Which Menedemus objected to Chremes; have I so much leisure, or little business of mine own, as to look after other men's matters which concern me not? What have I to do with physic? Quod medicorum est promittant medici. The [156]Lacedaemonians were once in counsel about state matters, a debauched fellow spake excellent well, and to the purpose, his speech was generally approved: a grave senator steps up, and by all means would have it repealed, though good, because dehonestabatur pessimo auctore, it had no better an author; let some good man relate the same, and then it should pass. This counsel was embraced, factum est, and it was registered forthwith, Et sic bona sententia mansit, malus auctor mutatus est. Thou sayest as much of me, stomachosus as thou art, and grantest, peradventure, this which I have written in physic, not to be amiss, had another done it, a professed physician, or so, but why should I meddle with this tract? Hear me speak. There be many other subjects, I do easily grant, both in humanity and divinity, fit to be treated of, of which had I written ad ostentationem only, to show myself, I should have rather chosen, and in which I have been more conversant, I could have more willingly luxuriated, and better satisfied myself and others; but that at this time I was fatally driven upon this rock of melancholy, and carried away by this by-stream, which, as a rillet, is deducted from the main channel of my studies, in which I have pleased and busied myself at idle hours, as a subject most necessary and commodious. Not that I prefer it before divinity, which I do acknowledge to be the queen of professions, and to which all the rest are as handmaids, but that in divinity I saw no such great need. For had I written positively, there be so many books in that kind, so many commentators, treatises, pamphlets, expositions, sermons, that whole teams of oxen cannot draw them; and had I been as forward and ambitious as some others, I might have haply printed a sermon at Paul's Cross, a sermon in St. Marie's Oxon, a sermon in Christ Church, or a sermon before the right honourable, right reverend, a sermon before the right worshipful, a sermon in Latin, in English, a sermon with a name, a sermon without, a sermon, a sermon, &c. But I have been ever as desirous to suppress my labours in this kind, as others have been to press and publish theirs. To have written in controversy had been to cut off an hydra's head, [157]Lis litem generat, one begets another, so many duplications, triplications, and swarms of questions. In sacro bello hoc quod stili mucrone agitur, that having once begun, I should never make an end. One had much better, as [158]Alexander, the sixth pope, long since observed, provoke a great prince than a begging friar, a Jesuit, or a seminary priest, I will add, for inexpugnabile genus hoc hominum, they are an irrefragable society, they must and will have the last word; and