rain may not win through, which goes very wittily in his oun language, beneficia aliis benefactis legito ne perpluant.  It is true the Duke designed no more by this dimission bot to ward of the present blow, and promised to keep all those offices for his oun behoof till the speat and humour of the people agst him wer spent and runne out, bot the Dutchess and others about him did so violent him that he was not so good as his word.  They insinuating to him that it was not safe to trust a man of sense and parts whom he had so highly enraged and disobleidged, and that the bringing him back to power was but the putting him in a capacity to revenge himself, and the truth is that has ever been the practice of the inconsiderat mad world to runne doun any man when he is falling, as Juvenal observes in the case of Sejanus, who brings in the mobile who had adored him the day befor with Hosannas crying with displayed gorge, dum jacet in ripa, calcemus Caesaris hostem, and it is very fitt that divyne providence tryst us with such dispensations.  For if wee had alwayes prosperous gales that is so inebriating are potion that lyke the herb mentioned by Homer, it’s ready both to cause us forgett our selves and our dewty to God, and I speak it from my oun knowledge that Abbotshall was rauch bettered by thir traverses of fortune, for it both gave him ane ryse and opportunity with more leasure and tyme to examine what he had done in the hurry of publick busines, and to repent and amend our errors is in Seneca’s Moralls the next best to the being innocent and not haveing committed thesse faults att all:  the French proverb being of eternall truth that the shorter ane folly be it is the better; and tho’ that physicall rule a privatione ad habitium non datur regressus be also true in politicks as in physicks that a man divested of his offices seldome ever recovers his former greatnes, yet Lauderdale being ashamed of the injustice with which he had treated Abbotshall, he made him many large promises of reparation, but ther was never any more performed bot the reponeing him again to his office as ane privy- Counsellor to teach us how litle the favour and assureances of great men are to be regarded, being lyke thesse deceiving brooks wherin you shall not find ane drope of watter in the drougth of summer, and to teach us to look up to God and to despyse the lubricity of this world and all its allurements, which is modo mater statim noverca, and being blind, foollish, and arrogant, renders all who greedily embrace her alse foollish as herself, and instead of ane substance deludes us with ane empty shaddow of are Junonian cloud, and playes with men as so many tinnise-balls.  I have oft blamed Abbotshall for his high manner of doeing bussines relyeing too much upon the strength of his oun judgement which, tho’ very pregnant, yet in his oun concernes might be more impartially judged by other by-standers.  I have wisht him, with the Marquesse Paulet, that he might have more