Sir Thomas.

“Even that sentence hath a twang of the doctor in it.  Nothing is so sweet as humility.  The mountains may descend, but the valleys cannot rise.  Every man should know himself.  Come, repeat what thou canst.  I would fain have three or four more heads.”

William Shakspeare.

“I know not whether I can give your worship more than one other.  Let me try.  It was when Doctor Glaston was discoursing on the protection the wise and powerful should afford to the ignorant and weak:-

“’In the earlier ages of mankind, your Greek and Latin authors inform you, there went forth sundry worthies, men of might, to deliver, not wandering damsels, albeit for those likewise they had stowage, but low-conditioned men, who fell under the displeasure of the higher, and groaned in thraldom and captivity.  And these mighty ones were believed to have done such services to poor humanity that their memory grew greater than they, as shadows do than substances at day-fall.  And the sons and grandsons of the delivered did laud and magnify those glorious names; and some in gratitude, and some in tribulation, did ascend the hills, which appeared unto them as altars bestrown with flowers and herbage for heaven’s acceptance.  And many did go far into the quiet groves, under lofty trees, looking for whatever was mightiest and most protecting.  And in such places did they cry aloud unto the mighty who had left them, “Return!  Return!  Help us!  Help us!  Be blessed!  For ever blessed!”

“’Vain men! but had they stayed there, not evil.  Out of gratitude, purest gratitude, rose idolatry.  For the devil sees the fairest, and soils it.

“’In these our days, methinks, whatever other sins we may fall into, such idolatry is the least dangerous.  For neither on the one side is there much disposition for gratitude, nor on the other much zeal to deliver the innocent and oppressed.  Even this deliverance, although a merit, and a high one, is not the highest.  Forgiveness is beyond it.  Forgive, or ye shall not be forgiven.  This ye may do every day; for if ye find not offences, ye feign them; and surely ye may remove your own work, if ye may re-remove another’s.  To rescue requires more thought and wariness; learn, then, the easier lesson first.  Afterward, when ye rescue any from another’s violence, or from his own (which oftentimes is more dangerous, as the enemies are within not only the penetrals of his house but of his heart), bind up his wounds before ye send him on his way.  Should ye at any time overtake the erring, and resolve to deliver him up, I will tell you whither to conduct him.  Conduct him to his Lord and Master, whose household he hath left.  It is better to consign him to Christ his Saviour than to man his murderer; it is better to bid him live than to bid him die.  The one word our Teacher and Preserver said, the other our enemy and destroyer.  Bring him back again, the stray, the lost one bring him back, not with clubs and cudgels, not with halberts and halters, but generously and gently, and with the linking of the arm.  In this posture shall God above smile upon ye; in this posture of yours he shall recognize again his beloved Son upon earth.  Do ye likewise, and depart in peace.’”