Let us speak
like politicians; there is a nobility without heraldry, a
natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with
another, another filed before him, according to the
quality of his desert, and pre-eminence of his good parts.
Though the corruption of these times, and the bias of
present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in the
first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the in-
tegrity and cradle of well ordered polities: till corrup-
tion getteth ground;--ruder desires labouring after that
which wiser considerations contemn;--every one having
a liberty to amass and heap up riches, and they a licence
or faculty to do or purchase anything.
Sect. 2.--This general and indifferent temper of mine
doth more nearly dispose me to this noble virtue. It is
a happiness to be born and framed unto virtue, and to
grow up from the seeds of nature, rather than the
inoculations and forced grafts of education: yet, if we
are directed only by our particular natures, and regulate
our inclinations by no higher rule than that of our
reasons, we are but moralists; divinity will still call us
heathens.
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