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vantage of anything done or said: yea, even to the ruin of his makers, if he may have benefit; that such a creature in a society makes men as careful of their speeches and actions, as the sight of a known cut-purse in a throng makes them watchful over their purses and pockets: he is also in this respect profitable physic, that his conversation being once truly tasted and discovered, the hateful foulness of it will make those that are not fully like him, to purge all such diseases as are rank in him, out of their own lives; as the sight of some citizens on horseback make a judicious man amend his own faults in horsemanship. If none of these uses can be made of him, let him not long offend the stomach of your company. That he is a disease in the body where he lives, were as strange a thing to doubt, as whether there be knavery in horse-coursers. For if among sheep, the rot; among dogs, the mange; amongst horses, the glanders; amongst men and women, the Northern itch, be diseases, a hypocrite cannot but be the like in all states and societies that breed him. If he be a clergy hypocrite, then all manner of vice is for the most part so proper to him, as he will grudge any man the practice of it but himself; like that grave burgess who, being desired to lend his clothes to represent a part in a comedy, answered, "No by his leave, he would have nobody play the fool in his clothes but himself." Hence are his so austere reprehensions of drinking healths, lascivious talk, usury and unconscionable dealing; when as himself hating the profane mixture of malt and water, will by his good-will let nothing come within him but the purity of the grape, when he can get it of another's cost: but this must not be done neither without a preface of seeming loathness, turning up the eyes, moving the head, laying hand on the breast, and protesting that he would not

do it but to strengthen his body, being even consumed with dissembled zeal, and tedious and thankless babbling to God and his auditors. And for the other vices, do but venture the making yourself private with him, or trusting of him, and if you come off without a savour of the air which his soul is infected with, you have great fortune. The fardel of all this ware that is in him you shall commonly see carried upon the back of these two beasts, that live with him, Ignorance and Imperiousness: and they may well serve to carry other vices, for of themselves they are insupportable. His Ignorance acquits him of all science, human or divine, and of all language but his mother's; holding nothing pure, holy or sincere, but the senseless collections of his own crazed brain, the zealous fumes of his enflamed spirit, and the endless labours of his eternal tongue; the motions whereof, when matter and words fail, (as they often do,) must be patched up, to accomplish his four hours in a day at the least, with long and fervent humms. Anything else, either for language or matter, he cannot abide, but thus censures: Latin, the language of the Beast; Greek, the tongue wherein the heathen poets wrote their fictions; Hebrew, the speech of the Jews that crucified Christ: controversies do not edify; logic and philosophy are the subtleties of Satan to deceive the simple; human stories, profane, and not savouring of the Spirit: in a word, all decent and sensible form of speech and persuasion, (though in his own tongue,) vain ostentation. And all this is the burden of his Ignorance; saving that sometimes Idleness will put in also to bear a part of the baggage.

His other beast, Imperiousness, is yet more proudly laden, it carrys a burden that no cords of authority, spiritual nor temporal, should bind, if it might have the full swing:

no pilot, no prince should command him; nay, he will command them, and at his pleasure censure them, if they will not suffer their ears to be fettered with the long chains of his tedious collations, their purses to be emptied with the inundations of his insatiable humour, and their judgments to be blinded with the muffler of his zealous ignorance. For thus does he familiarly insult over his maintainer that breeds him, his patron that feeds him, and in time over all them that will suffer him to set a foot within their doors, or put a finger in their purses. All this, and much more is in him that, abhorring degrees and universities as relics of superstition, has leapt from a shopboard or a cloak-bag, to a desk or pulpit, and that, like a sea-god in a pageant, has the rotten laths of his culpable life and palpable ignorance covered over with the painted cloth of a pure gown and a nightcap; and, with a false trumpet of feigned zeal, draws after him some poor nymphs and madmen, that delight more to resort to dark caves and secret places than to open and public assemblies. The lay hypocrite is to the other a champion, disciple, and subject; and will not acknowledge the tithe of the subjection to any mitre ; no, not to any sceptre, that he will do to the hook and crook of his zeal-blind shepherd. No Jesuits demand more blind and absolute obedience from their vassals, no magistrates of the canting society more slavish subjection from the members of that travelling state, than the clerk hypocrites expect from these lay pupils. Nay, they must not only be obeyed, fed, and defended, but admired too: and that their lay followers do sincerely, as a shirtless fellow with a cudgel under his arm doth a face-wringing ballad-singer; a water-bearer on the floor of a playhouse, a wide-mouthed poet, that speaks nothing but bladders and bombast. Otherwise, for life and

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profession, nature and art, inward and outward, they agree

in all, like canters and gipsies, they are all zeal, no knowledge; all purity, no humanity; all simplicity, no honesty; and if you never trust them, they will never deceive you.

A MELANCHOLY MAN

Is a strayer from the drove; one that nature made sociable, because she made him man, and a crazed disposition has altered. Impleasing to all, as all to him; straggling thoughts are his content, they make him dream waking, there is his pleasure. His imagination is never idle, it keeps his mind in a continual motion, as the poise the clock: he winds up his thoughts often, and as often unwinds them; Penelope's web thrives faster. He will seldom be found without the shade of some grove, in whose bottom a river dwells. He carries a cloud in his face, never fair weather; his outside is framed to his inside, in that he keeps a decorum both unseemly. Speak to him; he hears with his eyes, ears follow his mind, and that is not at leisure. He thinks business, but never does any he is all contemplation, no action. He hews and fashions his thoughts, as if he meant them to some purpose; but they prove unprofitable, as a piece of wrought timber to no use. His spirits and the sun are enemies; the sun bright and warm, his humour black and cold: variety of foolish apparitions people his head, they suffer him not to breathe, according to the necessities of nature; which makes him sup up a draught of as much air at once as would serve at thrice. He denies nature her due in sleep, and overpays her with watchfulness nothing pleases him long, but that which pleases his own fantasies; they are the consuming evils, and evil

consumptions that consume him alive.

Lastly, he is a man only in show, but comes short of the better part—a whole reasonable soul, which is man's chief pre-eminence, and sole mark from creatures sensible.

THE PROUD MAN

Is one in whom pride is a quality that contemns every one besides his master, who, when he wears new clothes, thinks himself wronged if they be not observed, imitated, and his discretion in the choice of his fashion and stuff applauded: when he vouchsafes to bliss the air with his presence, he goes as near the wall as his satin suit will give him leave, and every passenger he views under the eyebrows, to observe whether he veils his bonnet low enough, which he returns with an imperious nod: he never salutes first, but his farewell is perpetual. In his attire he is effeminate, every hair knows his own station; which if it chance to lose, it is checked in again with his pocket-comb. He had rather have the whole commonwealth out of order, than the least member of his moustache, and chooses rather to lose his patrimony, than to have his band ruffled; at a feast if he be not placed in the highest seat he eats nothing; howsoever, he drinks to no man, talks with no man for fear of familiarity. He professes to keep his stomach for the pheasant or the quail, and when they come he can eat little, he has been so cloyed with them that year, although they be the first he saw. In his discourse he talks of none but privy councillors, and is as prone to belie their acquaintance, as he is a lady's favours: if he have but twelvepence in his purse, he will give it for the best room in a playhouse. He goes to sermons only to shew his gay

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