THE SECOND BOOK 165 



4. The doctrine touching the platform or nature of 

 good considereth it either simple or compared ; either 

 the kinds of good, or the degrees of good ; in the latter 

 whereof those infinite disputations which were touching 

 the supreme degree thereof, which they term felicity, 

 beatitude, or the highest good, the doctrines concerning 

 which were as the heathen divinity, are by the Christian 

 faith discharged. And as Aristotle saith, ' That young 

 men may be happy, but not otherwise but by hope ' ; so 

 we must all acknowledge our minority, and embrace 

 the felicity which is by hope of the future world. 



Freed therefore and delivered from this doctrine of 

 the philosopher's heaven, whereby they feigned an 

 higher elevation of man's nature than was (for we see 

 in what height of style Seneca writeth, ' Vere magnum, 

 habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei,') we may 

 with more sobriety and truth receive the rest of their 

 inquiries and labour*. Wherein for the nature of good 

 positive or simple, they have set it down excellently in 

 describing the forms of virtue and duty, with their 

 situations and postures ; in distributing them into their 

 kinds, parts, provinces, actions, and administrations, 

 and the like : nay further, they have commended them 

 to man's nature and spirit with great quickness of argu- 

 ment and beauty of persuasions ; yea, and fortified and 

 entrenched them (as much as discourse can do) against 

 corrupt and popular opinions. Again, for the degrees and 

 comparative nature of good, they have also excellently 

 handled it in their triplicity of good, in the comparisons 

 between a contemplative and an active life, in the dis- 

 tinction between virtue with reluctation and virtue 

 secured, in their encounters between honesty and profit, 

 in their balancing of virtue with virtue, and the like ; 

 so as this part deserveth to be reported for excellently 

 laboured. 



6. Notwithstanding, if before they had comen to the 

 popular and received notions of virtue and vice, pleasure 

 and pain, and the rest, they had stayed a little longer 

 upon the inquiry concerning the roots of good and evil, 

 and the strings of those roots, they had given, in my 



