The whole paragraph is pure gold. Without being aware of this passage in Donne, I expressed the same conviction, or rather declared the same experience, in the appendix [15] to the Statesman's Manual. O! if only one day in a week, Christians would consent to have the Bible as the only book, and their minister's labour to make them find all substantial good of all other books in their Bibles! Ib. E. I remember one of the Panegyrics celebrates and magnifies one of the Roman emperors for this, that he would marry when he was young; that he would so soon confine and limit his pleasures, so soon determine his affections in one person. It is surely some proof of the moral effect which Christianity has produced, that in all Protestant countries, at least, a writer would be ashamed to assign this as a ground of panegyric; as if promiscuous intercourse with those of the other sex had been a natural good, a privilege, which there was a great merit in foregoing! O! what do not women owe to Christianity! As Christians only it is that they do, or ordinarily can, cease to be things for men, instead of co-persons in one spiritual union. Ib. p. 166. A. But such is often the corrupt inordinateness of greatness, that it only carries them so much beyond other men, but not so much nearer to God. Like a balloon, away from earth, but not a whit nearer the arch of heaven. There is a praiseworthy relativeness and life in the morality of our best old divines. It is not a cold law in brass or stone; but "this I may and should think of my neighbour, this of a great man," &c. Ib. p. 167. A. Christ was pleased to redeem this man from this error, and bring him to know truly what he was, that he was God. Christ therefore doth not rebuke this man, by any denying that he himself was good; for Christ doth assume that addition to himself, 'I am the good shepherd'. Neither doth God forbid that those good parts which are in men should be celebrated with condign praise. We see that God, as soon as he saw that any thing was good, he said so, he uttered it, he declared it, first of the light, and then of other creatures. God would be no author, no example of smothering the due praise of good actions. For surely that man hath no zeal to goodness in himself, that affords no praise to goodness in other men.