If you then intend to enjoy for your portion a Kingdom hereafter, adhere not to the allurements of Vice; for she will soon perswade you to be an unthrift, to sell your Inheritance whilest it is but in Reversion. But hearken to Vertue’s counsel; she will teach you how to husband all things well, so as to become a purchaser of no less than Joys eternal.
_Fortunes favors oft do fade, To those that in her arms do sleep: Shelter your selves in Vertue’s shade; She crowneth those that do her reap. For though darkned, you may say, When Friends fail, and Fortunes frown, Though Virtue is the roughest way, Yet proves at night a bed of Doun._
Thus have I given you a summary account of my life, from the Non-age to the Meridian of my days. If there be any expressions either scurrilous or obscene, my onely design was to make Vice appear as she is, foul, ugly, and deformed: and I hope, he that hath sense will grow wiser by the folly that is presented him; as Drunkards are often cured by the beastliness of others that are so. The subject would not permit to be serious, neither would it have been suitable to our merry age, being generally of _Tully’s_ minde, when he said, _Lectionem sine ulla delectatione negligo_: He hated reading where no pleasure dwelt.
As the day-light is purest, so have I endeavored to make my slender Wit appear terse and spruce, without the fulsomness of wanton language. If I have in anyplace transgrest the bounds of modesty by loose expressions, you need not fear to be offended with their unsavoury breath, for I have perfumed it: but if it should chance to stink, it is only to drive you from my former inclination and conversation. It is probable I may be a little guilty, being not fully cured of that malady I lately laboured under. For as the breaking out of itch and blains shews the body is not clear, so foul and unrinsed expressions are the parulent exhalations of a corrupted minde, stained with the unseasonedness of the flesh.
If any loose word have dropt from (the Mindes best Interpreter) my Pen, I would have the Reader to pass it over regardless, and not like a Toad, only gather up the venom of a Garden; or like a Goldfinder, make it his business to dive in stench and excrements. However, very cautious I was in offending any modest ear, (though sometimes it could hardly be avoided, the matter in a manner requiring it) because I look upon obscene expressions as the Plague on Paper; and he that comes between the sheets, is in danger of being infected. I shall assure you, had I not more respected a general good, by displaying Vice in general, to put men out of conceit with it, I should not have taken so much pains, to be both blam’d and laught at, but should have wrapt up in silence my shame and infamy. For in truth, this Book may bear a similitude with the _Amphisbena_, a Serpent headed at either end: one biteth the vicious temper of him that reads it, and the other stings him that wrote it. To conclude, I care not though my wickedness and folly be set up as a Monument to make my infamy eternal, so that the reading of my Life may be any ways instrumental for the reformation of licentious persons.