logick of his proper principles. Again, to speak nothing of the fin against the Holy Ghoft, whofe cure not only, but whose nature is unknown; I can cure the gout or stone in fome, sooner than divinity can cure pride, or avarice in others. I can cure vices by phyfick, when they remain incurable by divinity, and they fhall obey my pills, when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly fay, we all labour against our own cure, for death is the cure of all difeafes. There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know but this, which, tho' naufeous to squeamish stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality.

SECT. X.

For my converfation, it is like the fun's with all men, with a friendly afpect to good and bad. Methinks

.

Methinks there is no man bad, and the worst beft; that is, while they are kept within the circle of those qualities wherein they are good: there is no man's mind of fuch difcordant and jarring a temper to which a tuneable difpofition may nor strike a harmony. Magne virtutes nec minora vitia, is the pofy of the best natures, * and may be inverted on the worft; there are in the most depraved and venemous difpofitions certain pieces that remain untouched; which by an antiperiftafis become more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preferve themfelves from the contagion of their oppofite vices, and perfift entire beyond the general corruption. For thus it is alfo in nature. The greateft balfames do lye enveloped in the bodies of moft powerful corrofives; I fay moreover, and I ground upon experience, that poifons.con

contain within themfelves their own antidote, and that which preferves them from the venom of themfelves, without which they were not destructive to others only, but to themselves alfo. But it is the corruption that I fear within me, not the contagion of commerce without me. 'Tis that unruly legion within me that will deftroy me, 'tis I that do infect myfelf; * the man without a navel yet lives within me; I feel that original canker corrode and devour me, and therefore defende meDeus de me,Lord deliver me from myfelf, is apart of, my litany, and the firft words of my retired imaginations. is no man alone, becaufe every man is a microcofm, and carries the whole world about him; † Nunquam minus folus quam cum folus, tho it be the apophthegm of a wife. man, is yet true in the mouth of a fool; for indeed, tho' in a wildernefs,

Cc

There

explains p. 184-5

derness, a man is never alone, not only because he is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he is with the devil, who always conforts with our folitude, and is that unruly rebel that musters up thofe difordered motions, which accompany our fequeftred imaginations. And to fpeak more narrowly, there is no fuch thing as folitude, nor any thing that can be faid to be alone, and by itself, but God, who is his own circle, and can fubfift by himself: all others befides their diffimilar and heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply their natures, cannot fubfift without the concourfe of God, and the fociety of that hand which doth uphold their natures. In brief, * there can be nothing truly alone, and by itself, which is not truly one, and fuch is only God: All others do tranfcend an unity, and so by confequence are many.

SECT.

A

SECT. XI.

Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would found to common ears like a fable; for the world, I count it not an inn, but an hofpital; and a place not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcofm of mine own frame, that I caft mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round fometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outfide, perufing only my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas's fhoulders. The carth is a point not only in refpect of the heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part within us: that mafs of flesh that circumfcribes me, *limits not my mind: that surface that tells us the heavens hath an end, cannot per

fuade

*