No, let blood and name go together; but pray let nobility and virtue keep company, for they are nearest of kin. It is thus profited by God himself, that best knows how to apportion things with an equal and just hand. He neither likes nor dislikes by descent; nor does He regard what people were, but are. He remembers not the righteousness of any man that leaves his righteousness; (Ezek. xviii.;) much less any unrighteous man for the righteousness of his ancestor. V. But if these men of blood please to think themselves concerned to believe and reverence God in his holy Scriptures, they may learn that "in the beginning He made of one blood all nations of men to dwell upon all the earth;" (Acts, xvii. 26;) and that we all descended from one father and mother. A more certain original than the best of us can assign. From thence go down to Noah, who was the second planter of the human race, and we are upon some certainty for our forefathers. What violence has reaped or virtue merited since, and how far we that are alive are concerned in either, will be hard for us to determine but a very few ages off us. VI. But, methinks it should suffice to say, our own eyes see that men of blood, out of their gear and trappings, without their feathers and finery, have no more marks of honour by nature stamped upon them, than their inferior neighbours. Nay, themselves being judges, they will frankly tell us, they feel all those passions in their blood, that make them like other men, if not further from the virtue that truly dignifies. The lamentable ignorance and debauchery that now rages among too many of our greater sort of folks, is too clear and casting an evidence in the point: and pray tell me of what blood are they come?