A SUPERSTITIOUS MAN

Is more zealous in his false, mistaken piety than others are in the truth; for he that is in an error has farther to go than one that is in the right way, and therefore is concerned to bestir himself and make the more speed.  The practice of his religion is, like the Schoolmen’s speculations, full of niceties and tricks, that take up his whole time and do him more hurt than good.  His devotions are labours, not exercises, and he breaks the Sabbath in taking too much pains to keep it.  He makes a conscience of so many trifles and niceties, that he has not leisure to consider things that are serious and of real weight.  His religion is too full of fears and jealousies to be true and faithful, and too solicitous and unquiet to continue in the right, if it were so.  And as those that are bunglers and unskilful in any art take more pains to do nothing, because they are in a wrong way, than those that are ready and expert to do the excellentest things, so the errors and mistakes of his religion engage him in perpetual troubles and anxieties, without any possibility of improvement until he unlearn all and begin again upon a new account.  He talks much of the justice and merits of his cause, and yet gets so many advocates that it is plain he does not believe himself; but having pleaded not guilty, he is concerned to defend himself as well as he can, while those that confess and put themselves upon the mercy of the Court have no more to do.  His religion is too full of curiosities to be sound and useful, and is fitter for a hypocrite than a saint; for curiosities are only for show and of no use at all.  His conscience resides more in his stomach than his heart, and howsoever he keeps the commandments, he never fails to keep a very pious diet, and will rather starve than eat erroneously or taste anything that is not perfectly orthodox and apostolical; and if living and eating are inseparable, he is in the right, and lives because he eats according to the truly ancient primitive Catholic faith in the purest times.

A DROLL

Plays his part of wit readily at first sight, and sometimes better than with practice.  He is excellent at voluntary and prelude, but has no skill in composition.  He will run divisions upon any ground very dexterously, but now and then mistakes a flat for a sharp.  He has a great deal of wit, but it is not at his own disposing, nor can he command it when he pleases unless it be in the humour.  His fancy is counterchanged between jest and earnest, and the earnest lies always in the jest, and the jest in the earnest.  He treats of all matters and persons by way of exercitation, without respect of things, time, place, or occasion, and assumes the liberty of a free-born Englishman, as if he were called to the long robe with long ears.  He imposes a hard task upon himself as well as those he converses with, and more than either can bear without