en their bane.
For, [3550]_malus malum vult ut sit sui similis_; one drunkard in a
company, one thief, one whoremaster, will by his goodwill make all the rest
as bad as himself,

[3551] ------"Et si
Nocturnos jures te formidare vapores,"

be of what complexion you will, inclination, love or hate, be it good or
bad, if you come amongst them, you must do as they do; yea, [3552]though it
be to the prejudice of your health, you must drink _venenum pro vino_. And
so like grasshoppers, whilst they sing over their cups all summer, they
starve in winter; and for a little vain merriment shall find a sorrowful
reckoning in the end.

SECT. III. MEMB. I.
_A Consolatory Digression, containing the Remedies of all manner of
Discontents_.

Because in the preceding section I have made mention of good counsel,
comfortable speeches, persuasion, how necessarily they are required to the
cure of a discontented or troubled mind, how present a remedy they yield,
and many times a sole sufficient cure of themselves; I have thought fit in
this following section, a little to digress (if at least it be to digress
in this subject), to collect and glean a few remedies, and comfortable
speeches out of our best orators, philosophers, divines, and fathers of the
church, tending to this purpose. I confess, many have copiously written of
this subject, Plato, Seneca, Plutarch, Xenophon, Epictetus, Theophrastus,
Xenocrates, Grantor, Lucian, Boethius: and some of late, Sadoletus, Cardan,
Budaeus, Stella, Petrarch, Erasmus, besides Austin, Cyprian, Bernard, &c.
And they so well, that as Hierome in like case said, _si nostrum areret
ingenium, de illorum posset fontibus irrigari_, if our barren wits were
dried up, they might be copiously irrigated from those well-springs: and I
shall but _actum agere_; yet because these tracts are not so obvious and
common, I will epitomise, and briefly insert some of their divine precepts,
reducing their voluminous and vast treatises to my small scale; for it were
otherwise impossible to bring so great vessels into so little a creek. And
although (as Cardan said of his book _de consol._) [3553]"I know
beforehand, this tract of mine many will contemn and reject; they that are
fortunate, happy, and in flourishing estate, have no need of such
consolatory speeches; they that are miserable and unhappy, think them
insufficient to ease their grieved minds, and comfort their misery:" yet I
will go on; for this must nee