this the heat and agility of another is temper'd by the Phlegm and industry of their Enemy to their innate ambition is oppos'd the inexpungnable zeal others have to their native soil Thus we see the Empires of the world have their periods declination and expiration as well as a Rise augmentation and flourishing That the conceptions and designs of every individual admit so many transmutations with their years and that all of them sooner or later retire and clear the stage to another Generation to which must be committed the whole concerns of Mankind and yet all this while among so different traverses the world has faln into no decay no Encroachments have been made on Nature nor such inundations on its Inhabitants as to drown any of their specific temperaments or so oreflow any one part of them as not to be recovered in some revolutions does lowdly proclaim and justifie the most wise decretals ef Heaven managing so many dissenting heads and new hands to the carrying on the wonderful business of Providence There is no novelty under the Sun all will still proceed with the measures of a man if we do not put off our own natures and principles For 't is Atheism alone can unhinge all and invert the whole order of things by destroying all opinion of the wisedom and integrity of former ages the happy security of the present and all concerns and hopes for the future But had we a considerative view into the causes actings and terminations of those grand occurrences which first startle then leave us as much careless as unsatisfied we should admire the deep agencies of Providence Did every one but seriously regard the wonders that have signaliz'd a great part of his own private concerns and contingencies the notices arising thence would shew how he had been acted and guided by another hand and intention beside and beyond his own Round about how many notable instances daily break forth to instruct us that Blind Nature alone could not so happily Time and finish her wise mistakes As Embryos we cannot conceive much of the Order and Power of the Intellectual World But I am perswaded much more is done among us by the concurrence of good and Evil Spirits in common converse and Accidents than we imagine or observe Had we an history of those unaccountable remedies which are no small nor unwarranted part of Medicine some from animals other from Vegetables taken inwardly or used as Amulets we should acknowledge a great deal to their benignity or some permitted delusions in their discoveries The Temple of Aesculapius famous for its cures prescribed in dreams and registred into a Dispensatory on the walls therof beside many later remarkables of this nature justifies this my conceit Withal I suppose them very prone if not by rule disposed to concern themselves in all sorts of Offices wherein they may employ their powerful activities and have the pleasure unseen to guide assist and patronize many of our undertakings Many sudden and uncouth friendships antipathies strange deliverances advices in extraordinary distances solutions of intricacies presages and powerful influences upon other Creatures I may favourably refer to their presence and ministery not denying but there are some persons by nature and temper without recourse to an Asterism fitted to wonderful intimations and performances beyond the Vulgar Yet I cannot but admire to see some suddenly grown up into an opinion and repute with the World wonderfully made the darlings of Fortune from one lucky article of an occasion instantly outstripping all others and their own thoughts thrive and prosper to the amazement of all where every one before was defeated and wasted in every enterprize and but petty hazard successful and victorious and all this without anxious solicitudes laborious insudations or more than Common stock of comprehension or contrivance At the same time a person wherein nothing is wanting to the Ornament as well as strength and vigor of Reason and Prudence no defect in industry and Art sinking unfortunate every way oppressed and quite broken in all his designments When I presently reflect on the admonition given Mark Antonie in his competitions with Augustus and that there is more truth and mystery in it than we are aware of and advized by On a due collection you will conclude even where all seems to lay open to the sports and frolikes of Time and Chance a most sure Hand from above beyond our determinations and reaches disposes all events how casual soever in appearance and by many Instruments perhap of some nearer degree of Intellectual Agents From the promiscuous successes and conditions Virtue and Vice are here equally involved in with industry and Imprudence you may as necessarily infer the consequence of a state of life after this where one shall account for the impious abuses of long provoked and most attractive goodness the other meet a remuneration suitable to the exercise of a suffering throughly tryed and perfected integrity To which I may joyn the insatiable thirst the soul of man pants under toward a state of immortality It beholds it self made to distinguish and comprehend the truth and worth of all about it beyond the power it sees any other Creature born unto But there remaining so great a part of it undiscovered upon the Continent as well as wide Ocean of knowledge All the principles hereof also being but precariously and dubiously admitted How does the Soul lay down and bewail it's sad condition finding it's clearest resolves and conclusions subject to cavillation and torture when raising up an appetite large enough to take in the coveted delicacies appearing only as if but to tantalize it But now that doctrine which meets us heated tyred dejected in despair of ever reaching what our greediness has transported us out after how wellcome pleasant satisfactory will it be to us reviving and raising us up again on our feet so as to forget all our past toil and weariness Especially when to the possession of this Terrestrial knowledge It bids us look up to Heaven above and reckon upon the innumerable Lights and worlds of wisdom and understanding there which we are created capable to look and pass into and shall eternally reside under their illuminations We shall suddenly then make up the arrears of the longest lives and an hundred years are brought into as small a point as twenty to the review of a dying person The Philosophy we grope after all the short night of our duration here will I conceive by the first approaches of the light of our never setting day be plain and illustrate to us The First and Wisest of Men had not larger notices of the Creation than the uncaptiv'd Spirit instantly enters upon for that as Adam at first is born and springs forth from it's clay arrayed with the same connate beams of knowledge as of life And the wisdom of Solomon was that Celestial Charisma which in it's very illapses enlarged his Soul to it's reception Thus ennobled the Spirit
