336 ADVAXCEMENT OF LEARNING. [boDK VIIL 



fire, he would quench it, not with water, but destruction. 8 

 And so Lysander would say, that children were to be decoyed 

 with sweetmeats and men by false oaths; and there are 

 numerous other corrupt and pernicious maxims of the same 

 kind, more indeed, as in all other cases, than of such as are 

 just and sound. Now if any man delight in this corrupt or 

 tainted prudence, we deny not but he may take a short cut 

 to fortune, as being thus disentangled and set at large from 

 all restraint of laws, good-nature, and virtue, and having no 

 regard but to his own promotion — though it is in life as in a 

 journey, where the shortest road is the dirtiest, and yet the 

 better not much about. 



But if men were themselves, and not carried away with 

 the tempest of ambition, they would be so far from studying 

 these wicked arts, as rather to view them, not only in that 

 general map of the world, which shows all to be vanity and 

 vexation of spirit,^ but also in that more particular one, 

 which represents a life separate from good actions as a curse ; 

 that the more eminent this life, the greater the curse ; that 

 the noblest reward of virtue is virtue itself; that the ex- 

 tremest punishment of vice is vice itself; and that as Virgil 

 excellently observes, good actions are rewarded, as bad ones 

 also are punished — by the consciousness that attends them. 

 ** Quae vobis, quae digna, viri, pro laudibus istis 



Praemia posse rear solvi ? Pulcherrima primum 



Dii moresque dabunt vestii."» 



And indeed, whilst men are pi'ojecting and every way rack- 

 ing their thoughts to provide and take care for their fortunes, 

 they ought, in the midst of all, to have an eye to the Divine 

 Providence, which frequently overturns and brings to naught 

 the machinations and deep devices of the wicked, according 

 to that of the Scripture, " He has conceived iniquity, and 

 shall bring forth vanity."'' And although men were not in 

 this pursuit to practise injustice and unlawful arts, yet a con- 

 tinual and restless search and striving after fortune, takes 

 up too much of their time, who have nobler things to observe, 

 and prevents them from paying their tribute to God, who 

 exacts from all men the tenth part of their substance and the 

 seventh of their time. Even the heathens observed, that 



» Cicero pro L. Muraena, and Cat. Conspir. 31. * Eccles. i. 2 — 14. 



* ^neid, ix. 252. * Psal. vii. 15, but in another aena* 



