There is an equal delusion in both,
and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other; we
are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the
body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of
sense, but the liberty of reason, and our waking conceptions do not
match the Fancies of our sleeps. At my Nativity, my Ascendant was the
watery sign of _Scorpius_; I was born in the Planetary hour of _Saturn_,
and I think I have a piece of that Leaden Planet in me. I am no way
facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardize of company; yet in
one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the
jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof: were my memory as
faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my
dreams; and this time also would I chuse for my devotions: but our
grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted
understandings that they forget the story, and can only relate to our
awaked souls, a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed.
[Sidenote: _Religio Medici_]
He is rich, who hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be so
poor that a noble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. _He
that giveth to the poor, lendeth to the Lord;_ there is more Rhetorick
in that one sentence, than in a Library of Sermons; and indeed if those
Sentences were understood by the Reader, with the same Emphasis as they
are delivered by the Author, we needed not those Volumes of
instructions, but might be honest by an Epitome.
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