now, contrary, I wonder as much how there should be
any. He that shall consider how many thousand
several words have been carelessly and without study
composed out of twenty-four letters; withal, how many
hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabrick of
one man; shall easily find that this variety is necessary:
and it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to
make one portrait like another. Let a painter carelessly
limn out a million of faces, and you shall find them all
different; yes, let him have his copy before him, yet,
after all his art, there will remain a sensible distinction:
for the pattern or example of everything is the perfectest
in that kind, whereof we still come short, though we
transcend or go beyond it; because herein it is wide,
and agrees not in all points unto its copy. Nor doth
the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of
nature, nor any way confound the works of God. For
even in things alike there is diversity; and those that
do seem to accord do manifestly disagree. And thus is
man like God; for, in the same things that we resemble
him we are utterly different from him. There was
never anything so like another as in all points to
concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip
in, to prevent the identity; without which two several
things would not be alike, but the same, which is
impossible.

Sect. 3.--But, to return from philosophy to charity, I
hold not so narrow a conceit of this virtue as to con-
ceive that to give alms is only to be charitable, or think