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er eee i 3 a 54 Erasmus but just now off in the Robes of a King, put on the Raggs of a Begger. Thus are all things represented by Counterfeit, and yet without this there were no living. And here if any wise man, as it were dropt from Heaven, should start up and cry, This great thing, whom the World looks upon for a God and I know not what, is not so much as a Man, for that like a Beast he is led by his Passions, but the worst of Slaves, inasmuch as he gives himself up willingly to so many and such detestable Masters. Again if he should bid a man that were bewailing the death of his Father to laugh, for that he now began to live by having got an Estate, without which Life is but a kind of Death ; or call another that were boasting of his Family, ill begotten or base, because he is so far remov’d from Vertue that is the only Fountain of Nobility; and so of the rest: what else would he get by ’t but be thought himself Mad and Frantick? For as nothing is more foolish than preposterous Wisdome, so nothing is more unadvised than a froward unseasonable Prudence. And such is his that does not comply with the present
