when we tell him of it in secret, it shows we wish he should amend before the world comes to know he is amiss. Next, it ought to be in season; neither when the brain is misted with arising fumes, nor when the mind is madded with unreined passions. Certainly he is drunk himself, that profanes reason so as to urge it to a drunken man. Nature unloosed in a flying speed cannot come off with a sudden stop. "Quis matrem, nisi mentis inops, in funere nati Flere vetet? non hoc ulla monenda loco est." "He's mad, that dries a mother's eyes' full tide was the opinion of the smoothest poet. To admonish a man in the height of his passion, is to call a soldier to counsel, in the midst, in the heat of a battle. Let the combat slack, and then thou mayest expect a hearing. All passions are like rapid torrents; they swell the more for meeting with a dam in their violence. He that will hear nothing in the rage and roar of his anger, will, after a pause, inquire of you. Seem you to forget him, and he will the sooner remember himself. For it often falls out, that the end of passion is the beginning of repentance. Then will it be easy to draw back a ་ retiring man; as a boat is rowed with less la bor when it hath both a wind and tide to drive it. A word seasonably given, like a rudder sometimes steers a man quite into another course. When the Macedonian Philip was ca pering in the view of his captives, says Demades, "Since fortune has made you like Agamemnon, why will you show yourself like Thersites?" And this changed him to anoth A blow bestowed in the striking time is better than ten delivered unseasonably. There are some nicks in time, which whosoever finds may promise to himself success; in all things so in this, especially if he do it, as he ought, in love. er man. as It is not good to be too tetrical and virulent. Kind words make rough actions plausible. The bitterness of reprehension is insweetened with the pleasingness of compellations. If ever flattery might be lawful, here is a cause that would give it admission. To be plain, argues honesty; but to be pleasing, argues discretion. Sores are not to be anguished with a rustic pressure, but gently stroked with a ladyed hand. Physicians fire not their eyes at patients, but calmly minister to their diseases. Let it be so done, as the offender may see affection without arrogancy. Who blows out candles with too strong a breath, does but make them stink, and blows them light again. To avoid this, it was ordained among the Lacedæmonians, that every transgressor should be, as it were, his own beadle; for his punishment was, to compass an altar singing an invective made against himself. It is not consonant, that a member so unboned as the tongue is, should smart it with an iron lash.. Every man that adviseth, assumes as it were a transcendency over the other, which, if it be not allayed with protestations and some self-including terms, grows hateful; that even the reprehension is many times the greater fault of the two. It will be good, therefore, not to make the complaint our own, but to lay it upon some others, that, not knowing his grounded virtues, will, according to this, be apt to judge of all his actions. Nor can he be a competent judge of another's crime, that is guilty of the like himself. It is unworthily done, to condemn that in others which we would not have but pardoned in ourselves. When Diogenes fell in the school of the Stoics, he answers his deriders with this question: "Why do you laugh at me for falling backward, when you yourselves do retrograde your lives?" He is not fit to cure a dimmed sight, that looks upon another with a beamed eye. Freed, we may free others; and if we please them with prais ing some of their virtues, they will with muc more ease be brought to know their vice Shame will not let them be angry with them that so equally deal both the rod and laure If he be much our superior, it is good to do sometimes in parables, as Nathan did to David so let him by collection give himself the cen sure. If he be an equal, let it appear affectio and the truth of friendship urging it. If he b our inferior, let it seem our care and desire t benefit him. Towards all I would be sure to show humili ty and love. Though I find a little bluster fo the present, I am confident I shall meet wit thanks afterward, and in my absence his reve rend report following me. If not, the best wa to lose a friend is by seeking by my love t save him. It is best for others that they hat me for vice; but if I must be hated, it is bes for myself that they hate me for my goodness for then am I mine own antidote against al the poison they can spit upon me. OF THE EVIL IN MAN FROM HIM SELF AND OCCASIONS. It is not so much want of good, as excess o ill, that makes man post to lewdness. I believ there are sparks 'enough in the soul to flame a man to the moral life of virtue, but that they are quenched by the putrid fogs of corruption; as fruits of hotter countries, trans-earthed in colder climates, have vigor enough in themselves to be fructuous according to their nature, but that they are hindered by the chilling nips of the air and the soil wherein they are planted. Surely the soul hath the reliqued "impressa's" of divine virtue still so left within. her, as she would mount herself to the tower of nobleness, but that she is depressed by an unpassable thicket of hindrances. The frailties of the body, the current of the world, and the armies of enemies that continually war against goodness, are ever checking the production of those motions she is pregnant with. When we run into new crimes, how we school ourselves when the act is over! as if conscience had still so much justice left as it would be upright in sentencing even against itself. Nay, many times to gratulate the company we are fain to force ourselves to unworthiness. Ill actions run against the grain of the undefiled soul; and, even while we are a doing them, our hearts chide our hands and tongues for transgressing. There are few that are bad at the first merely out of their love to vice. There is a nobleness in the mind of man, which of itself |