s run into worser habits, the
evening doth not crown, but sourly conclude, the day.

If the Almighty will not spare us according to his merciful capitulation
at Sodom; if his goodness please not to pass over a great deal of bad
for a small pittance of good, or to look upon us in the lump, there is
slender hope for mercy, or sound presumption of fulfilling half his
will, either in persons or nations: they who excel in some virtues being
so often defective in others; few men driving at the extent and
amplitude of goodness, but computing themselves by their best parts, and
others by their worst, are content to rest in those virtues which others
commonly want. Which makes this speckled face of honesty in the world;
and which was the imperfection of the old philosophers and great
pretenders unto virtue; who, well declining the gaping vices of
intemperance, incontinency, violence, and oppression, were yet blindly
peccant in iniquities of closer faces; were envious, malicious,
contemners, scoffers, censurers, and stuffed with vizard vices, no less
depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion of man. For envy,
malice, hatred, are the qualities of Satan, close and dark like himself;
and where such brands smoke, the soul cannot be white. Vice may be had
at all prices; expensive and costly iniquities, which make the noise,
cannot be every man's sins; but the soul may be foully inquinated at a
very low rate, and a man may be cheaply vicious to the perdition
of himself.

Having been long tossed in the ocean of the world, he will by that time
feel the in-draught of another, unto which this seems but preparatory
and without it of no high value. He will experimentally find the
emptiness of all things, and the nothing of what is past; and wisely
grounding upon true Christian expectations, finding so much past, will
wholly fix upon what is to come. He will long for perpetuity, and live
as though he made haste to be happy. The last may prove the prime part
of his life, and those his best days which he lived nearest heaven.

Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let
intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place
their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let
complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of delight.
Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy Diana,
life, and profession. Voluptuousness is as insatiable as covetousness.