AN ADDRESS To the Hopeful Young GENTRY OF ENGLAND IN Some Strictures on the most dangerous Vices incident to their Age and Quality Mors fera Parce precor vitam anticipare vel ipsam Vt moriatur Homo sit precor ipse priús Couleius noster De Salviâ Cur moriatur-Cui Salvia crescit By a perfect Honourer of their Worth London Printed by E. C. for G. Walbancke and are to be sold at his Shop neer Grays-Inn-Gate in Holborn 1669. Imprimatur Rob. Grove R.P.D. Episc Lond. a sac Domest Mart. 26. 1669. TO THE Nobly Accomplished AND Honourably Descended John Burgoyne Esquire SIR IN the midst of the giddy and rapid turnings of the Affairs of this World the Malignity and Predominancy of Vice clowding and obstructing Reason violently agitating the purest of its spirits and succors into the same commotions and confusions He that can stand steady and immoveable is a greater Miracle than could have been the subject of Archimedes his bold Boast That he would unfix this whole Globe of Earth might be have but a footing off from it For beside his vanity to promise the uncentring of that vast Body and unweildy when he could not give his own small active Carcase one remove from it He would have been as far to seek for a convenient distance and station where to effect the operation So that thorough the incertainty and impossibility of his postulatum the grand design must necessarily fall to the ground as obscurely as himself was erelong cast down to measure his own lines and narrow dimensions in the Dust. But granting it a demonstration I must pay far greater Admiration and Esteem to those brave Souls who when the whole course of Nature is under impetuous motions and tumults remain unconcern'd and fixt and by the conduct of singular Virture retain their Sobriety and Prudence when all about them is mad and under the fatal hurries of the great Disturbers of mankind or the furious Tempests of their own uncontrouled passions This 't is to bear up a manly head above the Ruines though the whole Fabrick of the World be sinking and rowling into one Confusion That the slender supports of these few Lines are oppos'd against these threatned mischiefs of bolder Vice with ambition to act the part of any Atlas for our declining Age seems to want more than One would be a presumption I need not acquit my self from by assuring you I dwell not so much abroad and from the notice of the dangers menacing my own Cottage And indeed I here expect the whole world to be my Compurgators and fearing no such Calamity that every one will excuse me that Labour and as readily engage against any other such Vndertaker The truth is Sir these short reflexes on Vice do exceedingly enhanse to me the Beauty and Dowry of Virtue the more I contemplate the vacuities and deformities of that I admire to find not so much as the least shadow of either in this And I am willing to proclaim aloud That Virtue alone is that noble and undaunted generosity which not any single Engineer but were every vicious person an Archimedes with all their Stratagems and force they could not in the least shake or undermine And where should I expect however wish to find this Gallantry of Spirit if not among our Nobless I look on them to be the Spirituous bloud of the Body Politick not their Purpurate descent alone but the unquestionable verity that the Bloud is the vitals of the Creature warrants my assertion and it would be an ungrateful Argument to evince it from the infallible approaches Death once enterr'd here makes upon all the fortresses of the Garrison in every tide the bloud beats up to and from the Heart The fortyfying therefore of this Archeus may it be as cordial and acceptable as if I now brought some nobler Liquor to be transfus'd into the veins and drein'd off the sheepish and vituline qualities so long fed upon and imbib'd that though we scorn the cloathing betray the sound of Wool in our language But Sir I must stop here to meet your wonder when understanding perfectly my temperament you see this close conception expos'd and enduring the sight of the Sun and every ones readiness in Physiognomy and that He you know me to be when the World can be no more advantaged by his mean capacity than he is like to be by its unexpected kindness will yet put himself under the power of suffering from it why he is not content to sit still in private digesting his resentments of the follies abroad with the freedom they allow him to be quiet and if some will ever be found doing amiss what should make him do worse to say he likes it not He will first tell you every day produces something as strange as this and what may equally be the object of your wonder unless you are wholly exempt from it and He from saying more of it But if He much more wonder at this himself and if the regard He cannot dissemble for himself would permit do hugely condemn himself and it Will you or any other like him or it the better If neither Sir believe it he will keep a little more good opinion in store for himself which shall make him esteem no better of himself and the world than if there were no relation intervening He means so much to favour himself that that shall do him as little hurt as he can do it good And if you look for your friend Sir he is not yet turn'd Anchorite he will sooner be a Pilgrim with good Company and the excellent Guide he is lately acquainted with Nor are his resentments in fear of Fermentation next Spring Nay he hopes to be as serene in the Canicular daies as now when the humors are close with the Earth lockt up in the cold and innocent embraces of the Snow And let this clear him from being thought too invective to the evils of our times that as he is sensible of a monstrous conflux of instant vices his thoughts are calm and pen but mild to those fears he has of the next age in danger to be orespread with the Superfetations of that Impiety which will be too obdurate to feel the edge of a Satyr Sir all but your self will now expect large Encomiums to recommend you to the view of the multitude But I am sensible they stand but ready to devour you and this I call you to patronize For your self Sir I averre not so much Jealousie over your inclinations to these vices as Hopes that your life will be a fair copy of all Virtues presents you to this place to supply the draught I should haue added to them and may your Auspicious beginnings continue me in acknowledgment of my defects and tenuity deterring my pen from entring on the Commendations will be your due And for your Family it is so illustrious that I shall be taxed by those that would find nothing good in it for daring to
affix this Name to so mean a Front and they will leave you in hast to come and revenge themselves upon me if I cannot escape their stomach However be pleased my wishes and well wisht directions may be favourably interpreted by your Noble mind and all of your truly noble qu lity And Sir for your friend pray wish him well also now faln to be employ'd in such a publick Character for you cannot tell what change he may not dare venture next in his life if you will with him suppose it of his Life which every day changeth not of himself and his vow'd constancy and integrity for there must and will be found some so foolish as not to fear the Printers nor Readers Press they are to pass any more than others doe Matrimony and there may be Fatality to be pleaded for that also which to fear is the next way to the curse of continuing a Miserable Life out of all hopes of a kind Reprieve of Death to cut the halter of our fears And methinks I am now acting my own Departing and have two words to say for my self before the last Farewel wherein Pardon the digression I seem to represent many of those we have seen too much personating a publick not to say republick death as if their deaths too were to be none of their own not unlike to me they appear to the poor Widow who went out to gather two sticks to prepare a small cake that they may at least dye with a good morsel in their mouths But not to forget to leave off though I doe it less formally For first I will not supplicate your favour no more than expect your thanks for being prolix but tell you my design is honest and an effect of my Honour to your Name and Person Next I know not how to intreat a good opinion or pardon of the Language only assure you I took what words I thought most full and near to my Conceptions and I can sooner alter the natural Tone of my voice to counterfeit any others than chuse to fall into the Rectifiers or Body-makers hands and suffer my Mind to be pinched and shaped into the constraint of anothers dress and Mode