SECT.

honour that the World adores; whatsoever virtue its
prepared substance may have within my body, it hath
no influence nor operation without: I would not
entertain a base design, or an action that should call
me villain, for the Indies; and for this only do I love
and honour my own soul, and have methinks two arms
too few to embrace myself. Aristotle is too severe,
that will not allow us to be truely liberal without
wealth, and the bountiful hand of Fortune; if this be
true, I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal
intentions, and bountiful well-wishes. But if the
example of the Mite be not only an act of wonder, but
an example of the noblest Charity, surely poor men
may also build Hospitals, and the rich alone have
not erected Cathedrals. I have a private method
which others observe not; I take the opportunity of
my self to do good; I borrow occasion of Charity
from mine own necessities, and supply the wants of
others, when I am in most need my self; for it is
an honest stratagem to make advantage of our selves,
and so to husband the acts of vertue, that where they
were defective in one circumstance, they may repay
their want, and multiply their goodness in another.
I have not Peru in my desires, but a competence, and
ability to perform those good works to which he hath
inclined my nature. He is rich, who hath enough to -
be charitable; and it is hard to be so poor, that a
noble mind may not find a way to this piece of good-
ness. He that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord;
there is more Rhetorick in that one sentence, than in
a Library of Sermons; and indeed if those Sentences
were understood by the Reader, with the same Em-
phasis as they are delivered by the Author, we needed
not those Volumes of instructions, but might be honest

13

SECT.

14

by an Epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a Beggar without relieving his Necessities with my Purse, or his Soul with my Prayers; these scenical and accidental differences between us, cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both; there is under these Cantoes and miserable outsides, these mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose Genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to Salvation as our selves. Statists that labour to contrive a Common-wealth without our poverty, take away the object of charity, not understanding only the Common-wealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecie of Christ.

N°

TOW there is another part of charity, which is the Basis and Pillar of this, and that is the love of God, for whom we love our neighbour; for this I think charity, to love God for himself, and our neighbour for God. All that is truly amiable is God, or as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is it strange that we should place affection on that which is invisible; all that we truly love is thus; what we adore under affection of our senses, deserves not the honour of so pure a title. Thus we adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible: thus that part of our noble friends that we love, is not that part that we imbrace, but that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing but himself, and the traduction of his holy Spirit. Let us call to assize the loves of our parents, the affection of our wives and children, and they are all dumb shows and dreams, without reality, truth or constancy: for first, there is

a strong bond of affection between us and our Parents;
yet how easily dissolved? We betake our selves to a
woman, forget our mother in a wife, and the womb
that bare us, in that that shall bear our Image: this
woman blessing us with children, our affection leaves
the level it held before, and sinks from our bed unto
our issue and picture of Posterity, where affection holds
no steady mansion. They, growing up in years, desire
our ends; or applying themselves to a woman, take
a lawful way to love another better than our selves.
Thus I perceive a man may be buried alive, and behold
his
grave in his own issue.

15

CONCLUDE therefore and say, there is no happi- SECT. ness under (or as Copernicus will have it, above) the Sun, nor any Crambe in that repeated verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solomon, All is vanity and vexation of Spirit. There is no felicity in that the World adores: Aristotle whilst he labours to refute the Idea's of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum is a Chimæra, and there is no such thing as his Felicity. That wherein God himself is happy, the holy Angels are happy, in whose defect the Devils are unhappy; that dare I call happiness: whatsoever conduceth unto this, may with an easy Metaphor deserve that name: whatsoever else the World terms Happiness, is to me a story out of Pliny, a tale of Boccace or Malizspini; an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no more of Happiness, than the name. Bless me in this life with but peace of my Conscience, command of my affections, the love of thy self and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Cæsar. These are, O Lord, the humble desires of my

SECT. most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness 15 on earth; wherein I set no rule or limit to thy Hand or Providence; dispose of me according to the wisdom of thy pleasure. Thy will be done, though in my own undoing.

FINIS

PSEUDODOXIA EPIDEMICA

OR ENQUIRIES

INTO VERY MANY RECEIVED

TENENTS AND COMMONLY

PRESUMED TRUTHS

H