Page images
PDF
EPUB

2. There is humilitas quædam in vitio. If a man does not take notice of that excellency and perfection that is in himself, how can he be thankful to God, who is the author of all excellency and perfection? Nay, a man hath too mean an opinion of himself, it will render him unserviceable both to God and

mall.

3. Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up his dignity. In gluttons there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; it is not the eating, nor it is not the drinking, that is to be blamed, but the excess.

[merged small][ocr errors]

Se

Public Interest.

All might go well in the commonwealth, if every one in the parliament would lay down his own interest, and aim at the general good. If a man was sick, and the whole college of physicians should come to him, and administer to him severally, haply so long as they observed the rules of art, he might recover; but if one of them had a great deal of scammony by him, he must put off that, therefore he prescribes scammony; another had a great deal of rhubarb, and he must put off that, and therefore he prescribes rhubard, &c. they would certainly kill

the man. We destroy the commonwealth, while we preserve our own private interests, and neglect the public.

King.

1. A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat; if every man should buy, or if there were many buyers, they would never agree; one would buy what the other liked not, or what the other had bought before, so there would be a confusion. But that charge being committed to one, he, according to his discretion, pleases all. If they have not what they would have one day, they shall have it the next, or something as good.

2. The word king directs our eyes. Suppose it had been consul or dictator. To think all kings alike, is the same folly, as if a consul of Aleppo or Smyrna, should claim to himself the same power that a consul of Rome. Or a duke of England the duke of Florence. the word Bonus did as the Hebrew word sides, let the divines in their pulpits say what they will, they in their practice deny, that all is the

What, am not I consul? should think himself like Nor can it be imagined that signify the same in Greek, did with the Jews.

Be

king's. They sue him, and so does all the nation

whereof they are a part.

What matter is it, then,

what they preach or teach in the schools?

3. Kings are all individual, this or that king; there is no species of kings.

4. A king that claims privileges in his own country, because they have them in another, is just as a cook, that claims fees in one lord's house, because they are allowed in another. If the master of the house will yield them, well and good.

5. The text, Render unto Cæsar, the things that are Caesar's, makes as much against kings as for them; for it says plainly, that some things are not Cæsar's. But divines make choice of it, first in flattery, and then because of the other part adjoined to it, Render unto God the things that are God's, where they bring in the church.

6. A king outed of his country, that takes as much upon him as he did at home in his own court, is as if a man on high, and I being upon the ground,' used to lift up my voice to him, that he might hear me, at length should come down, and then expects I should speak as loud to him as I did before.

Selden was a man of very extensive learning; he is styled, even by the learned Grotius,

"the honour of the English nation;" a compliment, which from the literary celebrity of the bestower, he is said to have prized above all other marks of consideration.

But his language is little deserving of commendation. It has been observed, that it is a mixture of all that is bad, as well as good, in the Latin language. A still worse fault is, that his method is often perplexed and oscure. Yet his writings are replete with erudition and rational observation; circumstances which stamp a value upon them, which the direct opposites of the defects mentioned, unaccompanied by real information, could never have bestowed. Bacon had so high an opinion of Selden, that he desired by his will, his advice should be taken respecting the publication or suppression of his own MS. treatises.

KING JAMES.

I HAVE placed James in the rear of the wor thies which honoured his reign, not precisely (as Hume states it) because that is his place when considered as an author; but because I happened not to get his article in time to come first.

1

The English works of James I. were published in 1616, folio, by James, bishop of Winton, and dean of his majesty's Chapel Royal. The several pieces contained in the volume are: 1. A Paraphrase upon the Revelation.

2. Two Meditations: the first upon the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th verses of the 20th chap. of the Revelation: the second upon the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, and 29th verses of the 15th chap. of the first book of the Chronicles.

3. Dæmonology.

[ocr errors]
« PreviousContinue »