Public persons should have public spirits ; their gifts and goodness should diffuse themselves for the good of the whole. It is a base and ignoble spirit to pity Cataline more than to pity Kome, to pity any particular sort of men more than to pity the whole. It is cruelty to the good to justify the bad ; it is wrong to the sheep to animate the wolves ; it is danger, if not death, to the lambs not to restrain or chain up the lions ; but, Sir, from this ignoble spirit God has dehvered you. The ancients were wont to place the statues of their princes by their fountains, intimating that they were, or at least should be, fountains of the public good. Sir, had not you been such a fountain, men would never have been so warm for your continuance. My Lord, the great God hath made you a koivov uyadov, a public good, a public blessing ; and this hath made your name precious, and your govern-
1 The three tilings which God minds most, and loves best below heaven, are his truth, his worship, and his people. *
* Stobaeus, serm. xlii. p. 294. [i.e., his Florilegium or Sermones, otherwise Aydo- \6yiov. — 0.]
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY, O
ment desirable, and your person honourable in the thoughts, hearts, and eyes of all people. i Many — may I not say most? — of the rulers of this world are, as Pliny speaks of the Koman emperors. Nomine dii, naturd diaboli, Monsters, not men; murderers, not magistrates. Such a monster was Saul, who hunted David as a partridge, slew the inno- cent priests of the Lord, ran to a witch, and who was a man of so narrow a soul that he knew not how to look or live above Iwmself, his own interests and concernments. The great care of every magis- trate should be to promote the public interest more than their own, as you may see by comparing the scriptures in the mai'gin together.^ It was Ceesar's high commendation, that he never had himself after the world had him for a governor ; his mind was so set on the public, that he forgot his own private affairs. The stars have their bright- ness, not for themselves, but for the use of others. The application is easy.
My Lord, several philosophers have made excellent and elegant orations in the praise of justice. They say that all virtues are com- prehended in the distribution of justice.^ Justice, saith Aristotle, is a synopsis and epitome of all virtues. All I shall say is this, the world is a ring, and justice is the diamond in that ring; the world is a body, and justice is the soul of that body. It is well known that the con- stitution of a man's body is best known by his pulse : if it stir not at all, then we know he is dead ; if it stir violently, then we know him to be in a fever ; if it keep an equal stroke, then we know he is sound, well, and whole. So the estate and constitution of a city, kingdom, or commonweal is best known by the manner of executing justice therein; for justice is the pulse of a city, kingdom, or commonweal. If justice be violent, then the city, kingdom, or commonweal is in a fever, in a very bad estate ; if it stir not at all, then the city, kingdom, or com- monwealth is dead ; but if it hath an equal stroke, if it be justly and duly administered, then the city, kingdom, or commonweal is in a good, a safe, and a sound condition. When Vespasian asked Apollonius what was the cause of Nero's ruin, he answered, that Nero could tune the harp well, but in government he did always wind up the strings too high or let them down too low. Extremes in government are the ready way to ruin all. The Komans had their rods for lesser faults, and their axe for capital crimes. Extreme right often proves extreme wrong. He that will always go to the utmost of what the law allows, will too too often do more than the law requires. A rigid severity often mars all. Equity is still to be preferred before extremity. To inflict great penalties and heavy censures for light offences, this
^ There is a great truth in that old maxim, Magistratus virum indicat. In my epistle to my treatise called 'A Cabinet of Choice Jewels,' the ingenious reader may find six arguments to encourage magistrates to be men of public spirits. [Vol. iii. pp. 235, seq. — G.]
2 Exod. xxxii. 10, 11, 32; Neh. v. 6-19; Ps. cxxxvii. 5, 6; Acts xiii. 36.
^ Carneades, Aristotle, Socrates, &c. The Eoman orator hath long since observed, that the force of justice is such, and so great, that even thieves and robbers, both by sea and land, Avho live upon injustice and rapine, yet cannot live upon their trade without some practice of it among themselves. Cleobulus, one of the seven sages, was wont to say that mediocrity was without compare. The very heathen could set so much divine glory in the face of a magistrate, that he styled him f/x^i'xos dKoiv 6eov, The living image of the ever-living God. [Cf. Plato : Tim. 92 C— G.]
6 THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY.