Just Consideration

     Though I speake with the tongues of men & of Angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brasse or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophesie, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge: and though I have all faith, so that I could remooue mountaines, and have no charitie, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poore, and though I give my body to bee burned, and have not charitie, it profiteth me nothing. Charitie suffereth long, and is kinde: charitie enuieth not: charitie vaunteth not it selfe, is not puffed up, Doeth not behave it selfe unseemly, seeketh not her owne, is not easily prouoked, thinketh no euill, Reioyceth not in iniqitie, but reioyceth in the trueth: Beareth all things, beleeueth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charitie neuer faileth: but whether there be prophesies, they shall faile; whether there bee tongues, they shall cease; whether there bee knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesie in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is part, shall be done away. When I was a childe, I spake as a childe, I undersrood as a childe, I thought as a childe: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glasse, darkely: but then face to face: now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am knowen. And now abideth faith, hope, charitie, these three, but the greatest of these is charitie.
— St. Paul, from I Corinthians, xiii, 1-13, The Holy Bible, Authorized Version, 1611 A.D., p. 83, in The Oxford Book of English Prose, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (sel. & ed.), p. 126.

     I have of late, — but wherefore I know not, — lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the Earth, seems to me a sterile Promontory; this most excellent Canopy, the Air, look you,  this brave o'erhanging Firmament, this Majestical Roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How Noble in Reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in Action how like an Angel! in apprehension how like a God! the beauty of the world! the Paragon of Animals! And yet, to me, what is this Quintessence of Dust? Man delights not me; no, nor Woman neither, though, by your smiling, you seem to say so.
— William Shakespeare, Hamlet, II, ii, in Ibid., p. 150.

     God made Sun and Moon to distinguish seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons: But God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies; In paradise, the fruits were ripe, the first minute, and in heaven it is alwaies Autumne, his mercies are ever in their maturity. We ask panem quotidianum, our daily bread, and God never sayes you should have come yesterday, he never sayes you must againe to morrow, but to day if you will heare his voice, to day he will heare you. If some King of the earth have so large an extent of Dominion, in North, and South, as that he hath Winter and Summer together in his Dominions, so large an extent East and West, as that he hath day and night together in his Dominions, much more hath God mercy and judjement together: He brought light out of darknesse, not out of a lesser light; he can bring thy Summer out of Winter, though thou have no Spring; though in the wayes of fortune, or understanding, or conscience, thou have been benighted till now, wintred and frozen, clouded and eclypsed, damped and benumbed, smothered and stupefied till now, now God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the Sun at noon to illustrate all shadows, as the sheaves in harvest, to fill all penuries, all occasions invite his mercies, and all times are his seasons.
— John Donne, LXXX Sermons: Sermon II, "All Times are God's Seasons," in Ibid., pp. 168-169.

     Good and evil we know in the field of this World grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were inposed on Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil as two twins cleaving together leapt forth into the World. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil. As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbeare, without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortal garland is to be run for not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
— John Milton, "Against Fugitive and Cloistered Virtue," from Areopagitica, in Ibid., pp. 241-242.