects between the one and the other, is in outward things, as bodily feature, strength, riches and having power & princelike authority &c. But these poor Mundaine accounts terminate, in themselves as smoke into air: for the best and most perdurable, last here but in breath.  
Choler falling into passion and rage, is like the seething over of a pot.  
To speak or name all vices in one diction or word, is to say ingratitude.  
I protest my experience is yet short in true knowledge of a crafty companion, for he hath so bred himself up in base and customary courses of subtlety, that the Jack will turn the spit round of his own ends, to which he will make my credulity but the fire.  
If we would conceive that the wrong and mischief we do to others had impetration so with God's justice, to still afflict us by Apparition or Genius, it would deter a good mind from offering any, and give cause of fear to a bad.  
Although the causes of men's intentions pass for the most part under the common and ordained providence of God, yet in the best achivements, and things, I perceive we are stopped, unless the particular blessing admit us to it; the means is prayer and good life.  
be not too familiar with thy servants, nor with people of base condition; for than thou shalt find the proverb true: familiarity breeds contempt; but a generous spirit is thereby most flexible.  
All alchemists can do well, till they come to doing.  
Some praise nothing but what is their own, and they give few others' cause to do that deservedly.  
when I incline my attention to music, I listen to the sweetness of Cadence, Choice of Choardes, &c. when to words or discourse, than I harken after sense; for a tale that is senseless or dull is like a plain-faced woman with a flat nose, or one that's like the Ace of Clubs.  
Leave not thine own accustomed fashion (if good) to follow the guise, fashion or habit in manners of another; for what sits comely in another is questionable whether, it will do so in thee. Every man wears his own natural best, and limitation is ever short.  
Religion is the fairest flower grows in the garden of the soul.  
To flatter a friend is to play false in the game of friendship: to neglect thy once honest beloved acquaintance, is to throw the cards i'th' fire.  
He that breaks his word and promise with men, is like him that receives cuts and wounds in his skin, the greater the deeper, and are seldom cured without scars of suspicion; but he that esteems not his promise and protected word, loseth a joint or member in his credit and estimation.  
He that makes vows to forbear this or that, terminatly; shows no great strength of government and rides behind himself.  
Women for the most part rather desire to lie with men, than scholars.  
Experience every day more and more scrapes away an understanding man's confidence in others words and promises.  
In consideration is the devil's hawkes-hood, whereby he carries careless men quietly into perdition without ever baiting at the inn of repentance.  
He that puts confidence in uncertain men, is as one that goes upon the Ice.  
He that reveals the secrets of occult philosophy, resembles boys, that tells tales our of school; and some Philosophers have seemed to promise their readers so, but they play the crafty wags with mere litterallists.  
In a young man the sword in an old man the word young men hold the sword should give satisfaction fo● wrongs; but God's wor● reckons further and otherways.  
When thou wrongest another, think justice human, or divine, hath thee on the score.  
To suppress anger in thyself, is to conquer with Hercules one of the Furies; but to tame all passions in thee, is to lead Cerberus in chains.  
To strongly and patiently endure worldly afflictions, and crosses, is with Atlas to bear the world on thy shoulders.  
Who doth confidently love and trust in God and his goodness, may with Charles the fift write Non plus vltra.  
Mars his concubinary lying with Venus in Ovid, signifieth iron changed into copper; Vulcan's finding them, and discovering their false play; is the fire, and trial; for iron is not transmuted, as some suppose, but the coppresse or vitriol, corporated into a metalline form by the power of Mars or iron, his lustful and fiery sulphur. The Gods laughing, is Truth discerning the alchemist mistake; for the like is betwixt Mercury and Saturn.  
Actaeon pursued by his hounds will suffer diverse expositions: for it may aenigmatize a lover chased and devoured by his thoughts: but more properly, one given (as the phrase is) to good fellowship, and whose followers devours his estate, The history of Phaeton, Jason, &c. have golden expositions also; but the Pedagogues teach the children all they can, as the old crows put the worms into the young one's mouths: (As sayeth Erasmus,) without tasting them, themselves.  
It is blame and shame enough, to plainly deny, an unconsiderate, and unconscionable demander, his requests.  
Give a drunkard that hath learned to reel of the tapspinning Mearmaide, and a devil bomm-eRuffian, the wall, in any case; for the one needs it, the other in right should have wall on all sides of him, viz. Newgate.  
He that rouseth up a fierce wrath against women and scolds, is like him that draweth his sword upon offensive schoolboys.  
No man can say of himself he is good, if he enters into due consideration of what he knows by his desires: but he may justly say and boldly affirm, Man was good, if he looks into the unspotted purity, and suffering of our Saviour Jesus Christ and reckon his good thereby.  
That man may have some hope of himself, that sees Penetration, compunction; with sorrow and shame, standing within him, with dejected countenances, and frown upon his sins; but he that hath no consideration therein, is in a desperate case.  
A man rich and highly favoured is like a Sun dial regarded so long as his prosperity shineth on him; but poor, no more looked on than the dial is, the Sun being in a Cloud; so by man he is regarded, as regarded: but by the sun of heaven, as his heart is, so he is respected, be his estate poor or rich.  
I have heard many seafaring men pray for diverse winds, as their way was bound, North, South, East, West, which Lucian in his dialogues laughs at, husbandmen for rain, and at the same time travellers for fair wether, so in all a confusion. As if the sun, wind and Raine were to be fitted to the measure of our sensual occasions; so doth self-love blind most men, when indeed the sun, Wind, and rain, are God his Creatures, not ours, but by sufferance of his goodness, and however it blows, shines, or reins, we ought to be content and thankful, (not grudge at: heaven with Mistress minks riding to Ware) but reverence so great creatures, however to our ends contrary.  
To desire of another any thing without valuable consideration is foolish self-love and childish craving.  
It is honourable to aid honest investigation; for though not suddenly obtained, yet the intent was noble, but if found; profitable, & with every one praysable. When we wink at a friends faults, our judgement turns like vinegar, the spiritual part inward, and is last distilled, in a worthy minds accusation or wonds.  
A drunkard is a mad man for the tirne, but a mad man is always drunk.  
When we meditate or act good things, we only live; but when we eat, drink, spend time vainly, and sleep, we are dying.  
Stageplays, and pleasures, are but waking dreams.  
All things are ordained to praise God, the Metalline stands brightly fixed for his glory, the vegetable springs up, and spreads his flowers and fruits as in sacrifice; the animals suffer; and labour, and therein show us our duty; And we were worse than them all, if we do neglect withal humiliation to still laud, and thank his bounteous goodness; to whom he hath only given a reasonable and discursive soul.  
The more we show our understanding with humility and prayer unto God; the better he loves us; the more we show our wit to critical man, the more he disesteemes us.  
Judgement pierceth into the cause, and streatcheth with th'extension of a thing: Conceit hath taken but a superficial eye and a small circulation.  
Art thou crossed and unhappy in thy worldly dedesires and works? why, think with thyself art thou better than thy captain and Master Jesus Christ? was not he crossed even to the suffering a most bitter death upon the cross, despised &c. And as his great grandsiere (David) by the mother's side, was thrown out of the world as a broken potshard. Hold thyself then up in God, who is not only the Creator but preserver of all his works: and if thou be'st one of his, thou need not fear but that thou art in the eye of his providence. And examine thyself closely if thine own courses are not the cause of thy affliction; a hundred witnesses to one thou wilt find it so.  
