om
he will not be beholden. His conscience would fain speak with him, but
he will not hear it; sets the day, but he disappoints it; and when it
cries loud for audience, he drowns the noise with good fellowship. He
never names God but in his oaths; never thinks of Him but in extremity;
and then he knows not how to think of Him, because he begins but then.
He quarrels for the hard conditions of his pleasure for his future
damnation, and from himself lays all the fault upon his Maker; and from
His decree fetcheth excuses of his wickedness. The inevitable necessity
of God's counsel makes him desperately careless; so with good food he
poisons himself. Goodness is his minstrel; neither is any mirth so
cordial to him, as his sport with God's fools. Every virtue hath his
slander, and his jest to laugh it out of fashion; every vice his colour.
His usualest theme is the boast of his young sins, which he can still
joy in, though he cannot commit; and (if it may be) his speech makes him
worse than he is. He cannot think of death with patience, without
terror, which he therefore fears worse than hell, because this he is
sure of, the other he but doubts of. He comes to church as to the
theatre, saving that not so willingly, for company, for custom, for
recreation, perhaps for sleep, or to feed his eyes or his ears; as for
his soul, he cares no more than if he had none. He loves none but
himself, and that not enough to seek his true good; neither cares he on
whom he treads that he may rise. His life is full of license, and his
practice of outrage. He is hated of God as much as he hateth goodness;
and differs little from a devil, but that he hath a body.

OF THE MALCONTENT.

He is neither well full nor fasting; and though he abound with
complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he
condemned while it was, once past he magnifies, and strives to recall it
out of the jaws of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so
taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he cares not for, because
he cares so much for that which is not. When his friend carves him the
best morsel, he murmurs that it is an happy feast wherein each one may
cut for himself. When a present is sent him he asks, Is this all? and,
What, no better? and so accepts it, as if he would have his friend know
how much he is bound to him for vouchsafing to receive it. It is hard to
entertain him with a proportionable gift. If nothing, he cries out of