in danger, for whilst they think to justify their ignorance by impudence, and their persons by clothes and outward ornaments, they use but a commission to deceive themselves:  where, if we will look with our understanding, and not our senses, we may behold virtue and beauty (though covered with rags) in their brightness; and vice and deformity so much the fouler, in having all the splendour of riches to gild them, or the false light of honour and power to help them.  Yet this is that wherewith the world is taken, and runs mad to gaze on—­clothes and titles, the birdlime of fools.

De stultitia.—­What petty things they are we wonder at, like children that esteem every trifle, and prefer a fairing before their fathers!  What difference is between us and them but that we are dearer fools, coxcombs at a higher rate?  They are pleased with cockleshells, whistles, hobby-horses, and such like; we with statues, marble pillars, pictures, gilded roofs, where underneath is lath and lime, perhaps loam.  Yet we take pleasure in the lie, and are glad we can cozen ourselves.  Nor is it only in our walls and ceilings, but all that we call happiness is mere painting and gilt, and all for money.  What a thin membrane of honour that is! and how hath all true reputation fallen, since money began to have any!  Yet the great herd, the multitude, that in all other things are divided, in this alone conspire and agree—­to love money.  They wish for it, they embrace it, they adore it, while yet it is possessed with greater stir and torment than it is gotten.

De sibi molestis.—­Some men what losses soever they have they make them greater, and if they have none, even all that is not gotten is a loss.  Can there be creatures of more wretched condition than these, that continually labour under their own misery and others’ envy?  A man should study other things, not to covet, not to fear, not to repent him; to make his base such as no tempest shall shake him; to be secure of all opinion, and pleasing to himself, even for that wherein he displeaseth others; for the worst opinion gotten for doing well, should delight us.  Wouldst not thou be just but for fame, thou oughtest to be it with infamy; he that would have his virtue published is not the servant of virtue, but glory.

Periculosa melancholia.—­It is a dangerous thing when men’s minds come to sojourn with their affections, and their diseases eat into their strength; that when too much desire and greediness of vice hath made the body unfit, or unprofitable, it is yet gladded with the sight and spectacle of it in others; and for want of ability to be an actor, is content to be a witness.  It enjoys the pleasure of sinning in beholding others sin, as in dining, drinking, drabbing, &c.  Nay, when it cannot do all these, it is offended with his own narrowness, that excludes it from the universal delights of mankind, and oftentimes dies of a melancholy, that it cannot be vicious enough.