It discovers an earthly soul, where the discourse is most of morceaux friands (as the French call dainty dishes) for we should eat to live, not live to eat.  
A large compliment ushers a close craft; an honest meaning, gives due respects.  
It is easy to make men believe they are better than they be: but you may flatter some women beyond the knowledge of themselves.  
An ingrateful nature hath great cause to fear necessity, for it is but just he be the most despised wretch may be: if he relapse in his best, his thoughts bestinke his memory.  
Make no secret contracts or close business with a weak braynd man, for lookers on will judge thee crafty by his weakness, how sincerely soever thou dealest.  
It is a misery in a free spirit to depend on others, so unstable are most men in these times; wherefore with Paracelsus, Ne sit alterius qui suus esse potest.  
The best answer to an ignorant denier of principles, is silence, and to an obstreperous arrogant, a cudgel or laughter.  
Alchemy is the knowledge of things hidden in nature, the revelation thereof the gift of God.  
It is worth a large smile to observe how in things darkly discovered, every one through self love thinks themselves cunning.  
Seest thou that the world runs not on thy side, give over the world then, and go upon God's side, (that is) despise the desires of it, which is but cherishment of this frail and fading body: but if thou changest then to God his side, thou shalt at last find a perpetual way of bliss, when thy soul is got free of his prison.  
It is worth the observing in a knowing man, to see how one unknowing alchemist presumes upon the ignorance of his brother.  
To condemn good and authentic Authors, to uphold a self loved argument or opinion, shows a reprobate ignorance.  
Keep not company with him is servant to his servants, and they servants to vice, baseness, & ignorance.  
You can hardly find a rich Gentle weak unthrift, but his house is lined with queans and Knaves diggon.  
Show no inward excellency to an ignorant, for he is apt to contemn that where of he is uncapable.  
The science of hidden philosophy may be true, but most of the Artists the world knows false.  
A metal-monging alchemist is but a horsekeeper to a coiner, however he curries his trompery; but if he rides on the jade himself, his journey by odds reaches to the gallows, if imprisonment inn him not by the way.  
Human understanding follows high science slowly, but fools and women quest with Quando.  
He cannot justly be deemed dishonest that putteth supposition to the proof, though with charge: but he that knows a thing to be false, and for wicked gain leads others to repentance therein, is a knave.  
A bold fool hath great advantage in quiet over a sober wiseman; for the fool accounts an earthquake but the earth's Morice-dance, Thunder the clouds Colique, the wars a may-game, fighting at sharp a sport, till he be beaten to better respects.  
Take him for one of the unworthies, that cannot endure the praise of another.  
In abstruse things, arguments are endless; obedience is better than Sacrifice.  
Base slothful minds never think themselves satisfied for small panes.  
The word, good fellow as it is now sensed by the vulgan, imports a drunkard in a man, a light huswife in a woman.  
In our youth the senses bore the dominion, but in our age the understanding should.  
It is a poor backbiting stinking shift, to caluminate authentic Authorities, and Authors; but plain roguery to decurte or mispoint their writings.  
Aproud man of all others should not be penurious, for it engenders his hatred, and due contempt.  
Study, read, practice, and do what can be to obtain knowledge; yet you shall find an Ignorant will contemn all, rather than lose the opinion of himself.  
I am many times forced by the laws of hospitality to endure the hearing of goodmen calumniated, but I bear it the easier because the servants of vice do it.  
In argument strive not too violently with an Obstinate; for as stairs mounts us to a chamber, so must you graduate him.  
An unlearned disputant, is troublesome company, but if angered very evil society' and a sponge for defamatory intelligence.  
Books are the best companions can be; for they keep their passions inward; and you need not be troubled with them longer than you list or will.  
A good book should be read three times; first, to set his method; secondly, his matter; thirdly, to gather his instruction.  
Another's opinion of thee, concerns thee not so much as thine of thyself; in which thou shouldest not be partial.  
I never took a quick answerer, to have a great understanding, for small things are sooner contracted then great.  
We have three things to do in this world, though some say but two: viz. to avoid evil, to do good, and things necessary or indifferent.  
Seest thou thy poverty and improsperity makes enemies of thy former thought friends? Faint not therefore, for they were but outward friends not in ward, and are like dogs that follow the meat not the men.  
A prejudicate conce● works like Yeast in a weak judgement.  
Never trouble yourself with another's imagination or what he speaks o● thee in secret: for it is no● worth thy understanding unless he durst speak it openly.  
He that backbites other let him take care he wear clean linen himself, and keep no company with women and dogs.  
Point not at an others spots with foul fingers.  
When I behold a man bravely accoutred, a Lacedaemonian even to the shoulders, I think of Adam's nakedness, and smile to see how For-like the world esteems us, more for the case then the carcase.  
Passions are of diverse natures, and choler the most unruly and untunable to all gentle society; which if you can command, you are master of the captain.  
Dispraise, by a fool, quean, or Knave, may stick like burrs for the time, but they pierce no further than the outside of the stookings, and garments; and are rather an honest man's commendation.  
There's secret poison to the soul, lurking in the bottom of great bowls of wine.  
Men for the most part shake hands with sobriety in the third cup of wine; women in the second; children in the first. Bacchus and Venus are near friends; yet will Bacchus break Venus her glass when he is much drunk.  
A conjurer without learning, shows his devil is but an ass, or the spirit he works by, an ignorant slave.  
Drunkenness is the gate to all vice, or a pair of spectacles to see the devil and his works by.  
Life cannot die; that which we vulgarly call death, is but dissolution of parts.  
God his fire is life, which may be removed; but cannot be extinguished.  
That pleasure which is modest, moderate, and permanent, is most to be desired, and highest to be found.  
A robust breeding makes a rough spirit, and condition; and is apter to anger, than reformation.  
There's no telling a bred Seaman his errors aboordship, or a drunkard he is so, when he is so.  
A voluptuous man will be master of his word, that is, he will rather command it than it shall force him; but a just man is a servant to his promise.  
They are the proud indeed, who overpass the bounds of their calling and parts, to challenge respect of others.  
Our Appetites are Danaus' daughters, and our bodies their tubs.  
Good objects stay and help the wandering of our minds: hence the historical use of pictures and holy Images are not unprofitable, though Devotion sometimes overshoots the mark.  
The cleanest of our clay houses have many dirty corners, which like Sluts we love not to look upon till we are chidden by affliction.  
Men in Ancient time fought to prefer virtue & virtuous men; now silkworms dung hath gotten the upper place.  
A fly with a candle does as a fool with a fray, and money.  
A Poet hath advantage of a true Historian, for he can fashion men as they should be with invention only; the other ought to report them truly, as he finds them in many records.  
Vain boasting of knowledge shows emptiness therein, or vain glory thereof.  
He that steeps his jest in his own laughter, is like him that swallows his spittle, but uncomely.  
Ancient Heralds did denote the quality of deserts prettily and properly, when they gave the field Sables to gownmen; a field Gules, to deserving Soldiers; Argent and Or to men favoured in Courts of great Princes; &c. But now they sell monsters, and cruel beasts to one another.  
Few men wear in their coat Armours, lambs, Doves, and such harmless creatures, but ravenous, devouring and horrible beasts and birds; which denotes that Pride is cruel, and this invention is a child be got by war.  
A sergeant at law, will endure the discharge of a great piece as stoutly, as the proudest soldier of us all.  
Sleep of the body is the Image of its death, and dreaming shows the soul is neither at home, or needs sleep.  
