Four treatises tending to dissuade all Christians from four no less heinous then common…Foure treatises tending to disswade all Christians from foure no lesse hainous then common…

But they who admonish are to remember,¹ that they use all mildness and discretion in their admonition, least while they go about to prevent anger for the time to come, they presently provoke it. For if they be too austere and rough in using too insolent invectives and bitter reprehensions, they do not only commit themselves a great absurdity, while in reproving anger they show their own spleen, but also make their admonition altogether unprofitable. Because the angry man (if he see them so sharp and severe) will rather think how he may defend his fault by aggravating the injuries which he hath received, then either confess it, to such a synick censurer, or labour to amend it. For as no man will suffer his wound to be searched by such a Surgeon as hath a rough hand, and a hard hart, neither will any patient commit himself to the cure of a froward and merciless Physician: so no man can abide (and therefore much less an angry man) to have his galled faults, too much rubbed, or the wounds and diseases of his mind, healed and cured, with too sharp a corrosive and loathsome potion of insolent and bitter words. They therefore who will angerly reprove anger, are no fit Physicians for them who are subject to this passion. For to such they will either hide and dissemble their imperfections, rather feigning themselves well, then they will discover their disease to such a crabbed Physician; or else they will justify, and defend them as lawful and necessary. And as the fearful Snake, when he hath no means to fly away, will turn again, and desperately leap into the face of him that pursueth him: or as the timorous Stag, when he can escape no longer by running, maketh a stand, turning ⟨p. 81⟩cowardly fear into desperate rage. So the angry man being so hardly pursued with sharp invectives and bitter reprehensions, that he hath no evasion of excuse to cover his fault, nor hope of pity by confessing it, doth as it were fly into the face of the reprover, by objecting his greater faults, that they may serve to extenuate his which are less. You (will he say) who so sharply reprove me for my choler, have other faults as great as this, and therefore you may do well to cure your self before you become another's Physician. Yea in this you would show you self no more innocent, if you had the like occasion to show your anger.

But they who admonish are to remember,