Let me be
nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not find
the battle of Lepanto,<92> passion against reason, reason
against faith, faith against the devil, and my conscience
against all. There is another man within me that's
angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me.
I have no conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of
more heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to
take the impression of each single peccadillo or scape of
infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to
be forgiven some sins as to commit some others. For
my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my
baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and
reckon with God but from my last repentance, sacra-
ment, or general absolution; and therefore am not
terrified with the sins or madness of my youth. I thank
the goodness of God, I have no sins that want a name.
I am not singular in offences; my transgressions are
epidemical, and from the common breath of our corrup-
tion. For there are certain tempers of body which,
matched with a humorous depravity of mind, do hath
and produce vitiosities, whose newness and monstrosity
of nature admits no name; this was the temper of that
lecher that carnaled with a statua, and the constitution
of Nero in his spintrian recreations.
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