A translator of books, is but as one that deals another's bread to all about him.  
A translator & an Anagrammatist are both in a narrow room or entry, cannot bestir their wits if they deal truly.  
Vulgar and mean witted people that meddle with the affairs of mighty; Potentates, resemble clowns and russettings in a Stage-play, when they presume to sit in the play King's seat.  
A student's wife precizely fine and fair, denotes her husband hath oft trouble in his studies.  
The Mother knows best whether the child be like the father or no?  
Lustful people resemble those sharp-stomacked gluttons, that take delight to often whet their knives, and so wear them for the Bellies sake, to the back.  
A fool that tells some dull saltlesse jest to hold company with wit crackers; is like Aesop's ass, that imitated the fawning dog.  
It is music of the spheres to hear a wise and learned man discourse; but a trouble to the ear, and a burden to the mind, to hear an ignorant fool prattle.  
He that hath valiantly approved himself in his youth is excused for answering swearing brabbling darers in his age; and he that hath written well, is excused for speaking much.  
In our childhood we were fools; in our manhood we are servants of care, & in our age Porters to diseases.  
Reprehend not thy friend too plainly unless thou knowest him wise, else thou shalt find it unseasonable at all times.  
An optic multiplying glass is like a travelling young gallants thoughts, or a vulgar alchemists hopes, both great through perspective.  
He that strives to agrandize himself above his place, shall find envy lie lurking a th'wart his way, and in Court it lies smiling too.  
Soldiers and sailors should be the Godliest men of all other professions, because so often exposed to danger; and the sailor is reasonable at sea, and cannot abide whistling, but at Land, they are both Vpzeefreeze.  
Why should any be immoderately covetous, or unfittingly penurious, who hath neither child nor a lease of his life?  
You may more offend a Pedagogues disposition by breaking. Priscian's head, then by wounding Reasons side with nonsense.  
Lawyer's because they are in the ships poop, near the stirrage of the State, think their places before the Martialists: but soldiers know their precedence, for they are in the force-castle; the difference is, the lawyers have often apparitions of good angels, when the soldiers many times are paid with cracked crowns.  
Suppose our Thunder and lightning to be one of the fairest days in Hell, but the burning of Sodom and Gomorath, their ordinary weather.  
He that strives to live beyond his means and place, puts a burden upon his lives back.  
An usurer that lives upon eight in the hundred is like a pike that feeds and lives by devouring the smaller fish: but the difference is, when Death brings him to the dresser, he butters himself.  
There is no presumption from the centre of the beggar, to the circular of the promoted rich; if graduated by virtue, and worthy deserts; for virtue was the first promoter.  
There are 3. sorts of honest men, viz. your exchangeman for the bearing up of his credit; your cautionary, for fear of laws; but your true honest man is he, that is so for itself.  
Nature works by her ordained quality on quantity; your university physician, on form by prescript; but an empirike lays about him like a Fencer.  
Libelling is but an itching of the wit, but if he be taken scratching, he smarts more for it then his reader profits thereby.  
A libeler of great Princes errors, is like on throws the snuff of a candle amongst a heap of people; which a wise and moderate man, treads out.  
When thou findest vanity bear too much dominion in thy humours, think on thy Death, judgement, Heaven and Hell.  
The over lavish talk of a thick-witted fool, is like the roasting of a fat goose; much folly drops into the dripping-pan of others ears.  
It is no wisdom to refuse the fruits of August, for the flowers of May; that is; to give Benefits for fair words.  
Vituperate no man, to cover thine own defects.  
A striving affected quickness, denores a giddy and unstable condition.  
It is not material what men say: but what Reason speaks in men.  
Esteem not so much what the society be you keep, as what the company is. For company is the clothes of your habit.  
Prejudicate that most common laws esteem all qualities excepting his own and ready money, as he speaks French.  
To deem a Man by his actions and deeds, is the certain and unfailable way of judging.  
He is not out of the estate of grace, who chides himself for errors, but he who is carried by vice like a straw on a stream inconsiderately.  
The rust of usury many times frets in the children's fortunes.  
There is nothing proclaims a man's wisdom more, than the government of his passions: for fools through the spectacles of fury, see repentance in the red letters of their shame.  
It is the natural of most ignoble spirits to judge and censure others in the worse part; but noble Sir P. S. said evil speaking of others comes of the evil we have in ourselves.  
Evil men delight to make others so, but a good man is apten to amend his own defects then to accuse others.  
Seek to remove thy crosses by fervent prayer to God, and withal do honestly what thou Mayest; for the arms of heaven, sayeth one, are our endeavours: make the husbandman thy example.  
A man grown shameless in his talk is like a bag full of Eeeles and snakes; if opened, who knows what comes out first?  
A musician or a Poet overcurious to give his fantasies compositions, is as a gardener that denies leaves and smelling flowers: for matters of delight and recreation are but so in comparison of the fruits and seeds of necessary arts and sciences.  
Marriage in the bud of making, is like the month of April, but May and the heat of summer over, and familiarity worn to September, things appear naked and as they are, and sometimes have cold griefs.  
When I hear people in comaparison of disgrace with one another, as, I am as good or better than he or she, &c. I deem such words proceeds from the want of true judgement, wisdom and goodness, and that they both may mend.  
Where private opinion is sole judge of ambiguous texts, there unity is no household guest, either in Philosophy, alchemy, natural physics &c.  
Little young birds and women are very different in sufferance; for much handling kills the one, and makes the other wanton.  
Actions are others books, where we read by their thoughts, and accordingly judge.  
It is the periphrasis of a fool when he hath spoken (as he thinks) well, to ask the hearers if be not so?  
Slight loves are sullied with small distastes, but a well grounded affection, is like a strong how, hardly broken unless extremely over-drawne.  
Music in young men hath fingers, but in aged men only ears.  
Many are better guarded then regarded: but a criminal shall have faulty spy-faults enough going to prison.  
Novelties with a wife man are but as dust, brushed or blown off by examination; but stick in a fool's mind as the dirt of Paris in an Englishmans clothes.  
A lowed raenting Speaker that engrosseth all the talk may well be called the Drum of the Company, and a woman of the same quality the Fife.  
It is a laudable quality to keep touch, as they call holding promise: but when it is against the keeper's profit and to do good, honourable.  
He is not maliciously to be blamed that would pay his debts but cannot: but he that may and will not, should be placed in the singing schools of the Counters to learn better to keep time.  
It is no matter to call or prove a suspicious fool a fool, for in time he'll make himself so known.  
If an Illiterate mechanic will force his poor wisdom upon the company: the best course for understanders is to let him wear himself out of his own suit of tale.  
Soldiers in these peaceful and vicious times of most other professions, stand clear of one vice, viz. usury.  
Of all the letters in the cross-row a, w. is the worst and ill pronounced, for it is a dissemblers, and a knaves epitheton.  
As a gentleman's comely audacity, came by his good breeding & generous inclination: so a base fellow's argancy came first by the toleration of his malapert sauciness.  
A wife, and truly learned man, needs not care how fools and base upstarts expounds him.  
How can fools take learning in good part, or embrace learned men, being bound about the eyes of judgement with the swaddling clouts of Ignorance?  
Most men how faulty so ever, love not reprehension, though without envy it intends their good; but a wise man embraceth admonition, and loves the good counsel giver.  
It is taken for a disgrace to call the mean citizen's now goodman, or good wife &c. but if they had cause for it, they need not be so offended therewith.  
