ul_, in that Epistle, (proposing
to handle many Things at once) passes often from one Argument to
another, repeating what he had intermitted.

_Ch._ If I were not afraid, that by my Loquacity I should divert you
from eating your Dinners, and did think it were lawful to intermix any
Thing out of profane Authors with sacred Discourses, I would venture to
propose something that I read to Day; not so much with Perplexity, as
with a singular Delight.

_Eu._ Whatsoever is pious, and conduces to good Manners, ought not to be
called profane. The first Place must indeed be given to the Authority of
the Scriptures; but nevertheless, I sometimes find some Things said or
written by the Antients; nay, even by the Heathens; nay, by the Poets
themselves, so chastly, so holily, and so divinely, that I cannot
persuade myself, but that when they wrote them, they were divinely
inspired; and perhaps the Spirit of Christ diffuses itself farther than
we imagine; and that there are more Saints than we have in our
Catalogue. To confess freely among Friends, I can't read _Tully_ of _Old
Age_, of _Friendship_, his _Offices_, or his _Tusculan Questions_,
without kissing the Book, and Veneration for that divine Soul. And on
the contrary, when I read some of our modern Authors, treating of
_Politics, Oeconomics_ and _Ethics_, good God! how cold they are in
Comparison of these? Nay, how do they seem to be insensible of what they
write themselves? So that I had rather lose _Scotus_ and twenty more
such as he, than one _Cicero_ or _Plutarch_. Not that I am wholly
against them neither; but because, by the reading of the one, I find
myself become better; whereas, I rise from the other, I know not how
coldly affected to Virtue, but most violently inclin'd to Cavil and
Contention; therefore never fear to propose it, whatsoever it is.

_Ch._ Although all _Tully_'s Books of Philosophy seem to breathe out
something divine; yet that Treatise of _Old Age_, that he wrote in old
Age, seems to me to be according to the _Greek_ Proverb; _the Song of
the dying Swan_. I was reading it to Day, and these Words pleasing me
above the rest, I got 'em by Heart: _Should it please God to give me a
Grant to begin my Life again from my very Cradle, and once more to run
over the Course of my Years I have lived, I would not upon any Terms
accept of it: Nor would I, having in a Manner finished my Race, run it
over again from the starting Place to the Goal: For what Pleasure ha