and draws to itself. Water moistens and resolveth what it meets withal. Earth changeth all that we commit to her, to her own nature. The world is all vicissitude and conversion. Nor is it only true in materials and substances, but even in spirits, in incorporeals; nay, in these there is more aptness; they mix more subtly, and pass into one another with a nimbler glide. So we see infection sooner taken by breath than contaction; and thus it is in dispositions too. The soldier labors to make his companion valiant. The scholar endeavours to have his friend learned. The bad man would have his company like himself; and the good man strives to frame others virtuous. Every man will be busy in dispending that quality which is predominant in him. Whence this caveat may well become us, to beware both whom and what we choose to live withal. We can converse with nothing, but will work upon us, and by the unperceived stealth of time assimilate us to itself. The choice, therefore, of a man's company, is one of the most weighty actions of our lives; for our future well or ill being depends on that election. If we choose ill, every day declines us to worse; we have a perpetual weight hanging on us, that is ever sinking us down to vice. By living under Pharaoh, how quickly Joseph learned the courtship of an oath ! Italy builds a villain; Spain superbiates; Germany makes a drunkard, and Venice a lecher. But if we choose well, we have a hand of virtue, gently lifting us to a continual rising nobleness. Antisthenes used to wonder at those that were curious but in buying an earthen dish, to see that it had no cracks nor inconveniencies, and yet would be careless in the choice of friends, to take them with the flaws of vice. Surely, a man's companion is a second genius, to sway him to the white or bad. A good man is like the day, enlightening and warming all he shines on, and is always rising upward to a region of more constant purity, than that wherein it finds the object. The bad man is like the night, dark, obtruding fears, and dimitting unwholesome vapors upon all that rest beneath. Nature is so far from making any thing absolutely idle, that even to stones and dullest metals she hath given an operation. grow and spread in our general mother's veins, and by a cunning way of encroachment, cozen the earth of itself; and when they meet a brothered constitution, they then unite and fortify. Hence grows the height of friendship, when two similary souls shall blend in their commixions. This causes that we seldom see different dispositions to be entirely loving. They "Oderunt hilarem tristes, tristemque jocosi, Hor. Ep. i. 18. "Sad men hate mirth; the pleasant sadness shun; Swift men, the slow; the slothful, those that run; Who drinks, at midnight, old Falernian wine, Scorns him that will not take his cups." It is likeness that makes the true-love knot of friendship. When we find another of our own disposition, what is it but the same soul in a divided body? What find we, but ourselves intermutually transposed, each into other ? And nature, that makes us love ourselves, makes us, with the same reason, love those that are like us. For this, friend is a more What avails it sacred name than a brother. to have the bodies from the same original, when the souls within them differ? Í believe, that the applause, which the ancients gave to equal friendship, was to be understood of the likeness of minds, rather than of estate or years; for we find no season nor no degree of man, but hath been happy with this sun of the world, friendship; whereas in jarring dispositions we never as yet found it true. Nay, I think, if the minds be consonant, the best friendship is between different fortunes. He that is low, looks upward with a greater loving reverence; and he that is high, looks downward more affectionately, when he takes it to be for his honor to favor his inferior, whom he cannot choose but love the more for magnifying him. Something I would look to outwards; but in a friend I would especially choose him full of worth, that if I be not so myself, he yet may work me like him. So for company, books, or whatsoever, I would, if I have freedom, choose the best. Though at first I should not fancy them, continual use will alter me, and then I shall gain by their graces. If judgment direct me right in my choice, custom, winning upon my will, will never fail in time to draw that after it. OF RELIGION AND MORALITY. To render a man perfect, there is requisite both religion and nature; that is, faith and morality. But some will tell me, there needs but one; religion comprehends both. And certainly, the Christian religion, purely practised, will do so; for it rectifies and confirms the law of nature, and, purging man from corruption by faith, presents him justified and a fulfiller of the law, which nature cannot do. Religion more properly respects the service of God, yet takes care of man too. Morality looks most to our conversation with men, yet leaves us not when we come to God and religion. I confess I understand not, why some of our divines have so much cried down morality. A moral man, with some, is but another word for a reprobate. Whereas truly, charity and proba-. bility would induce us to think, that whosoever is morally honest, is so out of conscience, in obedience to the commands of God and the instinctments of nature, so framed and qualified by God himself, rather than out of sinister, lower, or less noble ends. And therefore, I hold it to be most true, that as true religion cannot be without morality, no more can morality, that is right, be without religion. I look upon it as the primitive and everlasting law and religion of man; which, instamped in his soul at his creation, is a ray arising from the image of God. Till the law was given, what religion had he but his own morality, for almost two thousand years? It was the world's religion. What was it else that taught man to pray and humble himself to a Deity? when he had done amiss, to make offertories to appease an angered Godhead, and to think of ways of |