Hope bears up the heavy hearted poor man, as bladders and cork an unskilful Swimmer.  
Fly that house as a plaguy one, where suspicion is master, and calumny and slander vicious servants: for the world will judge thee desperate of thy credit else, or that thou hast none.  
Prevent that an evil Conditioned man wrong thee not; for we ought not to desire or rejoice in any one's punishment, either in this life, or that to come.  
All words and actions penetrate not deeply (force excepted) where good opinion is stopped up by prevaricated ill conceit.  
The three notes of a self-lover, are over dandling his Children, over suffering his servants, over chearishing his beard and hair.  
It is easy to add to things found, but difficult to invent.  
There is such a thing questionless as the vulgar chemics, or Philosophers mimics, uncertainly seek after: for error denotes a verity.  
I can resemble some of our Gingling gallants, to Bartholmein fair in London, viz. the bruit more than the substance, consisting of rattles, drums, and such Childish toys, at the best, fine pictures and gingerbread speeches.  
The understanding of our vulgar chemics is like Whittington with his cat and bells; for although they prove not as he did Lord-Mayors in their art, yet they all can sindg the cat.  
An alchemist hath the reputation of a common liar, for though he should tell true, yet he should not be believed.  
There is an old saying (jack would be a gentleman if he could speak French) by which most of our attorneyes are but half-way yet, for they scarce half do it all.  
I would have a translator to give the names according to the same Language: for so might an intelligent reader know the Country man spoken of.  
No man can truly say he is better than another, because he is rich, strong, fair, nimble &c. only he may add the letter, r. more than others may: But where casualty and sickness etc can deprive men of all these qualities, none excelleth another but in good and virtuous actions, or in suppressing insurrectious passions, therein he may justly claim a due superiority.  
A man too full of suspicion doth either accuse his own inward disposition, or these times very plainly.  
That good is cleanly done which stands free from our own particular interresses.  
A prating Drunken busy headed fool, is like a brewer's Cart upon the stones, makes the most noise when his vessels be emptiest.  
A man that hides and flatters himself in his subtlety, doth but deceive himself, for his actions and desires will at last bewray him: yea and betray him to derision, and contempt.  
A broker endures to be cast in the same mould the usurer is formed in, though his stuff be not so good or currant; and it is high eloquence can make either of them fit for heaven; yet their selfe-loves would also make it their interest.  
That man is a good proficient in true wisdom, that esteems of the pleasant enticements of this world, truly as they be (that is) fading shadows, and like a Stage-play, a mere waking dream.  
He that can make agreement amongst Elements, may make peace in himself and health in others.  
A human body in its variation and surcrease, may be similized to the nature of the 7. planets; viz, milky infancy to Luna, the prattling school age to Mercury, the juvenall flowering May time to Venus; the flourishing and resplendent middle age to Sol; the virile and daring manhood to Mars; the better tempered and advized governing to Jupiter; the highest soul flying, and decrepit body moving, to Saturn.  
Desperate foredoers of themselves denote that they turned their backs upon God his goodness, and their faces from his mercy.  
It is a wretched estate that supports itself by lying and forgeries.  
A Painter and a Poet should have a great fantasy, a lawyer a strong memory, but a philosopher and a Divine, a deep judgement.  
To swagger and roar, is to play the little devil in this world; to lecher is like the spider that spinns a web out of his own bowels; to swill and drink in excess, is to turn tripe-wife and wash guts.  
He that glories to go away with a great deal of drink, shall be incomparably excelld, by a brewer's horse.  
God hath given us out of his free bounty, and for mere thanks, all things for enough; but not any thing for too much.  
Who would depend any reckoning upon the breath of man or woman, when one and the same thing, shall have such variation in epithets, as what a friend calls bounteous liberality, an enemy calls lavish prodigality; so frugality penury; valour, foolhardiness; boldness, rashness; audacity, arrogance; wariness, craft; learning, bookishness; and also the women call one another's beauty snout fair.  
Thou canst not esteem cheaper of thyself and parts than a detracting disposition will.  
Poverty is shamefully worn by a slothful man or an Ignorant person, but by a deserving and good spirit, it is the witness of the world's unworthiness, or the badge of his misfortune.  
The Philosophers say Anima, Media Natura, is the Actor of the greatest philosophical secrets; the Italians hold the middle place the most honourable way. The Ancients called Temperance the golden mean; keep thee there, it matters not for others censure.  
He is ill servanted that hears his maid before he sees her, and smells his man before he eyes him.  
To truly judge of a woman, is to suppose her Masculine, and so weigh her conditions, as breeding, state &c. for we all befool our judgements with thinking too much of her invisibilities.  
A busy headed tradesman stocked, hath a hive of bees in his pate; but turned broker; or sergeant varlet, a nest of wasps in his scull, and his mace is the sting.  
It was properly similizd of him that said, passions in a fool were like ordinance broke loose in a storm at sea; for they ruin themselves commonly without great help; and a choleric and undisswasable man approves it.  
Some trade's man made Scavenger, strokes up his stockeings, carefully; picks motes from his clothes; discourses of reformation; then made Constable, extraordinarily cherisheth his beard, and gets a hum of state; but being Churchwarden, acknowledgeth himself to be one of the worshipful, and picks quarrels with any glazier in the parish.  
We are slaves to the elements, and fain to give the fire food before he will warm us or cuit our meat; entreat the air with voice and instruments before he will speak us music: bear and embrace the water ere he will cleanse or quench our thirst; manure the earth ere he will bring us sustenance: and they to God are but his Serving Creatures; for the fire is his chamberlain, the air his musician, the water his basin, the Earth his footstool,  
All things obey their ordinance in Nature but Man, and he seduced by his will and vain Appetites many times turns rebel. But when he returns and becomes true subject, the citizens of Heaven rejoice.  
The honest informers I know are books; for they crave nothing but unclasping and turning over.  
Wise Sir Thomas Moor laughed a man should think himself better than his neighbour, because the cloth of his gown was a finer thread: and Democritus I think would break his spleen, if he lived now to hear a man should be wiser than his neighbour by five hundred pounds.  
A Goosquill scribe to some fat Saducae, or storuling wrangling Pharisae, thinks himself more knowing and wise than Albumazer the heaven's notary that summoned the revolutions; but an you untie the string of this barmy youth's pride, he will blot out his cork, and spend all his wit in frothy scoffs.  
The black dog of Newgate I think is but the Genius of envy at Court, of subtley in the city, and of knavery in the Country, and shakes his loose hairs in most houses once a year, but is not visible but by effect to sense.  
That which a man hath attained unto through the diligence and industry of honest endeavours, is shot free from care of others heart knawing envy: Yet it is wisdom to be wary of their malice.  
It matters not what the person is that speaks, or acts to good purpose: but what the matter, deed, and speech is.  
When a fellow brags of his swift and far riding in a day &c. I inwardly praise the horse; and when I see an heir proud of his ancestors leavings, I likewise commend the purchasers if they well achieved it.  
Most folk are more care full to preserve their clothes from dust and spots, than their souls from guilt, and bodies from surfeits.  
Poverty is not amiss to a mind not rich in government; but a true wiseman esteems not worldly wealth to be right riches.  
All earthly and corporal contentments do but rank us amongst our fellow ants: for the whole terrestrial globe is but as an Ant-hill to God, and we the pissmires.  
War is a horrible Monster; which were better drowned when borne; (as the ancient laws of some Countries was to hide natures defects) then bred up and cherished by ambitious Princes as it is, to vex the world with roaring.  
