: bosom is his friend's closet, where he may safely lay up his complaints, his doubts, his cares; and look how he leaves, so he finds them; save for some addition of seasonable counsel for redress. If some unhappy suggestion shall either disjoint his affection or break it, it soon knits again, and grows the stronger by that stress. He is so sensible of another's injuries, that when his friend is stricken he cries out and equally smarteth untouched, as one affected not with sympathy, but with a real feeling of pain and in what mischief may be prevented, he interposeth his aid, and offers to redeem his friend with himself. No hour can be unseasonable, no business difficult, nor pain grievous in condition of his ease: and what either he doth or suffers, he neither cares nor desires to have known, lest he should seem to look for thanks. If he can therefore steal the performance of a good office unseen, the conscience of his faithfulness herein is so much sweeter as it is more secret. In favours done, his memory is frail; in benefits received, eternal: he scorneth either to regard recompense or not to offer it. He is the comfort of miseries, the guide of difficulties, the joy of life, the treasure of earth, and no other than a good angel clothed in flesh. OF THE TRULY NOBLE. He stands not upon what he borrowed of his ancestors, but thinks he must work out his own honour and if he cannot reach the virtue of them that gave him outward glory by inheritance, he is more abashed of his impotency than transported with a great name. Greatness doth not make him scornful and imperious, but rather like the fixed stars; the higher he is, the less he desires to seem. Neither cares he so much for pomp and frothy ostentation as for the solid truth of nobleness. Courtesy and sweet affability can be no more severed from him than life from his soul; not out of a base and servile popularity, and desire of ambitious insinuation, but of a native gentleness of disposition, and true value of himself. His hand is open and bounteous, yet not so as that he should rather respect his glory than his estate; wherein his wisdom can distinguish betwixt parasites and friends, betwixt changing of favours and expending them. He scorneth to make his height a privilege of looseness, but accounts his titles vain if he be inferior to others in goodness: and thinks he should be more strict the more eminent he is, because he is more observed, and now his offences are become more exemplar. There is no virtue that he holds unfit for ornament, for use; nor any vice which he condemns not as sordid, and a fit companion of baseness; and whereof he doth not more hate the blemish, than affect the pleasure. He so studies as one that knows ignorance can neither purchase honour nor wield it; and that knowledge must both guide and grace him. His exercises are from his childhood ingenious, manly, decent, and such as tend still to wit, valour, activity: and if (as seldom) he descend to disports of chance, his games shall never make him either pale with fear or hot with desire of gain. He doth not so use his followers, as if he thought they were made for nothing but his servitude, whose felicity were only to be commanded and please: wearing them to the back, and then either finding or framing excuses to discard them empty; but upon all opportunities lets them feel the sweetness of their own serviceableness and his bounty. Silence in officious service is the best oratory to plead for his respect all diligence is but lent to him, none lost. His wealth stands in receiving, his honour in giving. He cares not either how many hold of his goodness, or to how few he is beholden: and if he have cast away favours, he hates either to upbraid them to his enemy, or to challenge restitution. None can be more pitiful to the distressed, or more prone to succour ; and then most where is least means to solicit, least possibility of requital. He is equally addressed to war and peace; and knows not more how to command others, than how to be his country's servant in both. He is more careful to give true honour to his Maker than to receive civil honour from men. He knows that this service is free and noble, and ever loaded with sincere glory; and how vain it is to hunt after applause from the world till he be sure of Him that mouldeth all hearts, and poureth contempt on princes; and shortly, so demeans himself as one that accounts the body of nobility to consist in blood, the soul in the eminence of virtue. OF THE GOOD MAGISTRATE. He is the faithful deputy of his Maker, whose obedience is the rule whereby he ruleth. His breast is the ocean, whereinto all the cares of private men empty themselves; which, as he receives without complaint and overflowing, so he sends them forth again. by a wise conveyance in the streams of justice. His doors, his ears, are ever open to suitors; and not who comes first speeds well, but whose cause is best. His nights, his meals, are short and interrupted; all which he bears well, because he knows himself made for a public servant of peace and justice. He sits quietly at the stern, and commands one to the topsail, another to the main, a third to the plummet, a fourth to the anchor, as he sees the needs of their course and weather requires; and doth no less by his tongue than all the mariners with their hands. On the bench he is another from himself at home; now