of expression I shall but add that all of it is but a Christmá Letter And you know we are allow'd our Masquerades and longer festivous entertains of a Carnival So as you will admit it over your threshold when I tell you under the vizour in a whisper That I am none other than Your very known Servant January 11 th 166 8 9. AN ADDRESS To the Hopefull Young Gentry OF ENGLAND SINCE you are now entring upon those years which entitle you the growing hopes of England and their fairest Care and Charge from whom is expected the strength and honour of your Age the security and glory of the Nation It cannot be unworthy consideration to Advise by what generous means the old renown of our Ancestors may be vindicated from the threatned Evils of those dangerous Vices which springing up with the young Nobless of our Countrey enervate their native vigor deplume their Nobility and in a viperous combination attempt to strangle our Hercules in it's very infancy Your birth was in the midst of busie and tumultuous Times wherein you may remember and could not but observe some of the later grand catastrophes in which part of your several families eminently acting from the various engagings and suÌ„ccesses of those your relations you still received suitable Impressions on your green years and in those early days took in a â—â—rge Map of the World in a smal Compass You have seen enough in your sphere to make you early commence Men and furnish you with notices beyond the researches of former Histories It deserves to be reckoned among the effeminacies of mankind that so many are found to complain of their peculiar infortunacy to be cast into such a stirring and unquiet Age as we have lived in Whereas an Heroic spirit and virtue esteems it a proper exercise test of it's worth from so great revolutions acquiring withal a knowledge and experience of the admirable occurrences we turn many years Chronicles to be acquainted with there having met so rare and quick a conflux of signal mercies and judgments together that we may judge them design'd by Providence either to make the utmost experiment to resuscitate a lethargic people and restore Spirits in the Compendium of Elyxirs Or as the Stage is alway fullest and crowded with dispatches at the winding up the Play that the World it self near a period is to fill up it's short duration with an Epitome of all the wonderful events of past Ages if not laboring to exceed them all in delivery of a new world of Prodigies e're it be made the greatest by it's own conflagration But among all the unhappy Ones we have liv'd to see none is so stupendous as their unsuccessfulness That when an hand from high has been exerted in all the amazing Methods of Providence we have clos'd our Eyes with a Malignant obstinacy against the clearest evidencies and acknowledgments of a Deity and been so miserably incredulous as to dare the Divine Vengeance to farther proofs of it's Power and Wisdom in our utter confusion Thus of old Vesuvius could not satisfie some unreasonable Curiosâ—s but by their addition to it's fewel or the difficulty of a recess whence they brought the scars and stigmas of their folly who hoped to pry and wade through such clouds of smoak and gulfs of Fire You are therefore to contrast with a stupidly opining Age which having forfeited the right use of it's Reason will desperatly expose all to the hazard rather than seem to be without it and stumbling at the plain most familiar and lucid Resolves of Reason and Nature will yet blindly assay to ransack all their most abstruse treasures and discuss the Sacred Mysteries Infinitely transcending either But the malice of this evil will assault you most dangerously by corrupting all the sound Rules of Morality in your converse and having conform'd your manners to the licentiousness it practises you must be forc'd to espouse those principles which will patronize your exorbitancies And this is a very insinuative debauching of the mind a Conquest without the formalities of an attaque which serve to alarm us against the Enemy There are therefore of the most pernicious habits which our young Gallants Indulge which seem to me the infallible prognosticks of their ruine and the fate of the common Body Against which I am to fortifie you as those that by their very familiarity and obviousness are become more inimical and dangerous gathering strength by not being oppos'd and by our long desuetude from the contrary renour of unquestion'd Virtue which if you admit to become the Arbitres of your Life and Conceptions will render the various aspects of every Age as pleasant and useful to your steady and clear optics as they are confusive and unaccountable to all other
which would summon the utmost skill and consort of Music to play his Dormouse asleep or would to Oriental Bezoar and Ambar dissolve Gold and Pearl to maintain a Mole To no higher archievements serve the fair Titles Revenues and Complexions of a great part of Mankind beside these nothing is intelligible about them nor can more be said of them so near to nothing do they shrink whose souls languish under the irreparable decays of tabific inactivity or are broken with pitiful low and sordid lubencies of idle entertainments wholly superseding those brave actions sublime and profitable speculations which would infuse the life of men into them and render them off Men immortal Thus their Heroic Progenitors traced Virtue and Honour through all its intricate and dangerous mazes and this was the ascent they made to that high serenenes where every Pearl of their Coronets was stellified And this only high-way to Happiness is still as open and more delightful than you imagine the common descent to Avernus And indeed it can be no other than the very dregs of Idleness that can sink the spirit or may I not rather say the Sediment of a soul below all handsome action in such an age as we live which pretends to such extraordinary Knowledge and Politeness however must be most famous for those Grand Actions to be enroll'd in it wherein Posterity will imagine none could be born but to some laborious part Had we the generosity which did alway breath with English spirits it would be so far from being extinguish'd in ignoble silence and limited to the narrow stage of our own Iland that it would break forth and display its valour through all parts of the habitable Earth Have we no Messieurs de Villa Fevillade or St. Mont-brun kindled with the sparks of honor that will flie to the succors of that Chistian Garrison before whose walls more blood has been shed than would serve for Cement to a far greater City rather than expire at home as unknown as their Tombs will be to the Candiots Certainly That place is now the fairest Field of Honor which has so long been the Christians strongest shield under their great Captain and Prince against Infidels and it will be worthy learning with how vast expense of Treasure and prodigality of Lives they study to defend their dearer Country And in the long story of that single Siege you will read all the old admired Roman Courage Conduct and Felicity which will be so signaliz'd to after times that our latest Nephews will take a Voyage only to visit its venerable ruines wherein are now inclosed those gallant Souls that have shaken off the softness and stupifying pleasures of Ease with the grim terrors of Death to sacrifice all in so glorious a Quarrel and for the common security Can we lie immersed in wanton Idleness when Christianity is concerned for her battered Bulwarks that suffer again the Siege of Rhodes more nearly and that in such sanguinary Scenes and Tragedies as the very naming them will fright the young Gallants out of the Pit Where being brought by my discourse I do not much admire to see the Theatres crowded with our