War the child of injury is prodigal beyond ordination: it is pride in a soldiers mouth, offence in a civil ear; a tiger and furious beast when assailant, a goodly man when defendant; a monster to heaven, a comedy to evil spirits, a tragedy to the good angels, where men are verbs Active and passive, and the slain death's windfalls.  
Noble Persons should resemble stars in the Firmament, the higher they are, the less in pride they should seem.  
To praise and dispraise one person upon every slight occasion is like writing and rubbing out in a Tablebooke.  
To be over curious in trifles, is like a Tobacco seller, that discourseth the whiteness of the ash, rising in the pipe &c.  
We ought not to be proud of that another's true dispraise, can blemish or tread out.  
Words are vagabonds where the persuaded hath an ill opinion of the persuader.  
Prosperity, Court, Law, the city and a playhouse, have all the quality or gift to teach folks to be shameless.  
So speak of all men, and to all men, as they would all be thy enemies and shame thee to their power; for men are various, and by nature affect the left hand in censure of others: it is not what thy wit and understanding is, that God respecteth (for, he gave it thee as thy talon) but what thou dost with it, for of that, he means to take account.  
The principal cause as the Spaniard thinks, the Dutch man fell from the Roman Church, was that they denied the Cup to the laity.  
Conceive that an other man's intention (Covered however) is most part for his own ends, and affects therein most his own good, however he will seem to be thine.  
Contradiction is the ruin and death of a lie.  
Take no part with people affected to the dispraise of others, for thou knowest not thy turn amongst them; but avoid them, and the subject whereon they work in thine own condition.  
A common weal resembles a ship, the King the master, the councillors and officers, the pilot and mariners; the ordinary subjects the passengers, good-lawes the compass, affair wind and sea room God his blessing, and years of plenty.  
Those wretches which fore-doe themselves for worldly afflictions and troubles, are like the flounder that leap out of the frying-pan into the fire: The grievous difference is, the one is momentary and terminate, but the other everlasting; to similar it more nearer, let us conceive a man bit with fleas in his bed, who should therefore throw himself for ease into a cauldron of scalding oil, or amongst a tub of Snakes.  
Youth, health, and Riches makes a well furnished palace of this world: but age, sickness and poverty, a prison of this life: but a good mind expects delivery with patience.  
A Student is with his thoughts, as an Artificer with his fingers.  
A flatterer is fodder to a fool.  
Where the reason is subjected and forced to follow the will, the actions run in a Kind of madness.  
God saw it was not good for man to live alone, and therefore made him a helper, viz. woman: Wherefore in consequence a woman ought not only to be a companion, but also a helper.  
Covetousness, sensuality, and opinion, are the three devils stirs most men to motion.  
Care not for men's thoughts of thy works, if thy operations be good; for their cogitations and thoughts are not thy works; but thy works is the good thou shouldst be constant in.  
As Conjurers when they call up evil spirits, provide before for the safety of their persons: so if by course of argument thou art forced to contradict the evil spirit of any man, be sure of thine own safety too; for many are no better than evil spirits, and kinds of devils.  
It is a care every man ought heedfully to look unto, what company he keeps: for evil, base, and ignorant company, are like copper, which if thou mix thyself with, it will allay thy reputation, as gold and silver is allayed therewith, by the goldsmith's.  
In thy Election and choice, let not thy affection shame thy judgement; but so choose that thy judgement may be commended in thy election.  
The railing mouth of an envious villain against the good, is the devil's baggpipes.  
Answer arguments with reason; if reason will not be heard or approved, then answer them with silence.  
Remember always that practice or action takes more deep impression with men than precept or discourse; which Diogenes well knew when he tumbled his tub.  
Our desires begets our cares, and our courses our fortunes, or the accidents befalls us meeting with others in the same passages; which we wrongfully attribute to destiny, for all things with us, comes from ourselves, or by ourselves; I mean mundanely: therefore when thou hearest a man complain of fortune, consider his courses, with himself and others.  
The philosopher's stone is like the northwest passage, locked up in strechio D'avies, but not so cold in seeking.  
Things proffered and easy to come by, diminish themselves in reputation & price: for how full of pangs and dotage is a wailing lover, for it may be some brown bessie? But let a beauty fall a-weeping, overpressed with the sick passion; she favours in our thoughts, something Turnbull.  
A man poor, yet rich in knowledge; undertaking to work some excellery in this helpless age, is like a Merchant that intends some rich Sea voyage, without a bark, Victuals, or Men.  
The wiser fort of human judgements, do not accept form for matter, but matter for form: otherwise our Sophisters would be taken for wise men, who are yet but prentices therein.  
A constant and wise considering Spirit, giveth only place to men's humours, not to variation in truth.  
A bold talking braggart, is like the torrent running from a Mill, troubles the ear and eye fruitlessly, with what he hath done and seen; but angle him of his knowledge, and you may perhaps catch a Gudgeon.  
The true correction of an ill tongued man or woman, is to bid them speak as they have found, and known, and not more, or less; and forfeit for untruths.  
He that converseth amongst ill tongued people, is like him that walks amongst thorns, and to contend with them is to tread on Snakes and Adders.  
Conversation with earthly Company and terrestrial things, is but grovelling upon this surface of our great molehill the earth: but when we in our airy discourses lift ourselves higher, let us take heed we put not our mouths too peremptorily into heaven.  
nature's Instruments wherewith she so wisely and wonderfully works in the universe as we see, are the sun, moon and stars influences, motions, upon, in and with the Elements and seeds; But God omnipotent works his will by his unspeakable power and word, by Angels, Nature, and all things; to whom be all praise.  
It is no more injustice in almighty God to kill and destroy evil men, then in one makes glasses, and disliking his workmanship therein, breaks them into the furnace again.  
When extremes oppress thee, consider wisely thy courses, and search well into thyself and actions, if thou be'st not the cause of them thyself, and through the perverseness of thine own will, before thou blamest Fortune, or that we call destiny; the one a word or figment, the other a course of occasion, or chance.  
Cast the eye of thy imagination as a stranger upon thy outward actions, course, and behaviour amongst people; and thou Mayest find that thy self-love hath covered many things they secretly blame in thee; and which thou oughtest tacitly to amend, and discern in thyself.  
Seest thou thy store small and means weak? be content then with small things; thank God for that thou hast, despair not of enough, and do thy endeavour honestly, and say, Deus providebit.  
When thou art tempted by that sensual or substill Spirit (thy will) to eat of the forbidden fruit (that is) to commit any evil act, either fleshly or mentally, pray to God, seeing thy weakness or nakedness, and cast thee down at the foot of his mercy seat, laying hold upon the merits of his son our Saviour and mediator Jesus Christ, and say with the Psalmist, If thou O great God shouldest look on all that is done amiss, who can endure thy justice? O consider that we are but dust, and seeing there is mercy and compassion with thee, pardon my frailties, and keep me from presumptuous sinning, and suffer me not to be led into temptation, but deliver me from all evils.  
We pass our time here with great care of our present being and the conversation thereof; but God be merciful, for the most part of men, little look to the future; which is perdurable. O let us note and remember what the wise man sayeth, viz. As the tree falls so it lies.  
Go not to a covetous man with any request too soon in the morning, for his covetousness is up before himself and he before thee; but stay till the afternoon, then he'll be drunk upon some borrowers purse.  
Music breathed by a gentleman, is a juell or ear-ring in others' hearing: in a beggar or fiddler, it is a wallet in the eyes of others thoughts.  
