our selves Thy present State is good and in some mens Opinion to be preferred Paul therefore was happy who had learned in what state soever he was therewith to be content Let them rail on scoff on slander and lye on Sapiens contumelia non afficitur quia contra Sycophantae morsum non est remedium 'T is to no purpose to be troubled Wicked People will use their Tongues to detract from and asperse their Neighbours Who is free from such Calumnies Disgraces Slights Not the King himself nor the most pious and best men though never so circumspect CHRIST himself was a Wine-bibber with them Company-keeper of Publicans and Sinners a Devil and what he did was by the help of Beelzebub Nay GOD himself is Blasphemed by them Benè facere malè audire Regium est Let them scoff defame undervalue slander abuse and take their course 'T is an ordinary thing keep Faith and a good Conscience within commit thy case to God Repay not evil for evil but overcome it rather with good Besides 't is some comfort to consider that Honour Respect Esteem Employment in this World are not always attained by desert or worth neither do they make a man really worthy but are commonly bought and sold or attained by some great mens Letters Favour Friendship Affection c. For 't is Opinion and Interest only that carries things in this World Whence we so often find fools preferred and wisemen neglected little regarded or esteemed 'T is as ordinary as can be to see an Impertinent Illiterate Asse preferred before his betters because he can put himself forwards prate and temporize with every one and hath the countenance of Friends 'T was alwayes so and ever will be Qui nescit dissimulare nescit vivere Cardan Lipsius Melancton Budeus Erasmus men of great Learning Parts and to whom the whole World is so much beholden died all poor as they lived because they could neither flatter nor dissemble The Race is not to the swift nor the Battle to the strong but Time and Chance and sometimes a mischance happens unto us all the best of us Sic Superis visum GOD sees it good for us to be so humbled and therefore perhaps he has bid Shimèi Curse Good Men do not alwayes find Grace and Favour lest they should be puffed up grow Insolent and proud As St. Paul appologizes for himself Lest I be exalted above measure Le ts therefore indure with patience whatever happens and through good or bad Report enter into Immortallity And thus much shall suffice to be spoken of the Rectifying of the chief Passions For the rest in the same manner they may be subdued which for brevities sake I willingly pretermit And because That Immortality but now named ought to be the chief aim and care of a Gentleman I shall conclude with some Considerations of Life and Death CHAP. II. Of Life COncerning our Lives I must needs say and so it will appear if we seriously consider all things 't is but a fools Paradise and the World but a great Bedlam or a common Prison of Gulls Cheats Flatterers All conditions under the Heavens from the highest to the lowest are out of Tune As in Cebes Table Omnes errorem bibunt Before we came into the World we were Intoxicated with errours Cup and all our Lives long macerated and direfully cruciated with Anger Fear Sorrow Envy Discontent and the rest of those horrid Passions before spoken of Nay all our dayes are sorrow our Travel grief and our Heart taketh no rest in the Night as the wise Man notes And the Hearts of the Sons of Men are evil and madness is in their hearts while they live nay even the wisest In the multitude of Wisdom is much grief and he that increaseth Knowledge increaseth sorrow All is sorrow grief vanity and vexation of Spirit in the World the Wisest Man Solomon will not justifie his own Actions Surely sayes he I am more foolish then any Man and have not the understanding of a Man in me Nothing pleased him he hated his Labour and Life it self Impudence Folly and Fortune that care not what they do or say shall Rule more in the World then Virtue or Wisdom which oft-times give way whence honest and wise men are termed Fools How ordinary is it for such as cannot or will not Lye Dissemble Shift Flatter Temporize as others do but are honest and plain-dealing to be accounted Ideots Asses and no better then fools Again if the Philosophers that gave Precepts of wisdom to others Inventers of Arts and Sciences the seven Wise Men of Greece be fools as Lactantius in his Book of Wisdome proves them Dizzards Asses and Mad-men so full of absurd and ridiculous tenets and brain-sick positions that to his thinking never any old Woman or sick Person doted worse Democritus took all from Leucippus and left the Inheritance of his folly to Epicurus He makes no difference between Plato Xenophon Aristippus Aristotle and the rest and Beasts saving that they could speak If I say these men had no more Brains then so many Beetles what shall we think of the commonalty and the major part if not of the whole World Supputius Travelled all over Europe to find and confer with a wise man but returned at last without his Errand Cardan thinks few