Deare friend, be silent and with patience see, What this mad times Catastrophe will be; The worlds first Wisemen certainly mistooke Themselues, and spoke things quite beside the booke, And that which they haue of said of God, vntrue, Or else expect strange iudgement to insue. This Isle is a meere Bedlam, and therein, We all lye rauing, mad in euery sinne, And him the wisest most men use to call, Who doth (alone) the maddest thing of all; 10 He whom the master of all wisedome found, For a marckt foole, and so did him propound, The time we liue in, to that passe is brought, That only he a Censor now is thought; And that base villaine, (not an age yet gone,) Which a good man would not haue look'd vpon; Now like a God, with diuine worship follow'd, And all his actions are accounted hollow'd. This world of ours, thus runneth vpon wheeles, Set on the head, bolt vpright with her heeles; 20 Which makes me thinke of what the _Ethnicks_ told Th' opinion, the Pythagorists vphold, Wander That the immortall soule doth transmigrate; From body Then I suppose by the strong power of fate, to body. And since that time now many a lingering yeare, Through fools, and beasts, and lunatiques haue past, Are heere imbodyed in this age at last, And though so long we from that time be gone, Yet taste we still of that confusion. For certainely there's scarse one found that now, 30 Knowes what t' approoue, or what to disallow, All arsey varsey, nothing is it's owne, But to our prouerbe, all turnd vpside downe; To doe in time, is to doe out of season, And that speeds best, thats done the farth'st from reason, Hee 's high'st that 's low'st, hee 's surest in that 's out, He hits the next way that goes farth'st about, He getteth vp vnlike to rise at all, He slips to ground as much vnlike to fall; Which doth inforce me partly to prefer, 40 _Zeno._ The opinion of that mad Philosopher, Who taught, that those all-framing powers aboue, (As 'tis suppos'd) made man not out of loue To him at all, but only as a thing, To make them sport with, which they vse to bring As men doe munkeys, puppets, and such tooles Of laughter: so men are but the Gods fooles. Such are by titles lifted to the sky, As wherefore no man knowes, God scarcely why; The vertuous man depressed like a stone, 50 For that dull Sot to raise himselfe vpon;