our and
preferment; having no measures for merit and virtue in others, but those
very steps by which themselves ascended; nor the least intention of
doing good or hurt to the public, farther than either one or t'other is
likely to be subservient to their own security or interest. Thus, being
void of all friendship and enmity, they never complain or find fault
with the times, and indeed never have reason to do so.

Men of eminent parts and abilities, as well as virtues, do sometimes
rise in the court, sometimes in the law, and sometimes even in the
Church. Such were the Lord Bacon, the Earl of Strafford, Archbishop
Laud, in the reign of King Charles I., and others in our own times, whom
I shall not name; but these, and many more, under different princes, and
in different kingdoms, were disgraced or banished, or suffered death,
merely in envy to their virtues and superior genius, which emboldened
them in great exigencies and distresses of state, (wanting a reasonable
infusion of this aldermanly discretion,) to attempt the service of their
prince and country, out of the common forms.

This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the
management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes that need
not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain
writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world,
the dunces are all in confederacy against him. And if this be his fate
when he employs his talents[1] wholly in his closet, without interfering
with any man's ambition or avarice, what must he expect, when he
ventures out to seek for preferment in a court, but universal opposition
when he is mounting the ladder, and every hand ready to turn him off
when he is at the top? And in this point, fortune generally acts
directly contrary to nature; for in nature we find, that bodies full of
life and spirits mount easily, and are hard to fall, whereas heavy
bodies are hard to rise, and come down with greater velocity, in
proportion to their weight; but we find fortune every day acting just
the reverse of this.

[Footnote 1: "And thus although he employs his talents." This is the
reading of "The Intelligencer." [T.S.]]

This talent of discretion, as I have described it in its several
adjuncts and circumstances, is nowhere so serviceable as to the clergy,
to whose preferment nothing is so fatal as the character of wit,
politeness in reading or manners, or that kind of beh