How Matthew Poole dealt with fun

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VictorBravo

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I ran across this little excerpt about Matthew Poole while reading the Banner of Truth tonight. It drew my mind to the numerous silly-type threads we've had lately. Poole seemed to understand how to have a good time and maintain balance (I'm not sure if everyone would want to follow his diet, but I've followed a variation and it worked well for me).

Its from Edmund Calamy descibing Poole's routine while he was writing his magnum opus: Synopsis Criticorum:

While he was drawing up this work, and his English Annotations, it was his usual custom to rise at three or four o’clock, and take a raw egg about eight or nine, and another about twelve; and then to continue his studies till the afternoon was pretty far advanced; when he went abroad, and spent the evening at the house of some friend; at none more frequently than Alderman Ashurst’s. At such times he would be exceedingly but innocently merry, very much diverting both himself and his company. After supper, when it was near time to go home, he would say, ‘Now let us call for a reckoning;’ and then would begin some very serious discourse; and when he found the company was composed and serious, he would take his leave of them. This course was very serviceable to his health, and enabled him to go through the great fatigue of his studies, and it seems a noble example of the utile dulci. Were the mirth of our conversation always so closed, it would leave no uneasy reflections behind.

Taken from Banner of Truth, Issue 547, April 2009, p. 29.
 
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