St Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but in-
directly, and upon quotation of their own poet.<88> It is
as bloody a thought in one way as Nero's was in
another.<89> For by a word we wound a thousand, and
at one blow assassin the honour of a nation. It is as
complete a piece of madness to miscall and rave against
the times; or think to recall men to reason by a fit of
passion. Democritus, that thought to laugh the times
into goodness, seems to me as deeply hypochondriack
as Heraclitus, that bewailed them. It moves not my
spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours;
that is, in their fits of folly and madness, as well under-
standing that wisdom is not profaned unto the world;
and it is the privilege of a few to be virtuous. They
that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue; for
contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet
the life of one another. Thus virtue (abolish vice) is
an idea. Again, the community of sin doth not dis-
parage goodness; for, when vice gains upon the major
part, virtue, in whom it remains, becomes more excel-
lent, and, being lost in some, multiplies its goodness in
others, which remain untouched, and persist entire in
the general inundation. I can therefore behold vice
without a satire, content only with an admonition, or
instructive reprehension; for noble natures, and such
as are capable of goodness, are railed into vice, that
might as easily be admonished into virtue; and we
should be all so far the orators of goodness as to protect
her from the power of vice, and maintain the cause of