Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: I could have better foreseen them myself than rats or any such vermin, and yet did it not. I have heard indeed many fine stories told of rats, how they abandon houses and ships, when the first are to be burnt and the second drowned. Naturalists say they are very sagacious creatures, and I believe they are so; but I shall never be of the opinion they can forsee future contingencies, which I suppose the devil himself can neither foreknow nor foretell; there being things which the Almighty hath kept hidden in the bosom of his divine prescience. And whether the great God bath preordained or predestinated these things, which to us are contingent, to fall out by an uncontrollable and unavoidable necessity, is a question not yet decided. JOHN MANNINGHAM To Kkep Sheep The Best Life 15 February 1602.—The Life of Man was so affected to this life, that he denied not to crown his deity with this title: and by this he directed his especial charge to his especial disciple: giving us men this best name of a beast, of the best nature of beasts. They are innocent, they are patient, so would God have man; they love and live together, so would God have man. God made thee to behold the Heaven, and to meditate the wonders thereof; make thyself a shepherd, and thou art still beholding, still meditating. God commands thee to forsake the world : if thou art a shepherd thou dost so, thou withdrawest thyself from the world. The private life is the sweetest life; if thou livest the life of a shepherd, thou livest the sweetest private. Wilt thou be a King1! Be a shepherd, thou hast subjects, thou hast obedient subjects, thou hast sheep, thou hast a sceptre, thou hast a crook; thy fold is thy council chamber, and the green field thy flourishing palace. Thy companions are the sun, the moon and the stars... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.