A BUTTON-MAKER OF AMSTERDAM

Is one that is fled over for his conscience, and left his wife and children upon the parish.  For his knowledge he is merely a Horn-book without a Christ-cross before it; and his zeal consists much in hanging his Bible in a Dutch button.  He cozens men in the purity of his clothes; and ’twas his only joy when he was on this side, to be in prison.  He cries out, ’tis impossible for any man to be damned that lives in his religion, and his equivocation is true—­as long as a man lives in it, he cannot; but if he die in it, there’s the question.  Of all feasts in the year he accounts St. George’s feast the profanest, because of St. George’s cross, yet sometimes he doth sacrifice to his own belly, provided that he put off the wake of his own nativity or wedding till Good Friday.  If there be a great feast in the town, though most of the wicked (as he calls them) be there, he will be sure to be a guest, and to out-eat six of the fattest burghers.  He thinks, though he may not pray with a Jew, he may eat with a Jew.  He winks when he prays, and thinks he knows the way so now to heaven, that he can find it blindfold.  Latin he accounts the language of the beast with seven heads; and when he speaks of his own country, cries, he is fled out of Babel.  Lastly, his devotion is obstinacy; the only solace of his heart, contradiction; and his main end, hypocrisy.

A DISTASTER OF THE TIME

Is a winter grasshopper all the year long that looks back upon harvest with a lean pair of cheeks, never sets forward to meet it; his malice sucks up the greatest part of his own venom, and therewith impoisoneth himself:  and this sickness rises rather of self-opinion or over-great expedition; so in the conceit of his own over-worthiness, like a coistrel he strives to fill himself with wind, and flies against it.  Any man’s advancement is the most capital offence that can be to his malice, yet this envy, like Phalaris’ bull, makes that a torment first for himself he prepared for others.  He is a day-bed for the devil to slumber on.  His blood is of a yellowish colour, like those that have been bitten by vipers, and his gall flows as thick in him as oil in a poisoned stomach.  He infects all society, as thunder sours wine:  war or peace, dearth or plenty, makes him equally discontented.  And where he finds no cause to tax the State, he descends to rail against the rate of salt-butter.  His wishes are whirlwinds, which breathed forth return into himself, and make him a most giddy and tottering vessel.  When he is awake, and goes abroad, he doth but walk in his sleep, for his visitation is directed to none, his business is nothing.  He is often dumb-mad, and goes fettered in his own entrails.  Religion is commonly his pretence of discontent, though he can be of all religions, therefore truly of none.  Thus by naturalising himself some would think him a very dangerous fellow to the State; but he is not greatly to be feared, for this dejection of his is only like a rogue that goes on his knees and elbows in the mire to further his cogging.