Idle Spectators the hours here spent are a tolerable exemption from lewder diversions and with some obtain the credit of a School discipline periodic Lectures and Academic exercitations which teach as much gravity and experience as they think can amount to necessary aphorisms to regulate their own lives by and be diagnostic of all others I may not envy the Dramatic Ingeniosos the Empire they here sway over Wit nor the Models they give of the world and the delectable variety in which they serve up the humors that are abroad May the Stage never want a florid Laureat to Chastize predominant Vices and troublesome Follies but so prudently and industriously that they may no longer be fear'd to teach them But I could wish our Nobless would here alway admit the but necessary ceremony of a Taster that they may have its salubriousness approv'd before it take possession of their Stomach and it prove too late for an Antidote But supposing the Stage less dangerous and nauseous than some Pulpits and that every day brought forth a work as consummat as Father Ben's Yet I would advize them against their common frequenting Plays if I took it not as an eviction that they knew no more congruous advancement of their Noble faculties and were burthened with too long and empty parentheses of Time For I conceive whoever transmits his affections to be wrought on by every fiction the Poet engages them in shall in a little time cease to be Master over them and they will be at the command of every passionate Romantique Or they will be so broken or extirpated wholly by such continued and violent efforts that they will altogether be unserviceable if he lose not all the due sentiments of Nature Either of which extreme is so palpable an imbecillity of mind as need not be pointed at for it too easily betrays it self in dayly converse Greater inconveniences you may hear continually nurs'd up at the Stage and fear worse unless it be judiciously purg'd and refin'd But indeed what place time and occasion is not poison'd in a dead Sea of Idleness though they be never so free and innocent in their own disposition Virtue and Generosity it self coming but neer it though but in a volatile thought or Action is suddenly suffocated with the noysome exhalations of this almost Stygian lake I have heard in a very serene Oratory affirmed that two parts of three that are now sentenc'd under unquenchable flames had those first kindled here on earth in the fire of their burning and impure lust However it is scarce dubitable that all those miserable Souls now filling up the regions of darkness did first fit and adopt themselves to that state by contracting a supine torpor and negligence of Spirit For without controversie idleness lets in upon the Soul all the inundation of Vice and is that unhappy plot oregrown with every weed and noxious burthen of the Earth so that as some Gardens are a collection of the choycest and most usesul Plants this becomes a seminary of all the horrid excrescencies can grow out of a Dunghill We indeed see some of active lives and full of businesse fall into exorbitancies of as dismal effects as can be the off-spring of the dullest brain and hours But you may not surmise this the genuine birth of any honorable or necessary employ Those publick spirits were to be commiserated more than they who offered their lives as their Countries Victims of old if there were any fatal connexion of Vice with their Offices which are consecrated as the very Rewards and Asylums of Virtue and are so many Thrones on which she may display and dispense her Soveraign dignity and influences No I must believe any vices nourisht under their protection to be the scrofulae and luxuriant impetigos of fowl humors They will
worn out of Fashion That Pride which grows out of pregnant faculties and ample improvements of Time and Parts is so far from falling under our censure here that we may rather applaud and promote it that it may retain its indignation and just contempt of these insignificant Poppets and Mormoes whose souls bodies and cloaths seem to be but one Composition and as if they were all taken up at the same shop and artificially bombasted and compacted to sustain a burthen of wealth and fairly turn it self to all the Arrests of brutish sensuality Of this nobler and more substantial basis of Pride let this though be here said and considered with all the weight of seriousnesse That their brave spirits will bear an higher flight and there is yet above them a pleasure as satisfactory and durable as this of their high-born Pride is certainly most jejune and no less low and transient But the Epicure must be serv'd in the next place to Pride and INTEMPERANCE Is usually willing to yield unto her precedence but on good provision to be made for its Appetite immediately to succeed For it well relisheth the Genius of the Marcese in their reception of Messire and this Honorific Titles return in discovering to them the rate preparation of the leaf of a Swine So low a rate has been set upon the Man since the fairest part of his Character is that he eats and drinks well and knows good food nothing better As if the soul of the Glutton were bestowed upon him only to be a Cateresse to his carcasse and see the larder of the stomach be not unfurnisht Nay it often has no higher office than of a Cook and feasts it self with the skill to provoke as well as allay Hunger and Thirst What Adepti are those admired to be who can discourse learnedly on a studied dish can anotomize it dextrously shew you what contrary qualities meet in its temperament give you all the criticisms and analize the various Gustoes of meats and liquors To have the presence of such a Vertuoso is the best countenance you can give your Treat and your Friend you may be sure in his company you supp'd in Apollo Such a mans palat and Face for there you may tast his assay are as cautiously observ'd by the whole Table as if they were under his prescriptions for diet and as necessary as the previous infusion of the Unicorns horn to the patient Herd His frown is as fatal to the Cook as the Judges on the Bench and scorcheth all he sends up worse than at the rack This man needs not Philoxenus his wish for whatsoever is born down the swallow of any at the board I may say he has the pleasure of its gust for it becomes Manna to all the Guests by yielding the tast he put upon it and he may easily be understood to have the volupe of his Palat extended in all theirs Seems not this to be the instinct of a gallant and acute soul is not this a Gusto raised and fitted alone for Ambrosia and Nepenthe Yes certainly And you may believe such choice Viands will yield a concoction of Spirits that cannot but colonize the brain with most defaecate and noble Conceptions For they farse themselves with the most exquisite delicacies as if neither their bodies were cast in the mould of Earth nor their regalioes but the various-form'd figures of the dust they raise nor the spirits from them other than the brood which other Animals generate out of the grass we trample on But in truth do they not by their excess and high feeding oppress the brain and suffocate its operations with fuliginous steams from the kitchin obstructing the fine chanels and pipes which should transmit the finer and nimble spirits to all their stages and for all their admirable dispatches and functions while the redundancy of dull pituitous moisture unstrings and intercepts their vigorous tension and sensation No they are phlegmatic souls who think a load of dainties enrich this soil with any other product than what we cast out and spread upon the common The mind is that dry and clear light maintain'd in its Vigils by an even constant and moderate confluence of pure and innocent Spirits You drown it