men are well in their wits And Tully concludes every thing to be done foolishly and unadvisedly All dote but not in the same kind not alike one is proud another ambitious a third envious a fourth avaritious a fifth poring ever in a Book or writing Books a sixth lascivious a seventh given to Wine c. The whole course of our Life is indeed but matter of Laughter no difference between us and Children Majora Ludimus grandioribus pupis They play with Babies and we with greater bables 't is the same thing Charon in Lucian was conducted by Mercury to such a place wâ—ere he might see all the World at oncâ— After he had sufficiently viewed it Mercury would needs know what he had observed He told him he saw a promiscuous multitude whose Habitations were like Mole-hills they like Emmets and Cities like so many Hives of Bees and every Bee had a sting and did nothing but sting one another Some domineering like Hornets greater then the rest some like filching Wasps others as Drones Over their heads hung a confused company of perturbations anger fears sorrows cares anxieties hope ignorance jealousie Envy avarice revenge c. And innumerable Diseases which by the hooks of Disorder they were continually pulling on their own Heads Some were brawling some fighting riding running Sollicitè ambientes callidè litigantes for toys and trifles and such momentary things Their Towns and Provinces were factious Rich against Poor and Poor against Rich. And so condemn'd them all for Fools Ideots Asses The meditation of mans Life made Heraclitus Cry and weep continually to see its Madness And Democritus contrarywise to Laugh at the folly of it
Finisher of our faith is given by no less than GOD himself who though he be Omnipotent Å¿ Omnipotentia excludit omnes defectus qui sunt Impotentiae seu posse mori Peccare c. Thomas Aquinas 2. Quest 25. Art 34. yet cannot lye being Truth it self in the abstract His very existence then may be as well doubted as his Testimony And you have heard already the irrationality of Atheism in our proof of a Deity and that even among the Heathen a Deity has ever been acknowledged as also that their gods were true The Testimony God gives of Christ He was promised to Adam when fallen long before his coming The Seed of the Woman shall break the Serpents Head And his Testimony of him when sent was at his Baptism and on the Mount with Peter James and John This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased hear him And a little before his Death I have glorified it and will glorifie it again Likewise by the Star at his Birth which the very Heathen confest portended the descent of some God for the Salvation of Mankind Also by many Miracles wrought both by Christ and the Apostles and other wayes as well as by an Audible Voice As at his Death By Eclipsing the Sun at the time of the Full Moon contrary to the course of Nature so that many Astronomers in other parts of the World admired the strangeness thereof as a violence done to Nature whence Dionysius the Areopagite thus exclaim'd Aut Deus Naturae patitur aut Mundi machina Dissolvitur The Vail of the Temple was rent which the Superstitious Jews so adored And the saints dead Bodies arose and went into the Holy City and were seen by many Which things were so notoriously known that multitudes were Converted saying Of a Truth this was the son of God And lastly He himself did not only Rise but was taken up into Heaven both body and soul before their eyes So that the Question will be now whether there be any credit to be given to the scriptures that give such ample testimony of Christ from GOD or whether they are his revealed word more than other Writings Touching which I shall wholly lay aside those Arguments from their Majestickness and sometimes plainness of stile Their subject on which they treat or the power and influence they have on Mens Consciences as Idle frivolous not sufficiently evincing them to be Divine Oracles or to proceed from the Holy Spirit since our Consciences easily consent to what our belief is prepossest with in our Infancies Besides if this be all a Turk may plead as much for the Alchoran in every respect as we Whether the Old New Testaments be the Word of God can for the Bible Neither doth the sealing the Truth thereof by the blood of Martyrs signifie any thing in this particular since we daily see Jews Turks Pagans Hereticks Sects of all sorts Venners gang though in open Rebellion and before that the Regicides dye as resolutely couragiously with as much seeming assurance of their salvation as the best Martyr of them all in the affirmation and justification of their own belief and Deceits We must therefore endeavour to ground the Truth and Authority of Holy writ on more sure and sound Foundations Which I shall here at this time a little attempt notwithstanding the uncharitable censures of ignorant angry and narrow-witted Zelots accounting me in Discourses of this Nature an Atheist or at least one that contemns or hath but little regard for or to the Scripture And all because I have still