Morbi.—­The body hath certain diseases that are with less evil tolerated than removed.  As if to cure a leprosy a man should bathe himself with the warm blood of a murdered child, so in the Church some errors may be dissimuled with less inconvenience than they can be discovered.

Jactantia intempestiva.—­Men that talk of their own benefits are not believed to talk of them because they have done them; but to have done them because they might talk of them.  That which had been great, if another had reported it of them, vanisheth, and is nothing, if he that did it speak of it.  For men, when they cannot destroy the deed, will yet be glad to take advantage of the boasting, and lessen it.

Adulatio.—­I have seen that poverty makes me do unfit things; but honest men should not do them; they should gain otherwise.  Though a man be hungry, he should not play the parasite.  That hour wherein I would repent me to be honest, there were ways enough open for me to be rich.  But flattery is a fine pick-lock of tender ears; especially of those whom fortune hath borne high upon their wings, that submit their dignity and authority to it, by a soothing of themselves.  For, indeed, men could never be taken in that abundance with the springes of others’ flattery, if they began not there; if they did but remember how much more profitable the bitterness of truth were, than all the honey distilling from a whorish voice, which is not praise, but poison.  But now it is come to that extreme folly, or rather madness, with some, that he that flatters them modestly or sparingly is thought to malign them.  If their friend consent not to their vices, though he do not contradict them, he is nevertheless an enemy.  When they do all things the worst way, even then they look for praise.  Nay, they will hire fellows to flatter them with suits and suppers, and to prostitute their judgments.  They have livery-friends, friends of the dish, and of the spit, that wait their turns, as my lord has his feasts and guests.

De vita humana.—­I have considered our whole life is like a play:  wherein every man forgetful of himself, is in travail with expression of another.  Nay, we so insist in imitating others, as we cannot when it is necessary return to ourselves; like children, that imitate the vices of stammerers so long, till at last they become such; and make the habit to another nature, as it is never forgotten.

De piis et probis.—­Good men are the stars, the planets of the ages wherein they live and illustrate the times.  God did never let them be wanting to the world:  as Abel, for an example of innocency, Enoch of purity, Noah of trust in God’s mercies, Abraham of faith, and so of the rest.  These, sensual men thought mad because they would not be partakers or practisers of their madness.  But they, placed high on the top of all virtue, looked down on the stage of the world and contemned the play of fortune.  For though the most be players, some must be spectators.