But such is the multiplying and extensive virtue of dead earth, and of that breath-giving life which God hath cast upon time and dust, as that among those that were, of whom we read and hear; and among those that are, whom we see and converse with; everyone hath received a several picture of face, and everyone a diverse picture of mind; everyone a form apart, everyone a fancy and cogitation differing:  there being nothing wherein Nature so much triumpheth as in dissimilitude.  From whence it cometh that there is found so great diversity of opinions; so strong a contrariety of inclinations; so many natural and unnatural; wise, foolish, manly, and childish affections and passions in mortal men.  For it is not the visible fashion and shape of plants, and of reasonable creatures, that makes the difference of working in the one, and of condition in the other; but the form internal.

And though it hath pleased God to reserve the art of reading men’s thoughts to himself:  yet, as the fruit tells the name of the tree; so do the outward works of men (so far as their cogitations are acted) give us whereof to guess at the rest.  Nay, it were not hard to express the one by the other, very near the life, did not craft in many, fear in the most, and the world’s love in all, teach every capacity, according to the compass it hath, to qualify and make over their inward deformities for a time.  Though it be also true, “Nemo potest diu personam ferre fictam:  cito in naturam suam residunt, quibus veritas non subest”:  “No man can long continue masked in a counterfeit behavior:  the things that are forced for pretences having no ground of truth, cannot long dissemble their own natures.”  Neither can any man (saith Plutarch) so change himself, but that his heart may be sometimes seen at his tongue’s end.

In this great discord and dissimilitude of reasonable creatures, if we direct ourselves to the multitude; “omnis honestae rei malus judex est vulgus”:  “The common people are evil judges of honest things, and whose wisdom (saith Ecclesiastes) is to be despised”:  if to the better sort, every understanding hath a peculiar judgment, by which it both censureth other men, and valueth itself.  And therefore unto me it will not seem strange, though I find these my worthless papers torn with rats:  seeing the slothful censurers of all ages have not spared to tax the Reverend Fathers of the Church, with ambition; the severest men to themselves, with hypocrisy; the greatest lovers of justice, with popularity; and those of the truest valor and fortitude, with vain-glory.  But of these natures which lee in wait to find fault, and to turn good into evil, seeing Solomon complained long since:  and that the very age of the world renders it every day after other more malicious; I must leave the professors to their easy ways of reprehension, than which there is nothing of more facility.