endeavoured to bring them to a Rational ground of their Faith For although some things in Religion be beyond Reason yet it is not against Reason and most may be made out by Reason If this were not so our belief would be very Implicite I shall therefore endeavour to make it plain that the Books of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God and that upon the pure account of Reason only For to go about to prove any such thing to an Atheist or Pagan by the Scripture or any Argument deduced thence is when he believes no such thing to be ridiculous and to prove a thing to be so as Women do because it is so and compel another mans Reason too suddenly This I hope no Pagan or Atheist will deny that there is as much reason to believe the History of the Old and New Testament as any other since there is the same Reason first to believe the Tradition of the Old and New Testaments as the Tradition of any other i. e. That there was such a Man as Moses that wrote of the Creation of the Patriarchs of Gods Judgments on the Egyptians of his delivering the Israelites from the servitude of Pharaoh and leading them through the Wilderness And after him a Joshua who was their Captain and General in their possessing the Land of Canaan And so the Judges Kings and Prophets c. that did such and such Acts. A Matthew Mark Luke and a John that wrote such things as they saw and knew in their own times to be true of one Jesus of Nazareth I say we have as much reason to believe the Tradition of these Histories as any other Histories Or as that there was an Homer that wrote Illiads a Virgil his Georgicks an Ovid his Metamorphosis A Plato an Aristotle and the rest of the Philosophers or their Works Secondly it s as Rational to believe that those Books of the Old and New Testament were written by the same Men as are their reputed Authors as to believe Plutarch's Tacitus's Tully's and Caesar's works were theirs Thirdly that all that was delivered in the Old Testament in Christs time was true appears by his frequent quoting of and referring to it in his Discourse and Disputes Besides if it had been corrupted he would no doubt have taxt them with it as well as for their Teaching for Doctrines the Traditions of Men. And that 't is the same we now have and the Jews at this day acknowledge and that 't was never corrupted is evident from the multitude of Copies distributed after the first and second Captivities to every Synagogue where they were dispersed in which they read every Sabbath-day Now how it shou'd be possible for Men in almost all Nations and at different times to combine together in corrupting the Book of God on design let a prudent Man judge But we find they do all agree which they could never do if any and not all of them shou'd have been corrupted And that they shou'd altogether designedly or casually be corrupted when there appears no solid reason for such a contrivance seems more than improbable To which add if they were corrupted 't would have been in those places especially which speak and Prophesie of Christ and against them Besides if they were corrupted they shou'd have corrupted the Septuagint Translation which was extant in Egypt three hundred years before
Christ to make them agree Again if we observe it we shall find more harmony between the Writers of the Divine Oracles though distant in time than among any other Writers whatsoever Lastly that the Old Testament which we acknowledge is the same the Jews now receive and alwayes did may easily appear by comparing our Copies and Translations with the Originals among them in all Nations Nor can it be thought that the Learned in all places times and of contrary Religions Jews Papists Protestants c. shou'd combine to deceive the giddy and more unknowing sort of people in the World Fourthly because they wrote nothing but what was done in their own times and known generally to all who might have contradicted their Writings especially the Scribes and Pharisees who under the Gospel were their Persecutors and wou'd assuredly have condemned them had they been false or liable to exception Nay and Josephus though a Jew yet an unbeliever in Christ * Antiq. Judaic Lib. 18. Cap. 4. testifies that at that time there was a Man if he might call him a Man whose name was Jesus that did raise the dead Cure Diseases and do many Miracles and being accused by the chief of the people was Condemned and Crucified by Pilate and the third day appeared to them again alive as it was predicted of him by the Prophets Moses and the Prophets Matthew Mark Luke John Peter James Paul and Jude have been continually reputed and generally from Age to Age down to these our times confessed by all to be the Pen-men of those Books that bear their Names Nay this is acknowledged by the very Jews Pagans and even by Julian the Apostate And therefore there is not only the same Reason to believe them as any other writings but as great Reason if not greater that their Writings are true since what they wrote was only the passages or actions of their own times done by