A young man is the spring of time, when nature in her pride shows her beauty to the world.  He is the delight of the eye and the study of the mind, the labour of instruction and the pupil of reason.  His wit is in making or marring, his wealth in gaining or losing, his honour in advancing or declining, and his life in abridging or increasing.  He is a bloom that either is blasted in the bud or grows to a good fruit, or a bird that dies in the nest or lives to make use of her wings.  He is a colt that must have a bridle ere he be well managed, and a falcon that must be well maned or he will never be reclaimed.  He is the darling of nature and the charge of reason, the exercise of patience and the hope of charity.  His exercise is either study or action, and his study either knowledge or pleasure.  His disposition gives a great note of his generation, and yet his breeding may either better or worse him, though to wish a blackamoor white be the loss of labour, and what is bred in the bone will never out of the flesh.  In sum, till experience have seasoned his understanding, he is rather a child than a man, a prey of flattery or a praise of providence, in the way of grace to prove a saint, or in the way of sin to grow a devil.

A HOLY MAN.

A holy man is the chiefest creature in the workmanship of the world.  He is the highest in the election of love, and the nearest to the image of the human nature of his Maker.  He is served of all the creatures in the earth, and created but for the service of his Creator.  He is capable of the course of nature, and by the rule of observation finds the art of reason.  His senses are but servants to his spirit, which is guided by a power above himself.  His time is only known to the eye of the Almighty, and what he is in his most greatness is as nothing but in His mercy.  He makes law by the direction of life, and lives but in the mercy of love.  He treads upon the face of the earth till in the same substance he be trod upon, though his soul that gave life to his senses live in heaven till the resurrection of his flesh.  He hath an eye to look upward towards grace, while labour is only the punishment of sin.  His faith is the hand of his soul, which layeth hold on the promise of mercy.  His patience is the tenure of the possession of his soul, his charity the rule of his life, and his hope the anchor of his salvation.  His study is the state of obedience, and his exercise the continuance of prayer; his life but a passage to a better, and his death the rest of his labours.  His heart is a watch to his eye, his wit a door to his mouth, his soul a guard to his spirit, and his limbs are but labourers for his body.  In sum, he is ravished with divine love, hateful to the nature of sin, troubled with the vanities of the world, and longing for his joy but in heaven.

GEOFFREY MINSHULL.