, in France, have trusted purely to Heaven for the
protection of mine, and have never removed plate, deeds, or hangings.
I will neither fear nor save myself by halves. If a full acknowledgment
acquires the Divine favour, it will stay with me to the end: if not, I
have still continued long enough to render my continuance remarkable and
fit to be recorded. How? Why, there are thirty years that I have thus
lived.

CHAPTER XVI

OF GLORY

There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and
signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the
substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it.
God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection,
cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be
augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His
exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him,
forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name,
which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to
God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from
reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being
indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having
continual need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our
endeavour. We are all hollow and empty; 'tis not with wind and voice
that we are to fill ourselves; we want a more solid substance to repair
us: a man starving with hunger would be very simple to seek rather to
provide himself with a gay garment than with a good meal: we are to look
after that whereof we have most need. As we have it in our ordinary
prayers:

"Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus."

We are in want of beauty, health, wisdom, virtue, and such like essential
qualities: exterior ornaments should, be looked after when we have made
provision for necessary things. Divinity treats amply and more
pertinently of this subject, but I am not much versed in it.

Chrysippus and Diogenes were the earliest and firmest advocates of the
contempt of glory; and maintained that, amongst all pleasures, there was
none more dangerous nor more to be avoided than that which proceeds from
the approbation of others. And, in truth, experience makes us sensible of
many very hurtful treasons in it. There is nothing that so poisons
princes as flattery, nor anythi