I have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity; and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue.  For I am of a constitution so general that it comports and sympathiseth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, anything.  I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find them agree with my stomach as well as theirs.  I could digest a salad gathered in a churchyard as well as in a garden.  I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander:  at the sight of a toad or viper I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them.  I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in others.  Those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, and Dutch:  but where I find their actions in balance with my countrymen’s, I honour, love, and embrace them in the same degree.  I was born in the eighth climate, but seem to be framed and constellated unto all.  I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden:  all places, all airs make unto me one country—­I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian.  I have been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds.  I can study, play, or sleep in a tempest.  In brief, I am averse from nothing:  my conscience would give me the lie if I should absolutely detest or hate any essence but the devil; or so at least abhor anything, but that we might come to composition.

I am, I confess, naturally inclined to that which misguided zeal terms superstition:  my common conversation I do acknowledge austere, my behaviour full of rigour, sometimes not without morosity; yet at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with all those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote my invisible devotion.  I should violate my own arm rather than a church, nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr.  At the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour:  I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of devotion.  I could never hear the Ave Maria bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all, that is, in silence and dumb contempt; whilst therefore they direct their devotions to her, I offer mine to God, and rectify the errors of their prayers, by rightly ordering mine own.  At a solemn procession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts,