A ZEALOT

Is a hot-headed brother that has his understanding blocked up on both sides, like a fore-horse’s eyes, that he sees only straight-forwards and never looks about him, which makes him run on according as he is driven with his own caprice.  He starts and stops (as a horse does) at a post only because he does not know what it is, and thinks to run away from the spur while he carries it with him.  He is very violent, as all things that tend downward naturally are; for it is impossible to improve or raise him above his own level.  He runs swiftly before any wind, like a ship that has neither freight nor ballast, and is as apt to overset.  When his zeal takes fire it cracks and flies about like a squib until the idle stuff is spent, and then it goes out of itself.  He is always troubled with small scruples, which his conscience catches like the itch, and the rubbing of these is both his pleasure and his pain.  But for things of greater moment he is unconcerned, as cattle in the summer-time are more pestered with flies that vex their sores than creatures more considerable, and dust and motes are apter to stick in blear-eyes than things of greater weight.  His charity begins and ends at home, for it never goes farther nor stirs abroad.  David was eaten up with the zeal of God’s house; but his zeal, quite contrary, eats up God’s house; and as the words seem to intimate that David fed and maintained the priests, so he makes the priests feed and maintain him; and hence his zeal is never so vehement as when it concurs with his interest; for, as he styles himself a professor, it fares with him, as with men of other professions, to live by his calling and get as much as he can by it.  He is very severe to other men’s sins that his own may pass unsuspected, as those that were engaged in the conspiracy against Nero were most cruel to their own confederates; or as one says—­

  “Compounds for sins he is inclined to
  By damning those he has no mind to.”

THE OVERDOER

Always throws beyond the jack and is gone a mile.  He is no more able to contain himself than a bowl is when he is commanded to rub with the greatest power and vehemence imaginable, and nothing lights in his way.  He is a conjurer that cannot keep within the compass of his circle, though he were sure the devil would fetch him away for the least transgression.  He always overstocks his ground and starves instead of feeding, destroys whatsoever he has an extraordinary care for, and, like an ape, hugs the whelp he loves most to death.  All his designs are greater than the life, and he laughs to think how Nature has mistaken her match, and given him so much odds that he can easily outrun her.  He allows of no merit but that which is superabundant.  All his actions are superfoetations, that either become monsters or twins; that is, too much, or the same again; for he is but a supernumerary