by powring in too much though never so rich Liquor if you impregnate its oyl with too fat and drossy a Sulphur it sends forth as noysom stenches as Vulcan's Cave and is orecast with an encircling shadow if you fret it with acid and saline particles how disturbed is its flame and offensive with continual crackling explosions of those busie bodies While the poor soul starves for want of its mean and kindly repast The pamper'd body too surcharg'd with crudities or an overgrown stock of flesh becomes its own unweildy impediment needing some Engine like the Chariot the Indians annex to their sheep to bear up theiâ— monstrous train of Tail not seldome is it an Hospital of diseases and its own House of correction too Into an unshapen bulk have we seen many extended whose parts are as useless to them as if growing in another Countrey like the unvisited rooms of some great Houses so little the care and concern of the family that Vermin have come to nestle and burrough in the wide tenements of their Flesh And truly they must of necessity devize some proportionable accretion and enlargement of their Soul if they would have all their apartiments and needless superstructures well tenanted and kept in constant repair But the direct contrary is their ruine for they appear with so little of the presence of a Spirit animating them that what they have of life is like that to be seen on the bodies of Witches in their extasies where the soul is withdrawn into the most close and silent recess the state of the voluptuous Egyptian Calyphs of old while they dawb up the pores and outward chinks to make the retiring room more dark and warm and guard the passes against foreign invasions The soul is in so little case in these additional out-jettings and looser edifices that immuring a larger compass of ground it is but more labyrinthally and securely imprisoned So some number of the world are buried under the curse of their much building and not a few masters famish'd to keep their beasts lusty by the inverted divine admonition to fortifie the inward man upon the ruines of the outward But our Apitii scorn to have their enjoyments streightned though more safely ensconced they must every day rove abroad to fetch in sacrifices to their Oesophagus and lowdly solennize the festivals of Comus crown'd with fresh chaplets of Ivy and Myrtles offering up the most delicious morsels the world has in store in their Latitudinarian Targets of Minerva as if she were here to be again born out of the variety of far-fetch'd brains and Tongues with no less libations of the Falernian grape in their lofty surveying Tricongio Goblets By the full draughts they quaff off in the noblest
Tumblers vault and without hardship of an Apprentiship become free of any Corporation This is enough to decypher them to your knowledge without the infallibility of the Porphyry Chair Avoyd them therefore as the most dreadful underminers of your liberty and happiness somewhat stoln upon the quiet of man again to cast him out and bar Paradise against us which shall be charge enough to impeach those seducing Spirits and confirm you in your blessed Innocence But I cannot have so great detestation to this herd of Satyrs as veneration to that Love which is pure and refulgent in the Conjugal or Amical Love-knot I even adore that Affection which springing from a sacred root sprouts forth it s still flourishing blossoms to enammel the fair plantations of Nature with a perpetual Spring The present the after ages while time and mankind cohabite shall rise up to honour you with their due benedictions and with the whole bank of Humanity shall acknowledge it ows its Stock to your liberal improvements Friendship I no less admire as one of the fragrantest flowers in the garden of the Creation that Odor which delights the Soul with the sympathy born from the same spot of Earth into an uniting coalition of Affections Which in differing sexes may sometime grow into elegancies not otherwise educible and if the terrene nourishment thereof be not too rich and luxuriant the complacencies of nature will by their fair attractions more powerfully and engagingly corroborate and sweeten it But a true principle of Amity in all persons and Relations will not cease to sublime it self into an Angelical perfection and innocence of Love both in wishing nothing so much as one anothers happiness and pursuing it by all the amicable obligations and assistances of Virtue with a caelestial efflorescence of Joy to have together ascended above the dull and tumultuous cares and hurries of unreasonable passions and be so farre emergent from sense as to distinguish and palat a condition that is serene congenial the Banquet of the most intelligent and amiable Spirits and a praelibation of what the happy Glorious above enjoy and feast upon But loe we are brought down again to this gross Orb of Grief and loss our Gallants Tragedy of GAMING Where we find his Royalties and Mannors parceld and rent into a small pack of Cards his money ebbing and flowing with the pace it keeps to the rifing and falling Dice all his hopes cast into a narrow box his deeds and conveyances in as little paper as the Conqueror pass'd whole Countries over by Not that our Gallants love Abridgments of our voluminous laws much less a sure and speedy way to be rich Nor do they curse the tedious formalities of Tribunals Only they admit of a distinct Court from Westminster-Hall from which no appeal is allowed Every Ordinary has its Solon and Lycurgus and as a particular Chancery expedites all the rules of its try'd and well consulted Equity and from these you shall sometime meet our Gamesters return with the countenances of those that had just pass'd a Tryal at Bar. The famous Painter Angelo might from their looks have finisht his last Judgment The loosers bearing the gulfs of despair in their very faces being undone and ejected out of all their fair affluences and so much as the hopes and possibility of having one cast more for a Fortune not one minute more of the whole stock of time to turn up a favourable revolution They themselves Relations dependents expectancies excluded and for ever debarr'd approach near to their abdicated prosperity On the other side he might have the high spring-tides of exhilient Joy enlarging their channels oreflowing all its banks to import an Ocean of new rais'd spirits to welcome and take acquaintance of the great success and delight the winner brings off In whose look not a Line Fear dares lay hold on nor thorough this crowd of exultations can one sad thought justle up to an Audience And our Painter may fear to begin a Face so full of life as all his skill and oyl will be too little to tarifie and air to brisk and rutilate But those in whom our Gaming can draw so pleasant a Prospect are indeed herein more like the blessed Heirs of Heaven in that they are the rarer instances of Beatitude some few select reserves of the collection of mankind like the crowned Victors of the many that contended for the Prize and lost it Only here our Gallants rashly commit the whole course to Fortune and chance Those who exterminate Providence may here behold what fair provision they assign to the prudence and industry of the World and account it the unluckiest advantage man could stumble on to be born with eyes endowed with understanding to discern happiness and a soul spirited to its enjoyment but have no way distinguishable to seek after and acquire it nor any means to retain it longer than the mutable contingencies of Affairs settle in one Posture For when the four stirring Elements like the suits at Cards are shuffled into another hand or such numbers fall into a benigne or cross chance there will be no bearing up against these blind events and the Age must be