Manna is so strong an Antidote that neither the poison of bad affections nor the contagiō of wicked conversation can worke upon that soule to hurt it which is once fortified with it This is the tree of life by which wee triumph over Death and with the Lord of life become fellowe heires of that Kingdome which from before all ages hee hath prepared for us Before you pluck and taste this Divine fruit knock your selfe on the Breast and say Lord I am unworthy Thus doing I with joy assure my selfe dearest Sir that your dayes shall bee long in the land which the Lord your God hath given you Thus doing blessings shall not stay your wishes but come before and above your expectation Thus doing you shall sleepe and wake rise and lie down in security knowing that you are under the protection of a Guard which neither the policy nor power of Man or Divell can force Thus doing you shall give your enemies no cause to rejoyce and your Friends none to greive To conclude thus doing you shall go out of this World with honour and enter the other with Glory leaving behind you the Fame of a life wel lead and so ended Care of your private Estate I Have seene one of the Athenian Sages pictur'd with one eye cast up to Heaven the other fixed on the Earth The conceit no doubt implyes that the view of these two remote objects do beget in a wise brest two different cares the first whereof hath an eye to the end of his journey the latter to the meanes The one seekes for the fairest and the nearest way the other lookes to the Viaticum or provision for the voyage Thus must you doe excellent Sir you must not with too much thinking whither you are going forget where you are As you minde the joyes and glory of the other life so must you also the necessities of this Thales the Philosopher was derided by the old Governesse of his house in that through the earnest fixing of his mind and sight upon the starres he fell into a ditch the Contemplation of things a far off taking from him the remembrance of those neere hand So are they worthily censur'd and scoff'd at whom an ignorant zeale maketh give ouer this World while they are yet in it neglecting their estates and posterity nay utterly forgetting those humane offices wherin being defective wee can not deservedly bee stiled men These should consider that if Nature would have exempted them from the condition of men shee would by a third sexe have distinguish'd them from the rest The misunderstanding of our Saviours words in the 6. of S. Matthew verse 25. hath abused many they thinking that Christ in this place forbids all thought for this life whereas indeed he only prohibiteth such a care as any way tends to a distrust of Gods Providence My humble advice is that you walke doubly provided at once relying upon Gods supernaturall helpe and yet using the ordinarie meanes hee hath given you Doe so be an understanding Lord and let your wisedome warrant you worthy your Title Thinke twice how to maintaine your Greatnesse for once how to set it forth and your Honor admitting it oblige more your Posterity then your Ancestors have done you To be plainer encrease your Estate if you can doe it without the decrease of your Reputation Bee not like those who thinke it the prime and essentiall part of a Lord to bee ignorant of what hee hath Enquire into the particularities of your fortunes Know how and where your Mannors and Rents lie Let not your least revenue passe unexamin'd but informe your selfe of the former and present vallue of it Learne what successively it hath yeelded your predecessors and the Lease being expired let it according to the current rate of these times else in shewing your selfe a Mercifull Land-lord you may prove a cruell Father Consider who have beene true to your Parents and your selfe and let your reward ore waigh their deserts Omit not to take a role of all them who hold any thing of you and marke such Names as have beene faithfull to your Family These cherrish both with your purse and countenance taking the better deserving of them into your service To the off-spring of those whom you shall fynde branded with disloyaltie to your House bee neither uncharitable nor uncourteous yet let them neither have so great a share of grace or benefit as the former except you see apparent and extraordinary signes of Truth and merrite in them Beleeve me or if not me Story that there is a Fatality in these things and that perfidiousnesse often runs in a Blood I may adde the despaire will possesse the most honest heart ever to please you who shall come to your service clogged with the memory of his fore-fathers demerits and the comfortable advantage he shal come with who can assure himselfe that his errours shall bee buried in the merits of his Ancestours With the former take this generall caution that you set your Leases at such rates as no man can have just cause to call you oppressour Wisely consider that though a poore wronged man can not take from you your Titles Riches or Friends yet hee may fortake you from them Despaire as