Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

72 THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMnature, in virtue of the divine quality of reason, andin spite of all variety in wealth, birth, rank, and outwardfortune, proclaiming aloud that the only standardwhereby men should be measured is the use whichthey make of this divine quality within them, andthat as it affects their actions. He recognises there-Ofore the standard of moral worth as his only criterion.And he preaches this as tutor, minister, and favouriteof Nero, as the possessor of numerous palaces, sumptuouslyfurnished, in the fairest spots of the earth.Again, all countries are the same to the wise man,whose origin is from heaven, and whose home is theworld, declares the man, who, when banished to Corsica,though without the loss of his wealth, found notone of complaint abject enough to express his misery.He enjoins firmness and consistency in our moraljudgments, having exceeded all men in fawning flatteryof the living prince as the model of justice and wisegovernment, and in contemptuous abuse of the sameprince when dead as a worthless and besotted despot.The man who holds human life as sacred in themeanest slave, is minister by Nero's side when Britan-nicus, the young and innocent brother, is swept outof his way, and when Agrippina, the dangerous andguilty woman, but the mother still, perishes by herson's command. If we grant upon the testimony ofTacitus that Seneca was esteemed as one of the bestRomans of his day, and that his own life in the midstof boundless wealth was simple, and his example as ahusband especially without reproach, still these areheavv drawbacks in the character of a moralist sosevere in his judgment of others, and who mesall men and all things by the standard of reason.That a man's doctrine should be far above h