left to play its own Game and us without any mediate disposures or motions of our own This would be to infatuate all the designs of reason and diligence For though we know we must hazard storms unseen rocks and shelves of dangerous Seas Yet who puts out without his skilfull Pilot and Compass Nay who puts himself upon the perils of waves but on the fairest expectancy of profitable returns Only our home Adventurers here that contract their whole substance into so little bulk that they may easily heave all over-board at one lift and cast all away in one suddain wreck Nor will they be adviz'd to beware of those armed Land-Pirates that lay ready to prey upon every ventur'd Estate the arts they have to make out a Prize their stratagems to hunt it their violence and treachery invading it and barbarousness to divide the spoil in the very sight of the naked Gull So do we often see an old stout Carrack that has made many a successful honourable and rich voyage that has long carried all the fortune name and venture of a brave Family embarkt in it neither split on the fatall hardness of the times nor broken by fury of continual Tempests or lost by its old indiscoverably growing leakages no nor yet nobly sunk after manly resistance by the prevailing enemy of its nation But basely assail'd by an unsuspected crew of Villains in the very harbor unladen pillaged and cleft into so small planks that you find not so much of it remain as of our great Drakes vessel to be but a narrow Seat of that once famous name What the admirable wisdome and conduct of your Ancestors gathered into one safe Hive to be the stock and shelter of the whole Tribe to Head Countenance to all the Lineage One night surprizeth
destroys the Oeconomy of the Family extinguishes the fair Colonies it might have peopled the world with and there remains nothing of it but the shade of a great Name the empty curtail of its faint Eccho I know no law can be form'd to prevent these frequent miscarriages wherein Posterity suffers abortion and many a pregnant Spirit is suffocated in the streight enclosures of a confining vellicating Fortune who had they opportunity of fairly lanching forth their sails had been fill'd with the same breath of their Ages Honour and Applause which was a propitious gale to their Grand-fathers whereas now your own farthest extended Line shall remember your name but to lash it with their heaviest execrations For the robbing of the whole by your exportation and alienation of what was theirs more than yours has also like the Peter-penny ship stranded in Sandwich together with it sank the Harbor and made its convenient situation more regretfully deplorable in the sad disaster For it is a misery to be born to the remembrance of those honors which contemplation and sense of our present indigencies suffer us only to grieve over and sink in that also below the calamity and loss it self I could wish there were kept a Register in each shire of all who by this or any other profusion end as the Snuffs of noble and wealthy descents that their Country may exclaim at and abominate the stench And that some proportion of every fair Revenue might by no Law niceties be alienable but upon such a declination of the Family immediately pass into the Counties possession not to erect Hospitals for the devastator but be wholly converted to the education of the most hopeful Youth can be recommended those of that Name primarily respected for the making up the breach among them and raising up as flourishing a name again to the Nation Nor can your severity be too rigid upon the spend-thrift who has submitted himself and Fortune as the Military discipline sometime does its offenders lives to the lot upon the Drum-head and his posterity under the Spear to infamous slavery and sufferings Spirits so ignobly base that were their Fathers dust intrusted on their inheritance would even pawn their quiet ashes and old monuments to build one poor bank at play These are less worthy our commiseration than the many Malefactors we with dry eies follow to Execution He that salcheth or robbs on the high-way is not in hope of such booties nor capacity to destroy more than single lives Here we see play'd away the lives and beings of those they have no more just power to dispose of than the Church has to alienate its consecrate rights to profane abuses or than we can force of satisfaction for the cruelty and rapines of Romans and Danes upon our Fore-fathers I might add to the shame of our Gallants madness what their hopes of gain can be upon their greatest success Did you ever see any great Family made greater by accessions at Play Certainly Industry and honest Labor rais'd all that we now see bearing up above the malice and fate of old Time An Estate thus built has no one rafter but is seasoned every stone has the stability of a Quarry 't is cemented with long wrought sweat and is a morsel on which Saturn himself will break his fangs What we gain by fair diligence has a sweetness which stollen waters shall sooner become wine than emulate a sweetness which from the soundness of its constitution forbids corruption and must needs conserve every particular as being the condiment of Time it self which would be so burthensome to us that were there no industry necessary to till sow and reap our fields our bread and life would be alike embittered to us All your gains at play can never be adopted to serious and noble uses like the I holoze Gold and all Sacrilegious spoils they rather bring a Coal to consume your own high-rais'd hopes and Fortunes Those that rob you are anon under the pilferings of their own vicious Lusts and the Infidels that depend on Events of as great succes evey day will find their own Family unprovided for I will joyn to this Quixotry its inseparable Sancho through all the adventures of Gaming that bears the weapons and Portmantua full of Lightning and Thunder I mean the SWEARING That attends Gamesters which is so much the more inexcusable because all this while our Gallants must play with as little concern and regret as the Don had whether he did beat or was beaten the generosity of his spirit and glory of the Adventurers would not bear a second beating by his own passions But certainly that great Isabella who in her extremities of Childbirth cover'd her face and not so much as by her looks would derogate from Majesty could not so quietly look on the intrenchments upon her state and Soveraignty but would passionately assert it against her own Ferdinand And I will not believe Oaths and Curses because they accent our ordinary Language and are used to veil many natural defects sound no more when we part with an arm or limb of an Estate If they are not all this while in passion these might have been well spared if they be these like bellows blow it into greater heat and fury and this can be but the very blowing away an overture to an excuse However these are the Gamesters Artillery and Trumpets too if they come off with a fair Atchievment these proclaim the Prize if worsted they sound the foile too They have not Oaths enough to magnifie and invoke Fortune in her favourable aspect Nor ever hope to be reveng'd of her frowns by belching up their hasty and fowl execrations on the Mignion As temerariously and blindly they cast round about them these fire-brands and fatal ponyards as she seems to them wantonly to dispense her destinies But where the Fire catches and the Wounds fall the Nature of this fulminant Gold will lowdly direct you You think to blow and shoot it up against Heaven but it kindles below and breaks downward recoyling fearfully with the noise and burning of a Cannon upon your own bosom Might I enquire what these bold Gigantic Combatants think of Fortune or a surer hand guiding their Game If there be none why do the Brutes so rave at what do they discharge their continual brayings why so tormentously rend their weary throats If there be a Fortune She is blind and unconcern'd Why should they commit their hopes and enjoyments to the Winds But if indeed you strive with Heaven 't is because you can subject its decrees to yours or fear them not If the first you only are in fault if you be not as happy as you would be Conquered frighted Heaven must have stoop'd to your commands Why complain you farther of it If the latter steel your audaciousness They are very impotent and despicable cannot reach and punish your daring impieties Be confident however this is not the way to call down caelestial
