Come home you wandering self-neglecting souls; Lose not your selves in a wilderness or tumult of impertinent, vain, distracting things; your work is nearer you; The country that you should first survey and travail, is within you; from which you must pass to that above you: when by losing your selves in this without you, you will find your selves before you are aware, in that below you. And then ⟨p. 151⟩(as Gregory speaks) he that was stultus in culpa, a fool in sinning, will be sapiens in poena, wise in suffering! you shall then have time enough to review your lives, and such constraining help to know your selves, as you cannot resist. O that you would know but a little of that now, that then you must else know in that overwhelming evidence which will everlastingly confound you! And that you would now think of that for a timely cure, which else must be thought of endlessly in despair. Come home then, and see what work is there. Let the eyes of fools be in the corners of the earth! Leave it to men besides themselves, to live as without themselves, and to be still from home, and waste that time in other business, that was given them to prepare for life eternall. [Laudabilior est animus, cui nota est infirmitas propria, quam qui ea non perspecta, mania mundi, vias syderum, fundamenta terrarum, & fastigia caelorum scrutatur] inquit August. [The soul is more laudable that knows its own infirmity, then he that without discerning this doth search after the compass of the world, the courses of the stars, the foundations of the earth, and the heights of the heavens.] Dost thou delight in the mysteries of nature? consider well ⟨p. 152⟩the mysteries of thy own. Mirantur aliqui altiudines montium, ingentes fluctus mari•, altissimos lapsus fluminum, & Oceani •• bitum, & gyros syderum, & relinquunt seipsos, nec mirantur]. saith Augustine [some men admire the heights of mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the great falls of the rivers, the compass of the Ocean and the circuit of the stars, and they pass by them themselves without admiration] The compendium of all that thou studyest without thee, is near thee, even within thee, thy self being the epitome of the world.
Come home you wandering self-neglecting souls; Lose not your selves in a wilderness or tumult of impertinent, vaine, distracting things; your work is neerer you; The country that you should first survey and travaile, is within you; from which you must pass to that above you: when by losing your selves in this without you, you will find your selves before you are aware, in that below you. And then ⟨p. 151⟩(as Gregory speakes) he that was stultus in culpa, a foole in sining, will be sapiens in poena, wise in suffering! you shall then have time enough to review your lives, and such constraining help to know your selves, as you cannot resist. O that you would know but a little of that now, that then you must elss know in that overwhelming evidence which will everlastingly confound you! And that you would now thinke of that for a timely cure, which els must be thought of endlesly in despair. Come home then, and see what work is there. Let the eyes of fooles be in the corners of the earth! Leave it to men besides themselves, to live as without themselves, and to be still from home, and waste that time in other business, that was given them to prepare for life eternall. [Laudabilior est animus, cui nota est infirmitas propria, quam qui ea non perspecta, mania mūdi, vias syderum, fundamenta terrarum, & fastigia caelorum scrutatur] inquit August. [The soule is more laudable that knowes its own infirmity, then he that without discerning this doth search after the compass of the world, the courses of the starres, the foundations of the earth, and the heights of the heavens.] Dost thou delight in the mysteryes of nature? consider well ⟨p. 152⟩the mysteryes of thy own. Mirantur aliqui altiudines montium, ingentes fluctus mari•, altissimos lapsus fluminum, & Oceani •• bitum, & gyros syderum, & relinquunt seipsos, nec mirantur]. saith Augustine [some men admeire the heights of mountaines, the huge waves of the sea, the great falls of the rivers, the compass of the Ocean and the circuit of the stars, and they passe by them themseves without admiration] The compendium of all that thou studyest without thee, is neer thee, even within thee, thy self being the epitome of the world.