themselves or others which were easie to be known being most of them done in publick and they either Eye or Ear-witnesses or both of all passages So that they had the greatest opportunities in the World for detecting the Truth and consequently best able to declare it Besides the Pen-men throughout the Bible were either Kings Rulers men of Honour and high esteem among the People and therefore would not attest lyes to expose themselves to the contradiction and scorn of the World or Vulgar As Moses Joshua Samuel David Solomon Nehemiah Ezra c. Or Prophets Isaiah Jeremiah Daniel Ezekiel c. Or Apostles or Disciples Men of Integrity Piety and Fidelity that could purchase nothing by that they delivered if untrue nay for attesting those very truths they incurred Imprisonment Banishment Persecution Poverty and all kind of misery Wandring up and down in Sheep-skins and Goat-skins being destitute afflicted tormented c. They suffer'd for their profession of the Truth more than any Men did Besides they and their Doctrine was owned more especially by GOD himself in giving them the Spirit of Prophesie the Inspiration of the Holy-Ghost so that though illiterate they could speak all Languages the power of working Miracles Casting out of Devils Curing of Diseases by even their very shadows which was more than Christ in the flesh did and which the Magitians and Conjurers of those times could never do though zealously attempted and therefore we have greater reason to believe their Writings and them than any other whatsoever For none can be so impious or irrational as to think GOD would countenance and give testimony to Impostures and juggling tricks and especially such as pretend to teach and lead Men into the way of Salvation This were to speak with Reverence to make GOD accessary to the entrapping of mens Souls and the deceiving the whole Christian World A Gentleman having thus laid a Foundation of his Faith in the Being and Existence of a GOD In his testimony of Christ the Object Author and Finisher of our Faith the truth and Authority of the Old and New Testament and compared the profession is made in the Church of England with the vain Fopperies Superstitions and Innovations of the Church of Rome and the uncharitableness to be found among them and all Sectaries Schismaticks Phanaticks and Hereticks who condemn to Hell all that are not in their way accounting all without their pale damned The irrationality of the Mahometans and the absurd stupidity of the Pagan-gods and Worships The fantastical follies whimsies of the Jews I say these things being compared and the former Foundation laid and rooted in the intellects of a Gentleman he may not only soon resolve himself into a Religion but be satisfied which is the true one I shall therefore add no more in this matter but come to the next qualification of a Gentleman and a part of Education before premised viz. PART II. Travel IN the next place Travel being first well grounded in Religion will be requisite to experience and accomplish a Gentleman especially if he have the Language and other good parts if not he ought to take one that hath and has been abroad before that he may be informed of the Customs and Humours of the People and with what Company to associate otherwise a Man may be sooner injur'd than benefited And without a competent Judgment Ingenuity Reason and good Nature ruin'd or at least return as empty as he went Let him in every Town City and place he comes acquaint himself with the most Learned Eminent and in Repute Experienced and sober Men whereby he may not only learn good but avoid much evil Debauchery Quarrels and most other inconveniencies especially with Embassadors at least when they have Audience if possible with their Universities Libraries Buildings Revenues Colledges Churches Monuments Monasteries Government of the State and place Civil their Courts of Judicature when they plead judge and determine Causes as also Ecclesiastical and their Courts and if in the Metropolis the Kings Court it self or Chief Governours The Scituation of places Prospects Rivers and all Ornaments Ports Havens Ships Fortifications Trainings Tilts and Turnaments Treasuries Magazines and Armories Castles Forts Ruines and Antiquities Coyns Measures Habits Customes Feastings Weddings Funerals Publick Shews Wardrobes Publick Masques Comedies Playes Interludes and Triumphs especially such as are frequented by the better sort and with every thing else that is worth the noting And keep an account in writing of every dayes Observation wherever he goes So shall he in a little time be greatly improved and make the best advantage of his Travels which that he may the better do he ought to observe these Rules viz. To avoid Idle Expences Vain Ostentation and Regulate his Discourse and Carriage SECT I. Of Expences A Gentleman of any Man ought to be most wary and prudent in this matter not only lest he shou'd by his Extravagancy expose himself to the derision and scorn of the Vulgar but also to avoid the imputation of folly when so as well as by being