sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible than the pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I am obliged by the duty of my condition; I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure of knowledge; I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head than beget and propagate it in his; and in the midst of all my endeavours there is but one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among my honoured friends. I cannot fall out or contemn a man for an errour, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection; for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity: in all disputes, so much as there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined; for though they be amply proposed, they are scarce at all handled, they do so swell with unnecessary digressions, and the parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject. The foundations of religion are already established, and the principles of salvation subscribed unto by all; there remain not many controversies worth a passion, and yet never any disputed without, not only in divinity but inferiour arts. What a βατραχομυομαχία and hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in Lucian. How do grammarians hack and slash for the genitive case in Jupiter! how do they break their own pates to salve that of Priscian! Si foret in terris, rideret Democritus. Yea even amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given, and credits slain, for the poor victory of an opinion or beggarly conquest of a distinction! Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actus his razor; their pens carry farther and give a louder report than thunder; I had rather stand in the shock of a basilisco, than in the fury of a merciless pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the muses, that wiser princes patron the arts and carry an indulgent aspect unto scholars; but a desire to have their names eternized by the memory of their writings, and a fear of the revengeful pen of succeeding ages; for these are the men, that when they have played their parts, and had their exits, must step out and give the moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal of conscience to the compiling of an history; there is no reproach to the scandal of a story; it is such an authentick kind of falsehood that with authority belies our good names to all nations and posterity. IV. There is another offence unto charity, which no author hath ever written of, and few take notice of; and that's the reproach, not of whole professions, mysteries, and conditions, but of whole nations; wherein by opprobrious epithets we miscal each other, and by an uncharitable logick, from a disposition in a few conclude a habit in all: Le mutin Anglois, et le bravache Escossois; Le poultron Romain, le larron de Gascongne; L'Espagnol superbe, et l'Aleman ivrongne, St. Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but indirectly and upon quotation of their own poet. It is as bloody a thought in one way as Nero's was in another; for by a word we wound a thousand, and at one blow assassine the honour of a nation. It is as complete a piece of madness to miscal and rave against the times, or think to recall men to reason by a fit of passion; Democritus, that thought to laugh the times into goodness, seems to me as deeply hypochondriack as Heraclitus that bewailed them. It moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours, that is, in their fits of folly and madness, as well understanding that wisdom is not profaned unto the world, and 'tis the privilege of a few to be virtuous. They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. Thus virtue (abolish vice) is an idea; again, the community of sin doth not disparage goodness; for when vice gains upon the major part, virtue, in whom it remains becomes more excellent; and being lost in some, multiplies its goodness in others which remain untouched, and persists intire in the general inundation. I can therefore behold vice without a satire, content only with an admonition, or instructive reprehension; for noble natures, and such as are capable of goodness, are railed into vice, that might as easily be admonished into virtue; and we should be all so far the orators of goodness, as to protect her from the power of vice, and maintain the cause of injured truth. No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another. This I perceive in myself, for I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud; those that know me but superficially, think less of me than I do of myself, those of my near acquaintance think more; God, who truly knows me, knows that I am nothing; for he only beholds me, and all the world, who looks not on us through a derived ray, or a trajection of a sensible species, but beholds the substance without the helps of accidents, and the forms of things as we their operations. Further, no man can judge another, because no man knows himself; for we censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn, self-love. |