she hopes no good so shee feares no ill Vitae tuae Dominus est quisquis suam contempsit Hee is Master of your life who will forsake his own Of this we have a fresh example in one of your Lordships own Ranke This is one of the crying sinnes and the voyce of it reacheth a note higher then any of the rest Thus farre of your commings in now of your layings out Keepe a good set table that may not feare the approache of halfe a score good fellowes To this in case Strangers of extraordinary quality come you may adde according to your pleasure An orderly yet liberal table continued is by much more commendable then these intemperate Feasts which commonly are followed by as penurious fasts So that vaine-gloriously to entertaine our guests wee basely starve our Servants Men of great ranke I would seldome invite for it draws mony from you and censure from them such ever making 2the prodigallity or defects of your table the discourse of theirs I may adde the dangerous engagements they will invite you to which you must either with the losse of your Wisdome grant or with the purchase of their envy deny But if any eminēt Person without any invitation of myne should voutsafe me a visit I would like himselfe and my selfe receive him Some and those wise know every night the expenses of the passed day I am not of opinion that your Lordship should be so strict or put your selfe to that trouble but I would perswade you to take an account of every weekes charges and that at an appointed day and houre which I would not breake without a cause of great importance Entertaine not many followers least you leave behind you many beggars and few
the sounder part of them the rotten cast away But I all this while onely fetch the Wind to come with the fuller gaile into the Haven My counsell is that you set the whole frame of your life upon these three legges Religion Care of your private estate Discretion in all your actions Take away any of these and you fall either a ridiculous subject to your enemies or a sad object to your Friends For example Ruyne by negligence or prodigality your private Fortune and you become a laughing stocke to those that hate you on the other side abandon your Religion or Reputation to the just censure of others and you become a corrasive in the hearts of all your Honourers With your Lordships leave I will a little enlarge my Discourse upon these three severallie and demonstrate the comforts with which they fill his Soule in whom jointly they make their blessed union and happy mansion Religion I Place Religion first in obedience to Gods Commandement who wils us first to seeke the Kingdome of Heaven and the righteousnesse thereof promising that all other things shall be added unto us Againe I give it the leading for order sake imitating the Builder of an house who begins with the foundation which excelling both for matter and well laying the whole Frame will unmoved withstand the blasts and rage of Wind and Weather This preceding all things else readily follow which any way tend to the perfection and happinesse of living It is so it is so most honor'd Lord Religion was never seene to goe alone without alwayes a glorious traine of Vertues to attend and for the most part felicity to accompany it I say for the most part because though God ever affordes his Children the true ever flourishing internall felicity yet hee often suffereth even the dearest in his eyes to want the fading externall On the contrary where Religion doth not waite on humaine endeavours there the whole bodie of their actions is cloathed with imperfections There is nothing which so much distinguisheth Man and Beast as Religion which is discovered in us long before the use of our reason it being ingrafted in us by Nature as wee reade of Saint Iohn Baptist and divers other Saints who have made cleare and miraculous demonstrations of their Zeale even in the narrow compasse of the womb This is a Heavenly prerogative peculiar to man alone for that the other living creatures are rationall many have disputed but that they are religious no man was ever so stupid to maintaine It is an observation infallible throughout all Storie that the more Noble Nations were ever the more Religious Valerius said to the Romans that though they regarded not their Citty yet they should stand in feare of their Gods which by their enemies were taken prisoners It was with this polisht people a custome as commendable as usual that the Consull or Pretor ever offered the richest of his spoiles to the same Gods in the Capitoll unto whom there first hee pronounced his vowes In imitation and emulation of these truely brave Heathen doe you offer up likewise the first fruits of your noble heart as a rent due to him that made it Love with all your soule the Creator of it The cause why you love him you must make himselfe and the measure of that love must bee without measure Submit your will to his humbly desiring his direction and protection in all your wayes and proceedings Let this assurance fullie content you denying