grow up from the seeds of nature, rather than the
inoculations and forced grafts of education: yet, if we
are directed only by our particular natures, and regulate
our inclinations by no higher rule than that of our
reasons, we are but moralists; divinity will still call us
heathens. Therefore this great work of charity must
have other motives, ends, and impulsions. I give no
alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil
and accomplish the will and command of my God; I
draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his
that enjoined it; I relieve no man upon the rhetorick
of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating
disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an
act that oweth more to passion than reason. He that
relieves another upon the bare suggestion and bowels of
pity doth not this so much for his sake as for his own;
and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
It is as erroneous a conceit to redress other men's
misfortunes upon the common considerations of merciful
natures, that it may be one day our own case; for this
is a sinister and politick kind of charity, whereby we
seem to bespeak the pities of men in the like occasions.
And truly I have observed that those professed eleemo-
synaries, though in a crowd or multitude, do yet direct
and place their petitions on a few and selected persons;
there is surely a physiognomy, which those experienced
and master mendicants observe, whereby they instantly
discover a merciful aspect, and will single out a face,
wherein they spy the signature and marks of mercy.
For there are mystically in our faces certain characters