We need not go any further than the consideration of ourselves (who are by Moses in Genesis said to be God's Image) to prove or as it were see, the trinity in unity, and unity in Trinity; for is not Deus pater anima Mundi? is not Filius mens aut velle Dei patris? and is not spiritus Sanctus operatio & gratia Dei? & deus ipse in potentia & actu. Compare then our bodies to the great world, our bodies and flesh shall turn to dust or earth, so shall the world to his pristine Chaos; our souls shall endure for ever; God is eternal; our minds affects this or that, God the Son came down, was incarnate, showed and taught his Fathers will miraculously, suffered, descended, rose again; and ascended into his first place. The mind of man circuits, but still it returns the mind, conclusively; as the soul and mind sets the spirit to organize in the body to act; so the Holy spirit proceeds from the Father and son, in the motion of the universe; to effect and act his mind and will. Wherefore with Anaxagoras all things are in all things, Anima, Mens, spiritus, One in that all, who is three in parts or persons; who moves this all, making all things obey and serve this one God, as his instruments or organa: wherefore Plato said well, Caput eius est Coelum, oculus eius Sol; lula & stellae; venter mare, pedes terra, &c.  
Thick fire was the medium between God and Moses in the bush; So the unspotted flesh, though elemental, of the Sacred virgin; the interpose betwixt the deity of Christ and us.  
For ethnics, Atheists, Turks, Jews &c. making question why an eternal should have a son? answer is, God's power and word took flesh of the Sacred virgin, to satisfy his justice by the order of his mercy; and since it was for man, he served it in the same livery; which no angel, or creature, could do, no more than the hatchet can work alone.  
He gave Moses laws in Tables of stone, which Moses broke in anger of the Israelites idolatry: but he gave us precepts in our own similitude, which was darkened likewise by our saviour his death on the cross, but renewed by his resurrection, as the other by Moses remounting.  
If there were 100000000 millions of people on the earth's surface, more than there is; every one having a burning glass, yet all might use it to effect by one sun; In which there are excellent, cogitations to be meditated.  
The glory of the Almighty shines in all good things, as his relucent creature the sun, spreads his beams in the universe: but when it pleased him to contract himself to his word, then as a burning glass; gathers the rays of the world's sun: so he kindled a fire on Zion hill, and a bright flame in the womb of the blessed Virgin, which the proud malice of the Jews striving to extinguish, made this God's Son our soul's lumination shine the brighter.  
Whensoever thou seest the moon go into a cloud, think of the glorious ascension of our Saviour, and how he is in the Sacrament or Communion.  
God is one in himself, but as he appears to the world and us, is three, viz. God the Creator, and our Father; God the son, as he wore our humanity, suffered, and redeemed us: God the holy Ghost, as he instructeth, governeth, and Consolateth us. Yet all is one God, to whom be all praise.  
The exceeding difference betwixt us and our Saviour Jesus Christ, is very apparent in our disposition; for we are bent to the humanity, and he bent it to him.  
When we contemplate in the fervour of Prayer to find an Idea of the all-Creator, the utmost we arrive unto is a light, which our limited thoughts cannot so expound, as belongs to his ubiquity: and so we are set up as with a period. Therefore O wonderful bounty and goodness of God, that hath sent down his son, and clothed him in the shape of our humanity, whereby he is our speculum, and through whom we see God's mercy, power, love &c.  
The word Godly or godlike, and its Econtra, hath great signification, denoting some virtuous action, or contemplation, or the contrary to the contrary.  
The whole universe is but as a bowl in the hand of the almighty; but no magnitude can contain him that made space and place.  
As the luminous carboncle of the Firmament, whose presence makes the Day joy, and the Night mourn his absence, is the guide unto our bodies in this world: So the incomprehensible glorious sun of Heaven is the presence of our day in God, and our guide to his presence.  
All the works of God are essential & concreate; not as man looking on his face in a glass, a vanishing shadow: for God from all eternity could not but know himself, and looking upon himself, doubled the beams of his glorious essence, & begat his similitude or (quatenus nobis) his Son, the divine love of which resemblance, produced the holy Ghost or Spirit, three individual persons, in one Godhead to whom be praise, honour, and glory, in one thanks.  
Let God his study, be the chiefest place; in thy souls house.  
The highest orb for our station, is the earth, the lowest orb to God's vision is the earth, what he hath done above is for us to look upon, and admire, not to examine: but what he hath by his commandments, and his son's precepts, directed us to do, and believe, we ought carefully to look unto, (that is) by our Saviour his words thus in brief: love God above all things, and thy Neighbour as thyself.  
God is a sphere whose centre is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere: A light which through too much clarity becomes invisible, a greatness containing all magnitude, a power governing all potency, and a goodness inexplicable.  
To believe things fall only under our sense's comprehension, requires no reward, for reason pays it: but things beyond our reach and verified by two double Testimonies, engrosseth our bliss of faith in heavenly Characters.  
The miracles of our Saviour being so supernatural, showed the stony Jews, had been Gorgonized, before his coming.  
All sacred words and divine figures, denote unto us, what we ought to know, and known to hold inviolably and strongly.  
The humility of our Saviour, is th'exaltation of our hope to salvation; the foot of which Ladder was his humanity, the top his deity; the Angels going up and down, figures of his Passion, Death, resurrection, and ascension; Jacob's sleeping our lethargy in sin.  
God who contains all glorious forms within him, cannot be comprehended in any figure by man: therefore he sent his son in man's own figure, to be the readilier cogitated by man.  
The Ancient Ethnique world, were ever too apt and busy, in Deifying men; if they were but a little taller in their deserts then the ordinary pitch of others, as in Saturn, Jupiter, Hercules &c. And this was but a trick of that evil and malignant intelligent spirit, that aped in them before hand, what he knew would really follow in our Saviour Christ Jesus; thereby thinking to stop his reputation with such community.  
By our proneness to evil and penetrative sorrow after the fact; it declares that our Nature is depraved from the first purity we were placed in; for goodness cannot produce evil.  
Doubtless the conversation of some intelligent evil and depraved spirit through envy instigated, enticed and contaminated man's soul; which was the fruit forbidden, or that Tree of knowledge in good and evil; even as coyture with an unclean woman contaminates the body of a man.  
It hath been questionable in my thoughts, why that displaced & dejected spirit should so greedily seek after man's ruin: I can cogitate no further, then that his nature being depraved, his burden of torments great, his despair of release desperate and grievous; his envy therefore is strong upon those are in way to obtain his place, whom he seeks to hinder & ensnare in the nets of their own sensualities, which he knows and see's by their proceedings and life.  
Paradise was created and the man in it, of pure and incorruptible Elements, and the corruptible World for all other things; but by man's breach of God's commandments, the purity being taken away, man became Companion with the other Creatures, and by feeding on those Corruptible things, by little and little was so thrust out of paradise; that is, out of incorruptibility or tree of life, into corruptibility, and death.  
As by ill inclined will man fell, and was depraved: so by God his good inclined will, man may rise and be saved.  
God could easiler perform the power of his will by his own Essence, then by any under or subordinate power: and because no man can see him and live (he appearing in his pure essentiality) he therefore clouded himself under the flesh of the Holy Virgin.  
I have noted many careful to stop the wast of fire, and but careless in the wast of their time, the ravenous consumer of the most precious jewel viz Salvation.  