harbour to vaine curiosities which will disquiet not amend your mind Weary not your selfe with Controversies and needlesse nicities in Divinity but leave them for learneder men amongst whom I finde some who will not bee ignorant of Gods secrets as if it were a matter of nothing to bee saved unlesse wee also know what God will have unknowne Thinke that sufficient which God hath thought enough for you and seeke to know all that to salvation is necessary not to contestation When Aquinas and Scotus have vented and banded all their subtility each against other many wise men will judge it no other then a profound scolding The Iewes proceeding this way infinitely taketh mee who as often as they fell upon any difficult place in Scripture would say Veniet Elias enodabit wee know that Elias will come and tell us all things Those stirring wits that itch to propound acute questiōs are fitly compared to the Sunne in March who then exhales humours but dissolves them not And were their positions only frivolous they were more tollerable but they commonly end in horrid Blasphemy Laurentius Valla hearing a Cardinall dispute sublimely of God and his subordinate Spirits said to his companion And I could produce too such keene Arguments against my Christ but I spare so great a Majesty In a word Bee not in Divinity an Aculeo nor a Curio but in all your doubts have recourse to this sure decider of all differences Dominus dixit What folly nay madnesse is it to spend a mans whole age in speculations neither necessary to this life nor that to come We have a wicked custome in England of Gentlemens studying the Controversies for ornament not taking them to heart nor handling them with that reverence they ought Doe not you so but love goodnesse in what Religion soever you finde it Put not your sickle into the Divines Harvest but leave it to those whom God hath marked for his Ministry Raile at no Sect for they that delight in wrangling desire rather the confusion then the reformation of him they oppose Much disputing it may bee God loves not and for certaine most men abhorre To this I may adde that Truth is no way more involved then by that way shee is sought Reade you therefore such Bookes as may enflame your zeale laying aside those which onely satisfie your curiosity Neither be onely conversant in those workes which make against vice in generall but enquire after such also as treate of those vices to which you finde your selfe most prone Physitians after they haue given a generall Purgation use such Medicines as purge Elective that is take away onely that humour which is predominant in the patient So you must not run over onely those Authors which meerly write against sinne without descending unto particulars but intentively peruse and dwell upon such as inveigh against your own 2secret sinnes onely knowne to God and your selfe If to any notorious vice you bee inclined next your invocation of God the onely remedy is to shunne the cause Praesentia objecti naturaliter movet Potentiam The presence of the object stirres up the Desire To expresse my selfe more clearely Fly that thing or that company from whence your enticement comes If in a friend an imperfection appeares Friendship winkes at it but if a vice the hate of that makes her loath the thing beloved Bee not you such as was Fabius a Decemvir of whom Livy saith that hee chose rather to bee like Appius then himselfe I am not of
admirers Those you take once into your service maintaine so as the World may witnesse for you they want nothing due to backe or belly And when your last day comes which Iesus grant I may never see leave them legacies sutable to their severall quallities and deserts So shall their childrens children magnify your goodnesse and one Generation bequeath your praises to another Choose your Officers sober discreet and honest men for if a mans nature lead him to wast and sharke all your vigilancy will be in vaine Dispositions quickly put on Habits Bannish riot and roaring your house but alwayes beware of punishing a fault too severely in an old and faithfull Servant Yet if you can not reforme him give him meanes to live from you so shall you doe him good and keepe your family from infection We reade of Cato Vticensis that hee with great study kindled and nourished dissension amongst his servants by which meanes he came to know all their actions and conspiracies Doe you shunne this course as you would do infamy to which it leades Let all your endeavours serve to settle a firme concord amongst them otherwise your house will become a common Pleas and amongst other inconveniences this ensuing will bee one You cannot so indifferently carry your selfe but that your affection will appeare more to some then to others Now if your people bee at variance one will repine at the grace you shew the other judging himselfe wronged and undervallued by you From hence will proceede a mixt report one exalting and the other debasing you And though your praisers surpasse in number your revilers it will nothing at