unjust gain; and the last come and ease their grief to them upon
all pinching occasions, especially when their husbands are any ways
cross or unkind.

Thus much I suppose may suffice to make you sensible how much these
cell-hermits and recluses are indebted to my bounty; who when they
tyrannize over the consciences of the deluded laity with fopperies,
juggles, and impostures, yet think themselves as eminently pious as St.
Paul, St. Anthony, or any other of the saints; but these stage-divines,
not less ungrateful dis-owners of their obligations to folly, than they
are impudent pretenders to the profession of piety, I willingly take my
leave of, and pass now to kings, princes, and courtiers, who paying me
a devout acknowledgment, may justly challenge back the respect of being
mentioned and taken notice of by me. And first, had they wisdom enough
to make a true judgment of things, they would find their own condition
to be more despicable and slavish than that of the most menial subjects.
For certainly none can esteem perjury or parricide a cheap purchase
for a crown, if he does but seriously reflect on that weight of cares a
princely diadem is loaded with. He that sits at the helm of government
acts in a public capacity, and so must sacrifice all private interest
to the attainment of the common good; he must himself be conformable to
those laws his prerogative exacts, or else he can expect no obedience
paid them from others; he must have a strict eye over all his inferior
magistrates and officers, or otherwise it is to be doubted they will but
carelessly discharge their respective duties. Every king, within his own
territories, is placed for a shining example as it were in the firmament
of his wide-spread dominions, to prove either a glorious star of benign
influence, if his behaviour be remarkably just and innocent, or else
to impend as a threatening comet, if his blazing power be pestilent and
hurtful. Subjects move in a darker sphere, and so their wanderings and
failings are less discernible; whereas princes, being fixed in a more
exalted orb, and encompassed with a brighter dazzling lustre, their
spots are more apparently visible, and their eclipses, or other defects,
influential on all that is inferior to them. Kings are baited with so
many temptations and opportunities to vice and immorality, such as are
high feeding, liberty, flattery, luxury, and the like, that they must
stand perpetually on their guard, to fence of