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But besides, doth not the thing itself sound ill, to
bid you keep all your lifetime out of the world's eye, as
if you had rifled the sepulchres of the dead, or done
such like detestable villany which you should hide for?
What! is it grown a crime to live, unless you can keep all
others from knowing you do so? For my part, I should
pronounce that even an ill-liver ought not to withdraw
himself from the converse of others. No; let him be
known, let him be reclaimed, let him repent; so that, if
you have any stock of virtue, let it not lie unemployed, or
if you have been viciously bent, do not by flying the means
continue unreclaimed and uncured. Point me out therefore and distinguish me the man to whom you adopt this
admonition. If to one devoid of sense, goodness, or wit,
it is like one that should caution a person under a fever or
raving madness not to let it be known where he is, for fear
the physicians should find him, but rather to skulk in
some dark corner, where he and his diseases may escape
discovery. So you who labor under that pernicious, that
scarce curable disease, wickedness, are by parity of reason
bid to conceal your vices, your envyings, your superstitions,
like some disorderly or feverous pulse, for fear of falling
into the hands of them who might prescribe well to you
and set you to rights again. Whereas, alas! in the days
of remote antiquity, men exhibited the sick to public view,
when every charitable passenger who had labored himself
under the like malady, or had experienced a remedy on them
that did, communicated to the diseased all the receipts he
knew; thus, say they, skill in physic was patched up by
multiplied experiments, and grew to a mighty art. At the
same rate ought all the infirmities of a dissolute life, all
the irregular passions of the soul, to be laid open to the
view of all, and undergo the touch of every skilful hand,
[p. 5]
that all who examine into the temper may be able to
prescribe accordingly. For instance, doth anger transport you? The advice in that case is, Shun the occasions
of it. Doth jealousy torment you? Take this or that
course. Art thou love-sick? It hath been my own case
and infirmity to be so too; but I saw the folly of it, I repented, I grew wiser. But for those that lie, denying,
hiding, mincing, and palliating their vices, it makes them
but take the deeper dye, it rivets their faults into them.
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