aclitus
having written so many natural tracts concerning the last and general
conflagration of the world, died afterwards all filled with water
within, and all bedaubed with dirt and dung without. Lice killed
Democritus; and Socrates, another sort of vermin, wicked ungodly men.
How then stands the case? Thou hast taken ship, thou hast sailed, thou
art come to land, go out, if to another life, there also shalt thou find
gods, who are everywhere. If all life and sense shall cease, then shalt
thou cease also to be subject to either pains or pleasures; and to serve
and tend this vile cottage; so much the viler, by how much that which
ministers unto it doth excel; the one being a rational substance, and a
spirit, the other nothing but earth and blood.

IV. Spend not the remnant of thy days in thoughts and fancies concerning
other men, when it is not in relation to some common good, when by it
thou art hindered from some other better work. That is, spend not thy
time in thinking, what such a man doth, and to what end: what he saith,
and what he thinks, and what he is about, and such other things or
curiosities, which make a man to rove and wander from the care and
observation of that part of himself, which is rational, and overruling.
See therefore in the whole series and connection of thy thoughts, that
thou be careful to prevent whatsoever is idle and impertinent: but
especially, whatsoever is curious and malicious: and thou must use
thyself to think only of such things, of which if a man upon a sudden
should ask thee, what it is that thou art now thinking, thou mayest
answer This, and That, freely and boldly, that so by thy thoughts it may
presently appear that in all thee is sincere, and peaceable; as becometh
one that is made for society, and regards not pleasures, nor gives way
to any voluptuous imaginations at all: free from all contentiousness,
envy, and suspicion, and from whatsoever else thou wouldest blush to
confess thy thoughts were set upon. He that is such, is he surely that
doth not put off to lay hold on that which is best indeed, a very priest
and minister of the gods, well acquainted and in good correspondence
with him especially that is seated and placed within himself, as in
a temple and sacrary: to whom also he keeps and preserves himself
unspotted by pleasure, undaunted by pain; free from any manner of wrong,
or contumely, by himself offered unto himself: not capable of any evil
from others: a wrestler