Page:Gondibert, an heroick poem - William Davenant (1651).djvu/19

 prevail most upon our own, by being deriv'd from the same doctrine and authority; as the particular Sects educated by Philosophers, were diligent and piiant to the dictates and fashions of such as deriv'd themselves from the same Master; but lazy and froward to those who convers'd in other Schools: Yet all these Sects pretended to the same beauty, Virtue; though each did court her more fondly, when she was dress'd at their own homes, by the hands of their acquaintance: And so Subjects bred under the Laws of a Prince (though Laws differ not much in Morality, or priviledge throughout the civil World; being every where made for direction of Life, more than for sentences of Death) will rather die near that Prince, defending those they have bin taught, than live by taking new from another.

These were partly the reasons why I chose a Story of such Persons as profess'd Chaistian Religion; but I ought to have been most enclin'd to it, because the Principles of our Religion conduce more to explicable virtue, to plain demonstrative justice, and even to Honour (if Virtue the Mother of Honour be voluntary, and active in the dark, so as she need not Laws to compel her, nor look for witnesses to proclaim her) than any other Religion that e're assembled men to Divine Worship. For that of the Jews doth still consist in a sullen separation of themselves from the rest of humane flesh, which is a fantastical pride of their own cleanness, and an uncivil disdain of the imagined contagiousness of others, and at this day, their cantonizing in Tribes, and shyness of alliance with neighbours, deserves not the term of mutual love, but rather seems a bestial melancholy of herding in their own Walks. That of the Ethnicks, like this of Mahomet, consisted in the vain pride of Empire, and never enjoyn'd a Jewish separation, but drew all Nations together; yet not as their companions of the same species, but as slaves to a Yoke: Their sanctity was Honour, and their Honour onely an impudent courage, or dexterity in destroying. But Christian Religion hath the innocence of village neighbour-hood, and did