ESS A YS CIVIL AND MORAL, 



ships tost upon the sea : a pleasure to stand in the \vindow of a 

 castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below : but no 

 pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of 

 truth, a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and 

 serene : and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tem 

 pests, in the vale below :&quot; so always, that this prospect be with pity, 

 and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth to 

 have a man s mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon 

 the poles of truth. 



To pass from theological and philosophical truth, to the truth of 

 civil business ; it will be acknowledged, even by those that practise it 

 not, that clear and round dealing is the honour of man s nature ; and 

 that mixture of falsehood is like allay in coin of gold and silver : which 

 may make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these wind 

 ing and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely 

 upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so 

 cover a man with shame, as to be found false and perfidious. And 

 therefore Montagne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, why 

 the word of the lye should be such a disgrace, and such an odious 

 charge? Saith he, &quot; If it be well weighed, to say that a man lyeth, is 

 as much as to say, that he is brave towards God, and a coward 

 towards men. For a lye faces God, and shrinks from man.&quot; Surely 

 the wickedness of falsehood, and breach of faith, cannot possibly be GO 

 highly expressed, as in that it shall be the last peal to call the 

 judgments of God upon the generations of men : it being foretold, that 

 when Christ cometh &quot; he shall not find faith upon the earth.&quot; 



II. OF DEATH. 



Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark : and as that 

 natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. 

 Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and 

 passage to another world, is holy and religious ; but the fear of it, as 

 a tribute due unto nature, is weak. Yet in religious meditations, there 

 is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition. You shall read 

 in some of the friars books of mortification, that a man should think 

 with himself, what the pain is, if he have but his finger s end pressed 

 or tortured ; and thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when 

 the whole body is corrupted and dissolved ; when many times death 

 passcth with less pain than the torture of a limb : for the most vital 

 parts are not the quickest of sense. And by him that spake only as a 

 philosopher, and natural man, it was well said, &quot; Pompa mortis magis 

 tcrret, quam mors ipsa.&quot; Groans and convulsions, and a discoloured 

 face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, 

 show death terrible. It is worthy the observing, that there is no 

 passion in the mind of man so weak, but it mates and masters the fear 

 of death : and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man 

 hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. 

 Revenge triumphs over death ; love slights it ; honour aspircth to it j 



