Audacity and confidence doth in business so great effects as a man may doubt that, besides the very daring and earnestness and persisting and importunity, there should be some secret binding and stooping of other mens spirits to such persons.
Sith evils, great and unexpected, doth cause oftentimes even them to think upon divine power with fearfullest suspicions, which have been otherwise the most sacred adorers thereof; how should we look for any constant resolution of mind in such cases, saving only where unfeigned affection to God hath bred the most assured confidence to be assisted by his hand?
Confidence in ones self is the chief nurse of magnanimity; which confidence, notwithstanding, doth not leave the care of necessary furniture for it; and therefore, of all the Grecians, Homer doth ever make Achilles the best armed.
It concerns all who think it worth while to be in earnest with their immortal souls not to abuse themselves with a false confidence; a thing so easily taken up, and so hardly laid down.
Be not confident and affirmative in an uncertain matter, but report things modestly and temperately, according to the degree of that persuasion which is or ought to be begotten by the efficacy of the authority or the reason inducing thee.
A true and humble sense of your own unworthiness will not suffer you to rise up to that confidence which some men unwarrantably pretend to, nay, unwarrantably require of others.