flatter. He may hear his author speak as far as he likes, and leave him when he doth not please; nor shall he be angry though he be not of his opinion. It is the guide of youth, to manhood a companion, and to old age a cordial and an antidote. If I die to-morrow, my life to-day will be somewhat the sweeter for knowledge. The answer was good, which Antisthenes gave, when he was asked, what fruit he had reaped of all his studies. "By them," saith he, “I have learned both to live and discourse with myself."

OF SUPERSTITION.

THOUGH profaneness be much worse in some respect than superstition, yet this, in divers persons, is a sad discomposure of that life, which, without it, might be smooth and pleasant. He that is profane, sets up a god to abuse him; as Dionysius, when he took away Æsculapius's golden beard, said, "it was a shame. to see the son so grave, when the father was ever without one." He seems to know there is a God, but disclaims to pay him homage as he is one; or what he hath impropriated to himself and worship, contemptuously he debases

to secular and common uses; and sometimes mocks at that which, for its relation to the Deity and its service, should never but with reverence be looked upon. So that, though both be blamable, yet superstition is the less complainable. A religion, misguided only in some circumstance, is better far than to have none at all; and a man shall less offend by fearing God too much, than wickedly to jest at and despise him. An open slighting of so immense a goodness and a greatness as God is, is worse than mistaking him to be too severe and strict. To exceed this way produces sometimes a good effect; it makes a man careful not to offend. And if we injure not God by making him severer than he is, or by placing more in accidents and the creature, than religion allows that we should give, we cannot be too wary in offending.

Two things there are, which commonly abuse men into superstition; fear and ignorance. Fear presents as well what is not, as what is. Terror horrids the apprehension, and gives a hideous vizard to a handsome face. It sees, as did the new recovered blind man in the gospel; that which is a man appears a tree. creates evils that never were; and those that be, like the magnifying glass, when a face is no bigger than an apple, it shows it as large as a

It

bushel. But that which is good, it dwindles to nothing, and believes or suggests that God cannot help at need; so dishonors him into imbecility, lessening his goodness and his power, and aspersing both with defect. And this, for the most part, is begotten out of guilt; for courage and innocence usually dwell together. Nor is ignorance behind hand in helping to increase the scruple. Not seeing either the chain of Providence or the arm of power, we are apt to faint, and accuse unjustly that which, if we knew, we should adore and rest upon. And as fear is begot out of guilt, so is ignorance out of sloth, and through the want of industry. And this, surely, is the reason why we find superstition more in women and soft natures, than in the more audacious constitution of man. And where we do find it in men, it is commonly in such as are low in their parts, either natural or through neglect. A memorable example hereof we find in the first of the Annals. When the three legions in Hungary and Austria, that were under Junius Blæsus, were in the ruff of their mad mutiny, had menaced the guards, stoned Lentulus, and upbraided Drusus, that was sent from Rome by Tiberius to appease them, on a sudden their superstition made them tame and crest-fallen; for in a clear night, the moon being eclipsed,

and, before the eclipse was fully spent, the sky covered with clouds, being ignorant of the natural cause, and suspicious of their own misbehaviour, they thought the goddess frowned upon them for their wickednesss, and that it presaged their troubles should never have end. By which casual accident and unskilful opinion, they were again reduced to order and the discipline of arms.

What consternation have I seen in some at spilling of the salt against them! Their blood has deeper dyed their frighted face; a trembling fear has struck them through the heart, as if from some incensed triumvir they had received a proscription; all which I take to be only ignorance of what at first made it held to be ominous, and hath since, by a long succession, continued the vanity to us. Salt, among the ancients, was accounted as the symbol of friendship, because it both preserves from corrupting and unites into more solidity; and be. ing used to season all things, it was not only first set upon the table, but was held a kind of consecration of it. "Sacras facite mensas salinorum appositu ; "hallow the tables with the salt set on them. And merely from this estimation of salt, it was held ominous if it should be spilt; as if it had presaged some jar or breach of friendship among some of the guests

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or company. So that, in truth, the unluckiness of it is but a construction made by ourselves without a cause. For, otherwise, seeing the old Egyptians did so abominate it, that even in bread it was abandoned by them, (for they, affecting the purity of living, held it as the inciter of lust and the wakener of carnality,) why then should it not as well from this be avoided, as from the other find a sacration? But only blind custom, as in other things, so in this, hath led us along in the error. the Star-chamber was in being, at a dinner there, I remember the sewer overturned the salt against a person of honor, who startled, sputtered, and blushed, as if one had given him a stab, concluding it a prodigy, and ominous; to which Edward, Earl of Dorset, of a nobler frame and genius, handsomely replied, "that for the salt to be thrown down was not strange at all; but if it should not have fallen when it was thrown down, had been a prodigy indeed."

To make observation of accidents for our own instruction, without either dishonor to God or disturbance to ourselves, I hold to be a wise man's part. But to fear danger where none is, or to be secure where danger may be, is to change properties with one of those simple birds that either stoop at a barn-door, or,