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all kind of company, they be to many so unwelcome and troublesome in distracting or diverting their better employments, that oftentimes those they come to conceal themselves upon purpose, or suppose some necessary business that calls them away, with intention only to get rid of them. From which tediousness if no better employment of their own can divert them, yet the consideration of the unseasonable trouble they put those to whom they visit should even shame them from frequenting so bad a custom.

Yet custom hath so far prevailed, that I dare not prescribe a total neglect, but counsel to avoid frequent and assidual practice of so superfluous though received a fashion. Those that duty, love, respect, business or familiarity bind us to, we must observe and visit, lest they interpret our absence to be either in contempt of their persons or a carelessness and disesteem of their favor and friendship. And howsoever, with a non obstante, I do not by this seclude society and conversation, for such a solitary and unsociable disposition I hold to be worse than this gadder.

OWEN FELLTHAM

OF PURITANS

I FIND many that are called Puritans; yet few or none that will own the name. Whereof the reason sure is this, that 'tis for the most part held a name of infamy, and is so new, that it hath scarcely yet obtained a definition; nor is it an appellation derived from one man's name, whose tenents we may find digested into a volume, whereby we do much err in the application. It imports a kind of excellency above another, which man (being conscious of his own frail bendings) is ashamed to assume to himself. So that I believe there are men which would be Puritans, but indeed not any that are. One will have him, one that lives religiously, and will not revel it in a shoreless excess. Another, him that separates from our divine assemblies. Another, him that in some tenents only is peculiar. Another, him that will not swear. Absolutely to define him, is a work, I think, of difficulty; some I know that rejoice at the name; but sure they be such as least understand it. As he is more generally in these times taken, I suppose we may call him a Church-rebel, or one that would exclude order, that his brain might rule. To decline offences, to be careful and conscionable in our several actions, is a purity that every man ought to labor for, which we may well do without a sullen segregation from all society. If there be any privileges, they are surely granted to the children of the king, which are those that are the children of heaven. If mirth and recreations be lawful,

sure such a one may lawfully use it. If wine were given to cheer the heart, why should I fear to use it for that end? Surely, the merry soul is freer from intended mischief than the thoughtful man. A bounded mirth is a patent, adding time and happiness to the crazed life of man. Yet if Laertius reports him rightly, Plato deserves a censure for allowing drunkenness at festivals; because, says he, as then, the Gods themselves reach wines to present men. God delights in nothing more than in a cheerful heart, careful to perform him service. What parent is it that rejoiceth not to see his child pleasant, in the limits of a filial duty? I know, we read of Christ's weeping, not of his laughter: yet we see, he graceth a feast with his first miracle, and that a feast of joy; and can we think that such a meeting could pass without the noise of laughter? What a lump of quickened care is the melancholic man! Change anger into mirth, and the precept will hold good still: Be merry but sin not. As there be many that in their life assume too great a liberty, so I believe there are some that abridge themselves of what they might lawfully use. Ignorance is an ill steward, to provide for either soul or body. A man that submits to reverent order, that sometimes unbends himself in a moderate relaxation, and in all, labors to approve himself in the sereneness of a healthful conscience, such a Puritan I will love immutably. But when a man, in things but ceremonial, shall spurn at the grave authority of the Church, and out of a needless nicety be a thief to himself of those benefits which God hath allowed him or out of a blind and uncharitable pride, censure and scorn others as reprobates, or out of obstinacy fill the world with brawls about undeterminable tenents, I shall think him one of those, whose opinion hath fevered his zeal to madness and distraction. I have more faith in one Salomon, than in a thousand Dutch

parlors of such opinionists. "Behold then; what I have seen good! That it is comely to eat, and to drink, and to take pleasure in all his labor wherein he travaileth under the sun, the whole number of the days of his life, which God giveth him. For this is his portion. Nay, there is no profit to man, but that he eat, and drink, and delight his soul with the profit of his labor."1 For, he that saw other things but vanity, saw this also, that it was the hand of God. Methinks the reading of Ecclesiastes should make a Puritan undress his brain, and lay off all those fanatic toys that jingle about his understanding. For my own part, I think the world hath not better men than some that suffer under that name; nor withal, more scelestique villains. For when they are once elated with that pride, they so contemn others, that they infringe the laws of all human society.

OF REPREHENSION

To reprehend well, is both the hardest, and most necessary part of friendship. Who is it that will either not merit a check or endure one? Yet wherein can a friend more unfold his love, than in preventing dangers before their birth, or in reducing a man to safety which is travelling in the way to ruin? I grant, the manner of the application may turn the benefit into an injury; and then it both strengtheneth error and wounds the giver. Correction is never in vain. Vice is a miry deepness; if thou strivest to help one out and dost not, thy stirring him sinks him in the further. Fury is the madder for his chain. When thou chidest thy wandering friend, do it secretly, in season, in love-not in the ear of a popular convention. For many times, the presence of a multitude makes a man take up an unjust defense, 1 Ecclesiastes, ii, 24; viii, 5.

rather than fall in a just shame. Diseased eyes endure not an unmasked sun, nor does the wound but rankle more which is vanned by the public air. Nor can I much blame a man, though he shuns to make the vulgar his confessor; for they are the most uncharitable telltales that the burthened earth doth suffer. They understand nothing but the dregs of actions, and with spattering those abroad, they besmear a deserving fame. A man had better be convinced in private, than be made guilty by a proclamation. Open rebukes are for magistrates and courts of justice, for stelled chambers, and for scarlets in the thronged hall. Private are for friends; where all the witnesses of the offender's blushes are blind, and deaf, and dumb. We should do by them as Joseph thought to have done by Mary, seek to cover blemishes with secrecy. Public reproof is like striking of a deer in the herd, it not only wounds him to the loss of inabling blood, but betrays him to the hound, his enemy, and makes him, by his fellows, be pushed out of company. Even concealment of a fault argues some charity to the delinquent, and when we tell him of it in secret, it shows we wish he should amend, before the world comes to know his amiss. Next, it ought to be in season, neither when the brain is misted with arising fumes, nor when the mind is madded with un-reined passions. Certainly, he is drunk himself that profanes reason so as to urge it to a drunken man. Nature unloosed in a flying speed cannot come off with a sudden stop.

Quis matrem, nisi mentis inops, in funere nati

Flere vetat? non hoc ulla monenda loco est.

He's mad, that dries a mother's eyes full tide
At her son's grave. There, 'tis no time to chide.

Was the opinion of the smoothest poet. To admonish a

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