To Come To Our Instructions For Travellers, As Given In The Reign Of
James I., They Abound, As We Would Expect, In Warnings Against The
Inquisition And The Jesuits.
Sir Robert Dallington, in his Method for
Travell,[181] gives first place to the question of remaining steadfast
in one's religion:
"Concerning the Traveliers religion, I teach not what it should be,
(being out of my element;) only my hopes are, he be of the religion here
established: and my advice is he be therein well settled, and that
howsoever his imagination shall be carried in the voluble Sphere of
divers men's discourses; yet his inmost thoughts like lines in a circle
shall alwaies concenter in this immoveable point, not to alter his first
faith: for that I knowe, that as all innovation is dangerous in a state;
so is this change in the little commonwealth of a man. And it is to be
feared, that he which is of one religion in his youth, and of another in
his manhood, will in his age be of neither....
"I will instance in a Gentleman I knew abroade, of an overt and free
nature Zealously forward in the religion hee carried from home, while he
was in France, who had not bene twentie dayes in Italy, but he was as
farre gone on the contrary Byas, and since his returne is turned againe.
Now what should one say of such men but as the Philosopher saith of a
friend, 'Amicus omnium, Amicus nullorum,' A professor of both, a
believer in neither.[182]
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