Is a scholar in this great university the world; and the same his book
and study. He cloisters not his meditations in the narrow darkness of a
room, but sends them abroad with his eyes, and his brain travels with
his feet. He looks upon man from a high tower, and sees him trulier at
this distance in his infirmities and poorness. He scorns to mix himself
in men's actions, as he would to act upon a stage; but sits aloft on the
scaffold a censuring spectator. [He will not lose his time by being
busy, or make so poor a use of the world as to hug and embrace it.]
Nature admits him as a partaker of her sports, and asks his approbation,
as it were, of her own works and variety. He comes not in company,
because he would not be solitary; but finds discourse enough with
himself, and his own thoughts are his excellent play-fellows. He looks
not upon a thing as a yawning stranger at novelties, but his search is
more mysterious and inward, and he spells heaven out of earth. He knits
his observations together, and makes a ladder of them all to climb to
God. He is free from vice, because he has no occasion to employ it, and
is above those ends that make man wicked. He has learnt all that can
here be taught him, and comes now to heaven to see more.