pass in the world like single money among those that deal in small
matters. His wit is like fire in a flint, that is nothing while it is
in, and nothing again as soon as it is out. He treats of all things and
persons that come in his way, but like one that draws in little, much
less than the life:--

His bus'ness is t' inveigh and flatter,
Like parcel parasite and satyr.

He is a kind of vagabond writer, that is never out of his way, for
nothing is beside the purpose with him that proposes none at all. His
works are like a running banquet, that have much variety but little of a
sort, for he deals in nothing but scraps and parcels, like a tailor's
broker. He does not write, but set his mark upon things, and gives no
account in words at length, but only in figures. All his wit reaches but
to four lines or six at the most; and if he ever venture farther it
tires immediately, like a post-horse, that will go no farther than his
wonted stages. Nothing agrees so naturally with his fancy as bawdry,
which he dispenses in small pittances to continue his reader still in an
appetite for more.

A FANATIC.

St. Paul was thought by Festus to be mad with too much learning, but the
fanatics of our times are mad with too little. He chooses himself one of
the elect, and packs a committee of his own party to judge the twelve
tribes of Israel. The apostles in the primitive Church worked miracles
to confirm and propagate their doctrine, but he thinks to confirm his by
working at his trade. He assumes a privilege to impress what text of
Scripture he pleases for his own use, and leaves those that make against
him for the use of the wicked. His religion, that tends only to faction
and sedition, is neither fit for peace nor war, but times of a condition
between both, like the sails of a ship that will not endure a storm and
are of no use at all in a calm. He believes it has enough of the
primitive Christian if it be but persecuted as that was, no matter for
the piety or doctrine of it, as if there were nothing required to prove
the truth of a religion but the punishment of the professors of it, like
the old mathematicians that were never believed to be profoundly knowing
in their profession until they had run through all punishments and just
escaped the fork. He is all for suffering for religion, but nothing for
acting; for he accounts good works no better than encroachments upon the
merits of free believing, and a good life the m