all private respects of blood, alliance, amity are forgotten; and if his own son come under trial he knows him not. Pity, which in all others is wont to be the best praise of humanity and the fruit of Christian love, is by him thrown over the bar for corruption. As for Favour, the false advocate of the gracious, he allows him not to appear in the court; there only causes are heard speak, not persons. Eloquence is then only not discouraged when she serves for a client of truth. Mere narrations are allowed in this oratory, not proems, not excursions, not glosses. Truth must strip herself and come in naked to his bar, without false bodies or colours, without disguises. A bribe in his closet, or a letter on the bench, or the whispering and winks of a great neighbour, are answered with an angry and courageous repulse. Displeasure, Revenge, Recompense stand on both sides the bench, but he scorns to turn his eye towards them, looking only right forward at Equity, which stands full before him. His sentence is ever deliberate and guided with ripe wisdom, yet his hand is slower than his tongue; but when he is urged by occasion either to doom or execution, he shows how much he hateth merciful injustice. Neither can his resolution or act be reversed with partial importunity. His forehead is rugged and severe, able to discountenance villainy, yet his words are more awful than his brow, and his hand than his words. I know not whether he be more feared or loved, both affections are so sweetly contempered in all hearts. The good fear him lovingly, the middle sort love him fearfully, and only the wicked man fears him slavishly without love. He hates to pay private wrongs with the advantage of his office; and if ever he be partial, it is to his enemy. He is not more sage in his gown than valorous in arms, and increaseth in the rigour of discipline as the times in danger. His sword hath neither rusted for want of use, nor surfeiteth of blood; but after many threats is unsheathed, as the dreadful instrument of divine revenge. He is the guard of good laws, the refuge of innocence, the comet of the guilty, the paymaster of good deserts, the champion of justice, the patron of peace, the tutor of the Church, the father of his country, and as it were another God upon earth. : OF THE PENITENT. He has a wounded heart and a sad face, yet not so much for fear as for unkindness. The wrong of his sin troubles him more than the danger. None but he is the better for his sorrow; neither is any passion more hurtful to others than this is gainful to him the more he seeks to hide his grief, the less it will be hid; every man may read it not only in his eyes, but in his bones. Whilst he is in charity with all others, he is so fallen out with himself that none but God can reconcile him. He hath sued himself in all courts, accuseth, arraigneth, sentenceth, punisheth himself impartially, and sooner may find mercy at any hand than at his own. He only hath pulled off the fair visor of sin; so as that which appears not but masked unto others, is seen of him barefaced, and bewrays that fearful ugliness, which none can conceive but he that hath viewed it. He hath looked into the depth of the bottomless pit, and hath seen his own offence tormented in others, and the same brands shaken at him. He hath seen the change of faces in that cool one, as a tempter, as a tormentor; and hath heard the noise of a conscience, and is so frightened with all these, that he can never have rest till he have run out of himself to God, in whose face at first he find rigour, but afterwards sweetness in his bosom; he bleeds first from the hand that heals him. The law of God hath made work for mercy, which he hath no sooner apprehended than he forgets his wounds, and looks carelessly upon all these terrors of guiltiness. When he casts his eye back upon himself, he wonders where he was and how he came there; and grants that if there were not some witchcraft in sin, he could not have been so sottishly graceless. And now, in the issue, Satan finds (not without indignation and repentance) that he hath done him a good turn in tempting him: for he had never been so good if he had not sinned; he had never fought with such courage, if he had not seen his blood and been ashamed of his folly. Now he is seen and felt in the front of the spiritual. battle; and can teach others how to fight, and encourage them in fighting. His heart was never more taken up with the pleasure of sin, than now with care of avoiding it: the very sight of that cup, wherein such a fulsome portion was brought him, turns his stomach: the first offers of sin make him tremble more now than he did before at the judgments of his sin; neither dares he so much as look towards Sodom. All the powers and craft of hell cannot fetch him in for a customer to evil; his infirmity may yield once, his resolution never. There is none of his senses or parts, which he hath not within covenants for their good behaviour, which they cannot ever break with impunity. The wrongs of his sin he repays to men with recompense, as hating it should be said he owes anything to his offence; to God (what in him lies) with sighs, tears, vows, and endeavours of amendment. No heart is more waxen to the impressions of forgiveness, neither are his hands more open to receive than to give pardon. All the injuries which are offered to him are swallowed |