may bestead each other, but when there is no more good to be
expected, as they do by an old dog, hang him up or cashier him: which [355]
Cato counts a great indecorum, to use men like old shoes or broken glasses,
which are flung to the dunghill; he could not find in his heart to sell an
old ox, much less to turn away an old servant: but they instead of
recompense, revile him, and when they have made him an instrument of their
villainy, as [356]Bajazet the second Emperor of the Turks did by Acomethes
Bassa, make him away, or instead of [357]reward, hate him to death, as
Silius was served by Tiberius. In a word, every man for his own ends. Our
_summum bonum_ is commodity, and the goddess we adore _Dea moneta_, Queen
money, to whom we daily offer sacrifice, which steers our hearts, hands,
[358]affections, all: that most powerful goddess, by whom we are reared,
depressed, elevated, [359]esteemed the sole commandress of our actions, for
which we pray, run, ride, go, come, labour, and contend as fishes do for a
crumb that falleth into the water. It's not worth, virtue, (that's _bonum
theatrale_,) wisdom, valour, learning, honesty, religion, or any
sufficiency for which we are respected, but [360]money, greatness, office,
honour, authority; honesty is accounted folly; knavery, policy; [361]men
admired out of opinion, not as they are, but as they seem to be: such
shifting, lying, cogging, plotting, counterplotting, temporizing,
nattering, cozening, dissembling, [362]"that of necessity one must highly
offend God if he be conformable to the world, _Cretizare cum Crete_, or
else live in contempt, disgrace and misery." One takes upon him temperance,
holiness, another austerity, a third an affected kind of simplicity, when
as indeed, he, and he, and he, and the rest are [363]"hypocrites,
ambidexters," outsides, so many turning pictures, a lion on the one side,
a lamb on the other. [364]How would Democritus have been affected to see
these things!

To see a man turn himself into all shapes like a chameleon, or as Proteus,
_omnia transformans sese in miracula rerum_, to act twenty parts and
persons at once, for his advantage, to temporise and vary like Mercury the
planet, good with good; bad with bad; having a several face, garb, and
character for every one he meets; of all religions, humours, inclinations;
to fawn like a spaniel, _mentitis et mimicis obsequis_; rage like a lion,
bark like a cur, fight like a dragon, sting like a serpent