Seneca's Morals: Of a Happy Life, Benefits, Anger and Clemency

An excerpt from the introductory: TO THE READER. IT has been a long time my thought to turn Seneca into English; but whether as a "translation" or an "abstract," was the question. A "translation," I perceive, it must not be, at last, for several reasons. First, it is a thing already done to my hand, and of above sixty years' standing; though with as little "credit," perhaps, to the Author, as "satisfaction" to the Reader. Secondly, There is a great deal in him, that is wholly foreign to my business: as his philosophical treatises of "Meteors, Earthquakes," the Original of "Rivers," several frivolous disputes betwixt the Epicureans and the Stoics, etc., to say nothing of his frequent repetitions of the same thing again in other words, (wherein he very handsomely excuses himself, by saying, "That he does but inculcate over and over the same counsels to those that over and over commit the same faults.") Thirdly, His excellency consists rather in a rhapsody of divine and extraordinary "hints" and "notions," than in any regulated method of discourse; so that to take him as he lies, and so to go through with him, were utterly inconsistent with the order and brevity which I propound; my principal design, being only to digest, and commonplace his "Morals," in such sort, that any man, upon occasion, may know where to find them. And I have kept myself so close to this proposition, that I have reduced all his scattered Ethics to their "proper heads," without any additions of my own, more than of absolute necessity for the tacking of them together. Some other man in my place would perhaps make you twenty apologies for his want of skill and address, in governing this affair; but these are formal and pedantic fooleries, as if any man that first takes himself for a coxcomb in his own heart, would afterwards make himself one in print too. This "Abstract," such as it is, you are extremely welcome to; and I am sorry it is no better, both for your sakes and my own, for if it were written up to the spirit of the original, it would be one of the most valuable presents that ever any private man bestowed upon the public; and this, too, even in the judgment of both parties, as well Christian as Heathen, of which in its due place. Next to my choice of the "Author" and of the "subject," together with the manner of handling it, I have likewise had some regard, in this publication, to the timing of it, and to the preference of this topic of "Benefits" above all others, for the groundwork of my "first essay." We are fallen into an age of "vain philosophy" (as the holy apostle calls it) and so desperately overrun with Drolls and Sceptics, that there is hardly any thing so certain or so sacred, that is not exposed to question and contempt, insomuch, that betwixt the hypocrite and the Atheist, the very foundations of religion and good manners are shaken, and the two tables of the "Decalogue" dashed to pieces the one against the other; the laws of government are subjected to the fancies of the vulgar; public authority to the private passions and opinions of the people; and the supernatural motions of grace confounded with the common dictates of nature. In this state of corruption, who so fit as a good honest Christian Pagan for a moderator among Pagan Christians?