is impossible to improve or
raise him above his own level. He runs swiftly before any wind, like a
ship that has neither freight nor ballast, and is as apt to overset.
When his zeal takes fire it cracks and flies about like a squib until
the idle stuff is spent, and then it goes out of itself. He is always
troubled with small scruples, which his conscience catches like the
itch, and the rubbing of these is both his pleasure and his pain. But
for things of greater moment he is unconcerned, as cattle in the
summer-time are more pestered with flies that vex their sores than
creatures more considerable, and dust and motes are apter to stick in
blear-eyes than things of greater weight. His charity begins and ends at
home, for it never goes farther nor stirs abroad. David was eaten up
with the zeal of God's house; but his zeal, quite contrary, eats up
God's house; and as the words seem to intimate that David fed and
maintained the priests, so he makes the priests feed and maintain him;
and hence his zeal is never so vehement as when it concurs with his
interest; for, as he styles himself a professor, it fares with him, as
with men of other professions, to live by his calling and get as much as
he can by it. He is very severe to other men's sins that his own may
pass unsuspected, as those that were engaged in the conspiracy against
Nero were most cruel to their own confederates; or as one says--

"Compounds for sins he is inclined to
By damning those he has no mind to."

THE OVERDOER

Always throws beyond the jack and is gone a mile. He is no more able to
contain himself than a bowl is when he is commanded to rub with the
greatest power and vehemence imaginable, and nothing lights in his way.
He is a conjurer that cannot keep within the compass of his circle,
though he were sure the devil would fetch him away for the least
transgression. He always overstocks his ground and starves instead of
feeding, destroys whatsoever he has an extraordinary care for, and, like
an ape, hugs the whelp he loves most to death. All his designs are
greater than the life, and he laughs to think how Nature has mistaken
her match, and given him so much odds that he can easily outrun her. He
allows of no merit but that which is superabundant. All his actions are
superfoetations, that either become monsters or twins; that is, too
much, or the same again; for he is but a supernumerary and does nothing
but for want of a better. He is a civil