auxiliaries as infernal Spirits are willing to answer hard and terrible words your defiances arm them against you to powr down greater fury to compleat and triumph in your extremest misery But our Gallants plead not so much the ventilation of Passion the explosion only of some fired discontented Spirits by their cursed Oaths where I cannot conceive the Devil for their Example They use them as the Elegancies and figures of speech as necessary as the Ornaments of their dress They are their supplements unto all parts of discourse and Rhetoric Oaths and imprecations file off all rudeness and barbarisms act the full force of perswasion and the very acuteness of a declamation and Satyr They can be as ill layd down by our Nobless as their Muffs in winter so frigid and shrivel'd would their converse be without them They have a way to comprize much of their great minds in this kind of Laconic brevity Their Pages Coachmen and Watermen with but one round mouth'd Ejaculation and a hand toward their sword straight know what they mean and as Spaniels are taught readily execute their pleasure The same again breath'd with a melting accent smooth face and bending body serves in the quintessences of complements and protests of most oblieging friendship and service O depraved times and more degenerate Humanity Is there no way left us to be ingenious and facetious but by obscenities or monstrous abuse of all that is sacred Does Profaneness and contempt of Divinity encircle our Wits with that Laurel which will both dare the Thunderer and evade the blow Then let us yield them immortality and dread the stroaks of their incensed Wit as the vulgar doe the tails of Comets and the multiplication of Suns But if we reflect on the genuine evaporations of these Ingenioso's how like are they to Meteors and Hurricanes of wit rather than fixed stars or the Heaven born placid and fructifying Dew rather lowd foaming forced and angry Torrents than the smooth and Chrystalline stream flowing easily from a pure Fountain of happy invention That which can run with an even uninterrupted vein of fertile ingeny and knowledge thorough all the windings of Art and Nature Sometime emptying it self in the profound speculations of abstruse Philosophy to try the most reaching fathom Anon playing with and turning up the looser sands resting on the sides of the courted shoars crisping its light dividing waves into limpid curls with whispred purling murmurs as if weaving into bracelets and with its studied musick obliging its Muses stay and delight 'T is the facility and fertility of Wit alone can impregnate the most barren Subject make a Garden of a Common contrive an oregrown Forrest into a Grove or innocent Labyrinth cut a rocky Precipice into a delightful Grott and Waterworks and is at no knotty emergency so stopt and plung'd that it needs to call a Deity down upon the stage to make its way open and disembogued Since then the essentials of true wit are of a different Origination and progressions from the Spurious attempts of those who laying their titles so boldly from Heaven are but the monstrous race of Centaurs and far from Demi-Gods Let the Nobles confess their mistake when they find this cloud break in noise and smoak and include no other Juno And may they the more easily quit this superfluity of Vice as what sounds with no other effect than the vanity of Childrens Potguns and Crackers 'T is a wickedness yields so little present satisfaction and may so easily be shut out of all discourse that it is the huge amazement of sober men that any will venture paying dear for so fond a Lubency That converse which would be not only innocent but delightful is often thus orespiced and made too poynant with sprinkling those hot and high Oaths and Curses that our spirits are in danger of the air they breath like needles and launcets piercing a tender and sedate Soul at the same time making the wounds deeper with regrett to be so unhappily bound and sow'd up in a bag with nettles and Wasps This Vice may more decently now also be relinquished as being the Familiar of their very Lacquays the Blazonry of the dregs of the Populace In births cloaths diet diversions and the heightning your pleasures in the melioration of your minds by education and converse in your hopes designs and noble employments you far outstrip all their enjoyments and attempts But here they can Rival I doe not say outvie you in number volubility and as lowd volleys of Oaths and execrations Now it concerns your Honour to retire leave them the sport and quarry which is not worth your Time and does but dishonest your truly noble Entertainments You may here make a most profitable experiment upon the world most docible by Examples that descend You have convey'd this cursed sound through the whole Iland in an instant as in the whispring pipes the Roman wall is said to have carry'd in so long a Traverse Would you might be entreated to change these harsh and terrible sounds into soft and peaceable that the affrighments and Furies those have alarm'd may be appeas'd and we may appear to be seriously busie not tumultuously startled and hurryed together as to an uproar and Riot You may hence inform us whether signal Virtue can be as exemplary as Vice has been by imitation destructive So may you recover the reputation your births have given you above the commonalty and your Faith remain inviolable That your but necessary asseverations upon your Generosity and Honour may be reverenced in your selves and sacred in the esteem of your Inferiours We should now at last be grosly deluded if we expect to find Religion in those Persons we struck at in the series of our discourse For none of those Vices can be the Rule of that Profession we have espoused No softer a word and power than ATHEISM Regulates these mens lives and emboldens their impieties With this Generalissimo of the Powers of darkness this skirmish shall be concluded as that which some glosse the race of man shall at last set and conclude in And now indeed when we see the notion of a Deity usurp'd but as the occult qualities to be derided only and exploded We cannot but find the shadows growing and stealing apace upon us But certainly 't is an affectation of obscurity envelopes us in night and shuts out those raies which cannot but in every point clear up to us the being of a Creator 'T is grosse Ignorance Inconsideration malitious wickedness of the world that dares not will not admit a God into their thoughts to become the Supreme Arbiter of their hearts and lives Therefore they perplex their brains to dispute it off the stage and with far greater anxieties labor to entangle the conception of a Deity than they can so much as suppose in acknowledging their makers infinite perfections For shall fond man whom we every day see crumbling into Earth that knows not his own beginning nor