Man's soul is a spark of the pure Fire circuits God his seat, struck into the Tinder of the flesh by the will of the great creator, and life disposer; which if here contaminated by variation, and sensuality, cannot approach to his purity till purged; but obeying God his will, and acting to their power the precepts given by his son, it becomes a glorious Essence, and shall resuscitate and illustrate the body into the same spiritual substance.  
When I hear in some great city, many Clocks strike near together, I then judge the hours are near true telling: so when I see, read and hear the unity of many ancient and modern judgements agree in conformity, I deem their exposition and declaration to be next the truth in all science.  
The best manner of means for us to know our own souls, and immaterial matter whereof it was made, is to come near unto God by fasting, prayer, humility, good deeds: and for that which is his seat and circuits his glorious majesty, is of the same substance; and if worldlings knew their Ignorance, they would not be so bold with their folly.  
God his seat (as sayeth a Philosopher) is in the purest of pure and invisible Fire, which he by his gracious free Spirit only hath distributed to man in his first infusion of life, whereby man is Microcosmos, (with reverence be it spoken to the deity) and as in the threads of a spider's web the Spider being central, the least touch in circumference gives notion, so all the actions of man are by infinite ways, perceptible unto God, and he nearer unto us, than we to ourselves.  
I conceive Heaven to be repleatly filled with all spiritual delights, as the best and most excellent music, composed with a Homonimall Congruence of well chosen chords, and airy with the precedents tones.  
The end whereto we were Created was to serve, love and honour God, who doth by blessed souls still increase his kingdom, in lieu of those delapsed Angels once fell. Seek to be one of those Citizens by good and holy life.  
When thou prayest to God, conceive thou speakest to the whole trinity, when by addition of Father, then to thy Creator; when to the son, then to thy Redeemer; when to the holy Ghost, then to thy Sanctifier: So thank thy Creator, through thy Saviour by thy Sanctifier, and so in all thou thankest God, for all.  
Prayer is a speaking to God, in which let us regard what it were for a poor distressed worthless person, to come before the presence of some great Prince or Potentate of a kingdom; and so stretch or enlarge thy conceit, how then before the king of all Potentates celestial and terrestrial, what a reverence and awful respect ought to be used? No fashion or words can express it, but an humble heart, and mind, void of all earthly cogitations, is the best oblation, if done with all sincerity.  
Pictures of sancteous histories are but notes of divine actions in human characters.  
He that doth not believe the Credo or Symbolum Apostolorum, hath little to do with the paternoster.  
The paternoster denotes he is our Father by Christ: qui es in Coelis, that is, above all things in place, power and glory.  
Sanctificetur nomen tuum, the duty of our acknowledgement and due thanks to his goodness.  
Aedveniat regnum tuum, that all things and we are in and under his regiment, and so desire to be.  
Fiat voluntas tua, that we (as we ought) do lay down all our affections and interests under his will and dispose.  
Sicut in Coelo & in Terra, that we may be as obedient to his hests and commandments here, as his heavenly host high blessed is there.  
The rest are all plain particular petitions for our private good.  
The ancient use of praying on both knees, signifies, in my judgement that we should offer up all our actions and strength to God; for a man in so kneeling disableth himself of the possture to act, is unpassible, and as fixed to that he came from, and to which he must return: The lifting up of the hands, denotes he is before a dreadful judge, craves mercy, shows the chief actors of evil and wrongs, and the receivers of many benefits; But the standing up when the Creed is pronounced, denotes, we should be ready to justify, stand too, and maintain those Canons of our Faith against all Turks, Jews, and infidels.  
There is a Circle drawn about the list of man's liberty, and by God prescribed; out of which if any exorbitantly go, they fall into the devil's lash, who haunts there as the whip of God his just justice, whereby we see many punished in this life, and by straying out of the fold, fall into the wolves jaws.  
The stars and second causes predominate but upon and in our earthly part and humours, for the soul of man was inspired by God, and he is above all: therefore accidents are but as stumbling blocks, which wise men sees, and steps over, but fools (as saith Solomon) go in the dark: And the Kingly Prophet David prayed saying, Set up thyself above the heavens, and thy glory O God above all the earth, and so (in my opinion) Sapiens dominabitur Astris.  
We many times idly blame Fortune, a mere imagination or Idea, when our own follies and improvidence, is the real cause of disasters. For suppose a tile falls on the head, and hurts: Why fortune therefore! you might have kept at home; but you must by necessity go that way! blame the necessity then. Fortune is a figment to express chance by, unto which we are all subject.  
When storms, inundations, Thunders and Lightnings, Earthquakes, circuit us, we then aptly confess ourselves under Creatures, and that with terror and miserable fear; but by forgetfulness we again climb above Ela; nay further into God's closet, to his foresight, and predestination.  
The Chaos of all things, may be compared unto the flint and iron; the striker God, the lint or tinder, corporal substance, the sparks, life, or soul.  
In speaking to God by prayer, although thou canst not give the reverence is due; yet give what thou owest and canst duly: Let thy breath first laud him in his goodness; secondly, crave mercy for thy offences; thirdly, give him thanks for thy received benefits; fourthly, humbly crave the preservation of thy estate here, and life of bliss to come.  
It is not the mouth or lip-labour God respects so much, as the heart or mind in an intelligent orator; yet the resurrection of the body denotes that our prayers should not be merely mental, but conjoined with corporal action: for shall we not with Saint Paul hope to see God even with the same eyes? Lift them up towards Zion hill then, bend the knees, reach up the hands, offer the calves of the lips, make all thy powers pour forth the praise of him that made thee.  
Mere worldlings in judgement, are blind in censuring divine mysteries; for did not Festus and the learned Athenians deem Saint Paul's preaching foolishness? but an over stupid devotion ladeth out of the lighter of the fantasy more into the ark of the Church than she should carry; but Sectaries would throw the church's treasure over board.  
All our life here is but an entertaining of vanities; what good doth caps and reuerences really any man? The satisfaction of appetits, is but the uncovering of our wants; heaping of Riches, but as ill servants, that will run to others from us, and lag behind us: nothing here permanent or true happiness; let us therefore be careful to purchase by prayer and good deeds, treasure for heaven, that we may have wherewith to satisfy our reckoning there with the great Host, who hath forgiven us one score already; and therefore let us not presume too much on the next.  
When I consider the weakness of our human nature, I wonder mankind can be proud, for we cannot subsist a little time without the props of meat and drink, sleep, rest, &c. which the angels, and spirits need not nor use: but when I cogitate our frailty and vanity, I breath with the Prophet David, Lord, what is man that thou shouldst be mindful of him!  
The best use of dreams is to cogitate that as by fullness or coldness of the stomach, Crudities causeth fearful apparitions to the waking and working fantasy; and as good and temperate heat, digestion and humours, cause pleasant and delightful passages; yet all but shadows and vanish like darkness from the sun, when we rise; So when the soul is freed from this terrestriety, which clowdeth the judgement and reason; then the evil works committed essentially, casteth the soul most really amongst those are indeed evil, not in apparition, but deformed devils indeed: And the good & virtuous deeds amongst the blessed pleasures of holy spirits and angels. Wherefore let us take heed we go not to the bed of our grave with a stomach overcharged with sins.  
It much matters not, what Religion a fool or a knave is of, for their babbling is but vain prating, and the tree is best known by the fruit.  
Dis the god of money now laughs out right, because his wares are in more esteem amongst fools, than virtue, and Stultorum plena sunt omnia.  
