style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by
Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our faith
to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I
only include the base and minor sort of people: there
is a rabble even amongst the gentry; a sort of plebeian
heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these;
men in the same level with mechanicks, though their
fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their
purses compound for their follies. But, as in casting
account three or four men together come short in account
of one man placed by himself below them, so neither
are a troop of these ignorant Doradoes<79> of that true
esteem and value as many a forlorn person, whose con-
dition doth place him below their feet. Let us speak
like politicians; there is a nobility without heraldry, a
natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with
another, another filed before him, according to the
quality of his desert, and pre-eminence of his good parts.
Though the corruption of these times, and the bias of
present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in the
first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the in-
tegrity and cradle of well ordered polities: till corrup-
tion getteth ground;--ruder desires labouring after that
which wiser considerations contemn;--every one having
a liberty to amass and heap up riches, and they a licence
or faculty to do or purchase anything.

Sect. 2.--This general and indifferent temper of mine
doth more nearly dispose me to this noble virtue. It is
a happiness to be born and framed unto virtue, and to