pleasure, more favorable, sweeter, and more naturall; and not terme it vigor, from which it hath his denomination.  Should this baser sensuality deserve this faire name, it should be by competencie, and not by privilege.  I finde it lesse void of incommodities and crosses than vertue.  And besides that> her taste is more fleeting, momentarie, and fading, she hath her fasts, her eyes, and her travels, and both sweat and blood.  Furthermore she hath particularly so many wounding passions, and of so severall sorts, and so filthie and loathsome a societie waiting upon her, that shee is equivalent to penitencie.  Wee are in the wrong, to thinke her incommodities serve her as a provocation and seasoning to her sweetnes, as in nature one contrarie is vivified by another contrarie:  and to say, when we come to vertue, that like successes and difficulties overwhelme it, and yeeld it austere and inaccessible.  Whereas much more properly then unto voluptuousnes, they ennobled, sharpen, animate, and raise that divine and perfect pleasure, which it meditates and procureth us.  Truly he is verie unworthie her acquaintance, that counter-ballanceth her cost to his fruit, and knowes neither the graces nor use of it.  Those who go about to instruct us, how her pursuit is very hard and laborious, and her jovisance [Footnote:  Enjoyment] well-pleasing and delightfull:  what else tell they us, but that shee is ever unpleasant and irksome?  For what humane meane [Footnote:  Human meana. man’s life is subject, it is not with an equall care:  as well because accidents are not of such a necessitie, for most men passe their whole life without feeling any want or povertie, and othersome without feeling any griefe or sicknes, as Xenophilus the Musitian, who lived an hundred and six yeares in perfect and continuall health:  as also if the worst happen, death may at all times, and whensoever it shall please us, cut off all other inconveniences and crosses.  But as for death, it is inevitable.] did ever attaine unto an absolute enjoying of it?  The perfectest have beene content but to aspire and approach her, without ever possessing her.  But they are deceived; seeing that of all the pleasures we know, the pursute of them is pleasant.  The enterprise is perceived by the qualitie of the thing, which it hath regard unto:  for it is a good portion of the effect, and consubstantiall.  That happines and felicitie, which shineth in vertue, replenisheth her approaches and appurtenances, even unto, the first entrance and utmost barre.  Now of all the benefits of vertue, the contempt of death is the chiefest, a meane that furnisheth our life with an ease-full tranquillitie, and gives us a pure and amiable taste of it:  without which every other voluptuousnes is extinguished.  Loe, here the reasons why all rules encounter and agree with this article.  And albeit they all leade us with a common accord to despise povertie, and other accidental! crosses, to which