Th' Almighty God, is the soul of the universe, and the rays of his splendour, is the quintessence in every thing, be it mineral, vegetable, or animal; therefore in whatsoever genus or region an investigating Philosopher would grow intelligent, in that let him seek the quintessence, which is his moon; or else he laboureth in vain, and gathereth leaves in steed of fruits and seeds, for no man can truly meliorate any thing beyond his natural perfection, but by multiplying his quintessential part.  
Quintessence is not as Spageriques mistake it, separation of pure from impure, but must be taken from both the thin and thick, the spiritual and corporal. It is within all things non secundùm locum et partes; sed secundùm virtutem et actionem naturalem.  
What is it to me, what is in the sun, moon, stars, whether they are worlds or whatsoever Containing; when there is a law set down for me, viz. to serve their Creator and mine, on this earth; whereto I am fixed, by that upper ordinance who made them and all. But what I can lawfully find here, he hath given me leave thereby, to praise him, and help myself.  
What thou speakest. i. e. cogitates, within thyself, know God only hears, that sees without the eye, hears without the ear, and made thee both interiorly and exteriorly; But what thou dost outward either by action or words, spirits and men both good and bad, see and judge of. Cave.  
Not by eating, drinking, or sleeping doth the soul live, &c. but those additions helps her to sustain the bodies ponder and grossness.  
When thou tellest another any thing, think he is thy enemy present in his rotation of thought, or may be so futurely.  
Man blessed by God, with a good understanding may be compared to those feathered fowls, who lose their plumage in molting time: so may man his grace in the heat of sensualities, and yet by repentance recover; but he that is swallowed up by vice is as the fowl taken, killed, and plumed by Cook ruffian the devil.  
God is the Spirit of Spirits, the Lord of Lords; King of Kings; to be worshipped in Spirit and truth; Angels, Spirits, Potestares, Powers, sun, moon, stars, Firmament, Fire, air, Waters, Earth: the faculties of his hand; and the universe his Instruments; Man his Spirit is a spark of that flame, a drop of that Sea, a moat in that sun, his soul with her powers, are his Spirits faculties, his body is the organon.  
God made man and the whole, world to his glory, praise, and use; yet without his needing them, as we do need, viz. garments, houses, &c.  
God is within all things, but not included, without all things, but not excluded.  
There are some of opinion that each man hath a double genius, a good Angel and a bad, as they please to term them; which I hold no other but the animal spirit and the intellectual; The animal desireth the body's contentment, the intellectual the souls: if the animal hath the domination, the man is given to mundane lights which perish with the life: if the intellectual hath the predominance, the soul rejoiceth in spiritual pleasure, and affects things good, and eternal. Every man's conversation for the most part shows who carrieth the bridle of the will, how, and when.  
Those that work on nature's terminations, resemble them who swallow the nut, shell and all, for the kernels sake: for no man can further reach the determinate ordination of God in his handmaid nature's house, then by exuberation of the seeds; for, as sayeth the Philosopher, Species in Speciem non transmutation nisi reducantur ad primam materiam, and that ordinately digested, doth in philosophy work beyond nature's Creatures we see; wherefore let no man despise, or condemn that he knoweth not.  
God almighty, being the fountain of all wisdom, as we call excellent Sapiens, cannot be without the poor riveret of reason, which he hath given to man.  
As our Saviour suffered the afflictions of human nature, as hunger, thirst, sorrow, fear, anger, weeping, abstinence, pains &c. So ought we in soul and life to imitate him to our powers, viz. to abstain from ebriety, to avoid vain mirth, and to grieve for our sins, to be valiant in his defence, to be meek & humble, to mortify our carnal affections & to endure afflictions patiently.  
He that will duly weigh & consider the great and intolerable sufferings of our Saviour, par le menu as the French Phrase is; viz. his blows, whippings, scourgings, the contumelies of the deriding and rejoicing of his tormentors, his grief for the lamenting of his friends, his burden of the cross, his stretching, nailing, drinking vinegar and gall, his raylling spectators, &c. And withal consider his patience therein, and lamblike endurance, not opening his mouth to a murmur, but in prayer, & that even for them were his grievous afflicters: and then poise thy ability to these endurances, and thou must by force confess him not only God but thy wonderful good God, thy exceeding pitiful redeemer; and stand confounded in thy weakness, saying, Glory and immortal thanks be to the lamb, that so took away the heavy burden of our sins.  
God his justice is much to be feared, for as he is the fountain of all wisdom and our loving creator and father, yet to show his detestation to wilful finners, like a wise schoolmaster he did not much afflict Adam and his seed, so long as they stood but poor and weak man; but when his justice, mercy, word, and promise, took flesh and clothed itself in our dirty garments, than God to punish man and Adam's fault showed forth the length of the arm of his justice in our meek and suffering innocent Saviour; then did his anger burn, nay flame, against disobedience, and that so extremely, tha● had he not been God also, that bear the burden thereof, flesh nor human spirit, could have endured the thousand part of the torments he suffered; which patiently borne and suffered, his justice was satisfied, and man restored, & directed by a new law, which we are all bound to keep heedfully; and to take heed of rebellion here eafter.  
When I observe a cruel Carter yerk and slash but a poor over-toyld jade, or a hasty fool spur him to the guts, I cogitate then, if our godless dainty gallants were but so pythagorized, how they would wish they had lived better.  
Hast thou a great estate, and a great spark of Promethian fire; a larger capacity, a quicker wit, a more solid judgement, a more penetrating understanding, than many others? art thou not deceived by thyself love? &c. then remember our Lords parrable of the talents, to whom much is given, of him much is required.  
It is not the bare letter of sacred Scriptures men vary so much in, as the sense; therefore to sail safely in such an immense and profound Sea of mysteries, where the gusts of self conceit will be puffing, it is wise wariness to weigh up the Anchor of faith, and set sail of Christian passage, by the direction of the wisest and best experienced Masters & Pilots, who have made happy voyage before us; and such are the Ancient Fathers.  
As the Jews used our Saviour, so do Sectaries the Scriptures; first they see and wonder, than question & traduce; then turn them up & down, at last torture & crucify them.  
Reporters of disputations in these latter times, resemble such Painters that make all the figures and houses according to their Country form and fashion; but a true relater should give every syllable his due by report, however he affect.  
There is no Creature but loves themselves most, and others to themselves, else look for no love in this lower world.  
As addition and too apt credulity are motives to superstition, so diminution and incredulity, is the way to atheism: keep therefore right in the apostolic path of faith.  
He may according to holy Athanasius Creed, be well held a Christian and Catholic, that holds and believes the trinity in unity, and the unity in trinity: that is our main, & all other Circumstances should not (in may opinion) make Christians shed the others' blood, if the devil were not too busy in the envious hearts of placeholders; for we ought not to do evil that good may come thereof.  
In all thou dost intend, make God still thy chief material and end.  
This life is worn away as a winter day, which to the happy worldlings, seems fair and pleasant; but is short and variable: to the good and godly (if afflicted) it is foul, and windy; but the night of death brings them rest, and a home in heaven; when the wicked then lie without doors.  
God is the Father of eternity; men and angels sons of Aevum, all other Creatures subjects of Time.  
FINIS.   

Errata.  
Page 34. line 4. for his, read to a. p. 99 l. 13. for but, r. both. p. 102. l. 1. for russettings, r. rustings. p. 136. l. 15. for honest, r. honestest. p. 147 l. 1. leave out but p. 153. l. 1. for excellery. r, excellency.