wicked ungodly men. How then stands the case? Thou hast taken ship,
thou hast sailed, thou art come to land, go out, if to another life,
there also shalt thou find gods, who are everywhere. If all life
and sense shall cease, then shalt thou cease also to be subject to
either pains or pleasures ; and to serve and tend this vile cottage;
so much the viler, by how much that which ministers unto it doth excel ;
the one being a rational substance, and a spirit, the other nothing
but earth and blood.

IV. Spend not the remnant of thy days in thoughts and fancies
concerning other men, when it is not in relation to some common good,
when by it thou art hindered from some other better work.
That is, spend not thy time in thinking, what such a man doth,
and to what end: what he saith, and what he thinks,
and what he is about, and such other things or curiosities,
which make a man to rove and wander from the care and observation
of that part of himself, which is rational, and overruling.
See therefore in the whole series and connection of thy thoughts,
that thou be careful to prevent whatsoever is idle and impertinent:
but especially, whatsoever is curious and malicious: and thou must
use thyself to think only of such things, of which if a man upon
a sudden should ask thee, what it is that thou art now thinking,
thou mayest answer This, and That, freely and boldly, that so by thy
thoughts it may presently appear that in all thee is sincere,
and peaceable; as becometh one that is made for society, and regards
not pleasures, nor gives way to any voluptuous imaginations at all:
free from all contentiousness, envy, and suspicion, and from whatsoever
else thou wouldest blush to confess thy thoughts were set upon.
He that is such, is he surely that doth not put off to lay hold on
that which is best indeed, a very priest and minister of the gods,