perfect hexameter.* I feel not in me those sordid and
unchristian desires of my profession; I do not secretly
implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve
ephemerides and almanacks in expectation of malignant
aspects, fatal conjunctions, and eclipses. I rejoice not
at unwholesome springs nor unseasonable winters: my
prayer goes with the husbandman's; I desire everything
in its proper season, that neither men nor the times be
out of temper. Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the
malady of my patient be not a disease unto me. I
desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own neces-
sities. Where I do him no good, methinks it is scarce
honest gain, though I confess 'tis but the worthy salary
of our well intended endeavours. I am not only
ashamed but heartily sorry, that, besides death, there
are diseases incurable; yet not for my own sake or that
they be beyond my art, but for the general cause and
sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as
mine own. And, to speak more generally, those three
noble professions which all civil commonwealths do
honour, are raised upon the fall of Adam, and are not
any way exempt from their infirmities. There are not
only diseases incurable in physick, but cases indissolv-
able in law, vices incorrigible in divinity. If general
councils may err, I do not see why particular courts
should be infallible: their perfectest rules are raised
upon the erroneous reasons of man, and the laws of one
do but condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle oft-
times the opinions of his predecessors, because, though