all availe you men in these daies being more prone to harken after a mans vices then his vertues Withall build on this that those with whom you live are they must judge you Who will desire your Character from any other then from such as are Eare and Eyewitnesses of your Words Deeds and Cariage Take heed therefore that Malice reigne not in your house still remembring that Heavē is the true patterne of a perfect society and there Envy hath no place Weare good clothes but make it not your study to excell others in bravery Follow the received Fashion but do not adore it Totus nitidus saith Seneca Totus stultus All neat al Foole. Your Lordship shall observe in the course of your life that such as give themselves wholy over bodies and soules into the hands of a Taylour are likely litle wiser then he that fittes them They may have a superficiall but not an essentiall worth It may bee objected that they often attaine to high degrees of honour to which I answer that no man is properly stiled wise from the event It hath been long my observation that they who strove to have the leading in Fashion came behind in al the maine requisites of a Gentleman We see Women to bee their chiefe admirers and I dare bee bound that none of them was ever yet found who could see thorow a Milstone On my credit the clothes oftentimes judge the wearer We see the wisest of our Westerne Nations the Spanish and the Italian to bee this way the most moderate They finding this thrift and modesty in habit to be infinitlie beneficiall to the Common-wealth There is no Country under the Sunne that hath such an Apocryphall Gentry as the English where the sonnes of Brokers blend with it and out-brave and precede the most Ancient of it as if clothes had the guift to ennoble blood All are permitted to weare what they can get and their owne vallue depends on that of their raiment Amongst the ancient Romans all sorts of men were distinguisht by their habit so that at the first sight you might know a mans calling by his clothing Of Liberallity OF all the vertues in Man Liberallity is the King it being often called Humanitas as derived ab Homine The holy Fathers of the Church commonly usurpe Pium pro Liberali Pious for Liberall Let your house be like that of a Tribune never shut to the distressed make your life nothing else but a giving to the poore They followed Simo by troupes and he releived them with handfuls These voices are worthy the purchasing at a deare rate because upon them places in Heaven depend The onely way to be trulie great is to give to these little ones Make not your gifts common In the giving see that your judgement and affection concurre To the deserving be like a tree overcharged with fruit which boweth and offereth it selfe to be plucked Confer your benefits on such as have honesty and merit conjoyned In my opinion he is not truly said to be a man of good parts whose chiefe part the heart is rotten On my life where that is false nothing of vallue can harbour Bee not your owne Chronicle too 2much in boasting of the favours you doe Set not down your benefits in the Almanake The Noble Giver saith Seneca should instantly forget the guift but the gratefull Receiver never This vertue is not placed just in the middle but is nearer to Prodigality then Avarice Not without cause therfore I adde this caution that you be not too profuse in the distribution of your Money Call to mind that it is as well the nerve of Peace as warre By the helpe of it all things are acquired save those of the mind which are to bee had elsewhere and by other meanes yet to the obtaining of these too doth Diva Moneta afford no small aide I may also truly averre that Magnanimity can not truly shew herselfe without it Aristotles two extreames I would have you shun Some men saith he are so sparing in their expences as if they were to live for ever some so profuse as if they were instantly to die I have heard of some who have quaited away their mony and played at Duck and Drake with peeces but my comfort is I have yet read no Sentences of their cōposing Charles the fift as wise a man as the best of them would tye a knot in a broken point and reweare it yet was the most liberall Prince of those or these times One of my Ancestours was so beyond measure free of his purse that the Painters drew him with a Silver hand if they had added an empty purse the Device had beene most perfect Discretion in all your Actions IT now remaines that I treat of the discretion whereof all your Actions must savour This hath a large sence but I will reduce it to as few heads as possibly I can Guiccardin gives Ferdinand of Arragon King of Naples this testimony That hee was a Prince for his counsels Deliberate in his actions Rèsolute and touching his affections very moderate My God! what can man speake more of man Wee will examine the first part of the Testimony For his Counsels Deliberate A Wise Man considereth and weigheth al the circumstances of an action before he subscribes to it Make a long pause betwixt the invention and