may spring forth proportionate to the shades and twilight of a long morning dwelling in the dawning East of the Jews by a culminating high Glory and the leisurable progressions of Time if it have not yet ascended its Meridian Lustre and greater beams and glories will be displaied unto after ages if there be reserved a succession of greater wonders in which the whole world shall at once see and adore the Scepter of their Redeemer and every part of it feel the power glory and Joy of their Deliverance from Death and Hell Why should our evil eie envy this happy exaltation of Light and the munificence of our Lord Why should we bind up the hands and restrain the sweet influences of Heaven Rather may we suppose that this late manifestation was no Niggardice to the Happiness of man but that it will be extended with the most free and open effusions and largesses of divine bounty But I dread to approach these Mysteries with a bold hand and profane foot and advise others against timeratious putting forth theirs to the Sacred Ark which needs not humane support For we may be so mistaken in our dark conceptions and self relations as to run into a quite contrary resolution of the egresses and motions of the Deity And all the liberty we take in meditation on these hidden verities will be most allowable which makes way for our enlarged apprehensions and adorations of Infinite Goodness And indeed a wise man is not so much in prospective and foreseeing Futurities as if I may use the word in a continued Retrospect here he may attain certainty in his knowledge of things Past a sober conjecture of the following an insight into himself seeing the Errors overseen and setting up a fair rule for the time to come But I would not be thought all this while apologizing for Christianity especially to those great Souls who by their solemn initial Vows more special obliges and all the marks and bonds of their Nobility are engaged to defend the honour thereof with their utmost perils For notwithstanding that Sarcasm of railing Julian to the complaints of the poor persecuted Christians To you it is given to suffer I am confident the greatest opposition of the mad world cannot prevail against this greatest Truth I might spend Volumes to give you the Arguments our Religion defends it self withall While Reason and the tongues of men and Angels can speak they cannot be silent nor want demonstrative justifications of that Goodness which form'd them to a communication and declaration thereof Christianity for I will not divide and weaken it into factions has of late been so powerfully vindicated that Atheism can find out no new irreligion which has not been beaten down prevented and obviated And may that Tongue be for ever useless which will not speak in defence of his glorious Maker Our Profession having suffered of late by ostentation of those who had no Religion may not another Thief come on this hand and steal away that necessary Declaration and maintainance of our Faith and hopes in too nice and modest Concealment of the truly devote Soul I may fear a trespass on the Labors and Victories of our late Crowned Champions of Christianity whose Learning and Piety will render this our Age notoriously famous by the challenges they have answered of bold impiety Nor can I quit my self perfectly in the rules and method of my discourse wherein I have rather taken the liberty of a Letter and pray allow it to be like what it was born the rest is most of the notions and long retained Sentiments of my own mind And I believe would every one turn over those of his own Brain many would be found so connatural to the being of the Soul and Truth it self and those in a distinct Character from others legible that I may imagine as God has given each its specific Spirit so by differing Ideas this Principle is stamped and visible upon every one for we see a Diversity of all faculties and capacities distinguishing the minds of men God revealing himself also according to the module of our Intellectuals Yet so as all confesse and read this one great Truth of his Essence though in various impressions on the Soul And that our conceptions of the Existence of a Deity so much differ destroies not the reality of what we diversely apprehend For bring into any Company how great soever some exotic and unknown Rarity There shall not two agree perfectly in all the modes of apprehending it because they have an essential Diversity in the Faculties and Organs as also a different stock and possession of former Notions to which they have recourse and refer this present object If it be so in things incurring sense and where often no affection is touched In this Pure Abstraction from all sence and a notion that stirs up and works on every passion which are all so variable that none of them can ever be said to appear again in their former Phases no wonder that our Conceptions hereupon are as diverse as our Souls and Countenances But that all have their proper and innate notions of the being of their Maker I have greatest reason to affirm and confidently appeal to any person whether he found not this the only Indelible Principle upon his Soul and after all his labour and art of oblivion if it does not yet fairly upbraid the sponge But this is a subject so copiously and methodically elsewhere and by those whose profession has exercised their notions and parts eventilated That I refer all mine to their Better directed and therefore more confident Speculations only craving pardon of those our venerable Guids in Holy things for any sudden escapes of long confined thoughts which without offence I hope to their consecrate function I have bundled up together to try how consentaneous they will be one with another and out of an humble hope to serve our hopeful Young Gentry in the early measures they are to take of themselves and their Age. My whole design being to gain but so favourable an influence on our young Nobless now fairly blossoming that outliving the noysom Blasts and Morning Nippings of the dangerous Vices their Age and Quality are too obnoxious unto no season being more bewailed than that of the forward and tender Spring killed by hard and unnatural Colds They may yield a pleasant shade and protection to Virtue and derive the wholesome and lasting Fruits thereof to succeeding Ages flourishing in the Cions of their Noble stock May you therefore thus revive the high Renown of your Famous Grandfathers that their great Images may seem inspir'd to live again in you the Genuine Heirs of their Noblest Possessions May you among all Nations recover and advance the high Honour and Interest of your dear Coutry May the Glory and Puissance of your long desired Soveraign be aggrandiz'd by the happy Aceessions of your wisedom integrity and courage That the Sagacity and Gravity of your Heads may seem to constitute under him a Judicature and Council as large as his Dominions The Loyalty and Generosity of your Hearts be the Beams and Security of the Crown The Valour and Activity of your Arms his Forts and Navy Royal and your very private Families represent and every where maintain the Splendor and Sanctions of a Regal Court Then shall that good hand of Divine Providence which we have seen to rise in a small cloud and suddenly span ore the face of our whole Horizon with amazing darkness and desolations turn all its terrors upon our Enemies and showr down as of old the wonderful Deliverances of his Power and benignity upon us which shall sill up our furrows with the blessed encrease of Truth and Peace And England clear'd of all its noxious weeds and Briars under the constant irrigation of Heavenly munificence and care shall no longer bear the folly ingratitude and curse of so long Barrenness but become a fair planted Enclosure of all its former Plenty and Prosperity FINIS THE CONTENTS OF THE Principal HEADS Herein contained IDLENES Pag. 8. PRIDE Pag. 26. INTEMPERANCE Pag. 37. LUST Pag. 50. GAMING Pag. 75. SWEARING Pag. 85. ATHEISM Pag. 94.