Page:Advice to the young.pdf/11

 are read by the poor and illiterate only, and that there is nothing in them worthy the attention of the great, the wiſe, and the learned; but this is a miſtake: It is their particular excellency that they are calculated for the benefit of the moſt ſagacious philoſopher, as well as the moſt humble peaſant.

There is no book in the world ſo admirably adapted to the capacities of all men: It is ſo ſublime in its, language, ſo noble in its doctrine, yet plain in its precepts, and excellent in its end; that the man muſt be ignorant, and deprived, indeed, who lives without reading it.

Queen Elizabeth ſpent much of her time in reading the beſt writings of her own and former ages, yet the by no means neglected that beſt of books the Bible; for proof of which take her own words. "I walk," ſays ſhe, "many times in the pleaſant fields of the Holy Scriptures; where I pluck up the godliſome herds of sentences. By pruning, eat them; by reading, digeſt them; by muſing and laying