Digital Donne: the Online Variorum
The 1654 Prose Letters Letter 33, cont. (p.97) |
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another gives the perfection: so is no man vertuous by particular example. Not he that doth all actions to the pattern of the most valiant, or liberall, which Histories afford: nor he which chuses from every one their best actions, and thereupon doth something like those. Perchance such may be in via perficiendorum, which Divines al- low to Monasticall life, but not perfectorum, which by them is only due to Prelacy. For vertue is even, and continuall, and the same, and can therefore break no where, nor ad- mit ends, nor beginnings; it is not only not broken, but not tyed together. He is not vertuous, out of whose actions you can pick an excellent one. Vice and her fruits may be seen, because they are thick bodies, but not vertue, which is all light, and vices have swellings and fits, and noise, because being extreams, they dwell far asunder, and they maintain both a forein war against vertue, and a civill against one another, and affect Soveraignty, as vertue doth society. The later Physicians say, that when our [CW: naturall] |
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