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the natures and properties of things by their false principles and wretched sophistry, though an act be never so sinful, they will be sure to strip it of its guilt; and to make the very law and rule of action so pliable and bending, that it shall be impossible to be broke. So that he who goes to hell must pass through a narrower gate than that which the gospel says leads to heaven. For that, we are told, is only strait, but this is absolutely shut; and so shut that sin cannot pass it, and therefore it is much if a sinner should.

So insufferably have these impostors poisoned the fountains of morality, perverted and embased the very standard and distinguishing rule of good and evil. So that all their books and writings are but debauchery upon record, and impiety registered and consigned over to posterity.

In every volume there is a nursery and plantation of vice, where it is sure to thrive, and from thence to be transplanted into men's practice. For here it is manured with art and argument, sheltered with fallacy and distinction, and thereby enabled both to annoy others and to defend itself.

And to shew how far the malignity of this way of sinning reaches; he, who has vented a pernicious doctrine, or published an ill book, must know that his guilt and his life determine not together: no, such an one, as the apostle says, being dead, yet speaketh; he sins in his very grave, corrupts others while he is rotting himself, and has a growing account in the other world after he has paid nature's last debt in this; and, in a word, quits this life like a man carried off by the plague; who, though he

dies himself, yet does execution upon others by a surviving infection.

2. Such also are to be reckoned to take pleasure in other men's sins, as endeavour by all means to allure men to sin; and that either by formal persuasion, importunity, or desire, as we find the harlot described, enticing the young man, in Prov. vii. from ver. 13 to 22; or else by administering objects and occasions fit to inflame and draw forth a man's corrupt affections; such as are the drinking of a choleric or revengeful person into a fit of rage and violence against the person of his neighbour; thus heating one man's blood, in order to the shedding of another's. Such also as the provoking of a lustful, incontinent person, by filthy discourse, wanton books and pictures, and, that which equals and exceeds them all, the incentives of the stage; till a man's vice and folly works over all bounds, and grows at length too mad and outrageous to be either governed or concealed.

Now with great variety of such kind of traders for hell as these, has the nation of late years abounded. Wretches who live upon the shark, and other men's sins, the common poisoners of youth, equally desperate in their fortunes and their manners, and getting their very bread by the damnation of souls. So that if any inexperienced young novice happens into the fatal neighbourhood of such pests, presently they are upon him, plying his full purse and his empty pate with addresses suitable to his vanity; telling him, what pity it is, that one so accomplished for parts and person should smother himself in the country, where he can learn nothing of gallantry or

behaviour; as, how to make his court, to hector a drawer, to cog the die, or storm a whorehouse ; but must of necessity live and die ignorant of what it is to trepan or be trepanned, to sup, or rather dine at midnight in a tavern, with the noise of oaths, blasphemies, and fiddlers about his ears, and to fight every watch and constable at his return from thence, and to be beaten by them: but must at length, poor man! die dully of old age at home; when here he might so fashionably and genteelly, long before that time, have been duelled or fluxed into another world.

If this be not the guise and practice of the times, especially as to the principal cities of the kingdom, let any one judge; and whether for such a poor deluded wretch, instead of growing rusty in the country, (as some call it,) to be thus brought by a company of indigent, debauched, soul-and-body-destroying harpies, to lose his estate, family, and virtue, amongst them in the city, be not a much greater violation of the public weal and justice of any government, than most of those crimes that bring the committers of them to the gallows, we may at present easily see, and one day perhaps sadly feel.

Nor is this trade of corrupting the gentry and nobility, and seasoning them with the vices of the great town, as soon as they set foot into it, carried on secretly, and in a corner, but openly, and in the face of the sun; by persons who have formed themselves into companies, or rather corporations. So that a man may as easily know where to find one to teach him to debauch, whore, game, and blaspheme, as to teach him to write or cast accompt: it is their support and business; nay, their very profession and livelihood; getting their living by those

practices, for which they deserve to forfeit their lives.

Now these are another sort of men, who are justly charged with the guilt and character of delighting in other men's sins: men, who are the devil's setters; who contrive, study, and beat their brains how to draw in some poor, innocent, unguarded heir into their hellish net, learning his humour, prying into his circumstances, and observing his weak side; and all this to plant the snare and apply the temptation effectually and successfully; and when by such insinuations they have once got within him, and are able to drill him on from one lewdness to another, by the same arts corrupting and squeezing him as they please; no wonder if they rejoice to see him guilty of all sorts of villainy, and take pleasure in those sins in which they find their profit too.

3. Such as affect the company of infamous and vicious persons, are also to be reckoned in the number of those who take pleasure in such men's vices. For otherwise, what is there in such men which they can pretend to be pleased with? For generally such sots have neither parts nor wit, ingenuity of discourse, nor fineness of conversation, to entertain or delight any one, that, coming into their company, brings but his reason along with him. But, on the contrary, their rude, impertinent loudness, their quarrels, their nastiness, their dull, obscene talk and ribaldry, (which from them you must take for wit, or go without it,) cannot but be very nauseous and offensive to any one who does not balk his own reason, out of love to their vice; and, for the sake of the sin itself, pardon the ugliness of its circumstances: as a father will hug and embrace his beloved son, for all the dirt

and foulness of his clothes; the dearness of the person easily apologizing for the disagreeableness of the habit.

One would think it should be no easy matter to bring any man of sense to love an alehouse; indeed of so much sense, as seeing and smelling amounts to; there being such strong encounters of both, as would quickly send him packing, did not the love of good fellowship reconcile him to these nuisances, and the deity he adored compound for the homelines of its shrine.

It is clear therefore, that where a man can like and love the conversation of lewd, debauched persons, amidst all the natural grounds and motives of loathing and dislike; it can proceed from nothing but the inward affection he bears to their lewd, debauched humour. It is this that he enjoys, and, for the sake of this, the rest he endures.

4thly and lastly, Such as encourage, countenance, and support men in their sins, are to be reckoned in the number of those who take pleasure in other men's sins. Now this may be done two ways.

First, By commendation. Concerning which, we may take this for granted; that no man commends another any further than he likes him for indeed to commend any one, is to vouch him to the world, to undertake for his worth, and, in a word, to own the thing which he is chiefly remarkable for. He who writes an encomium Neronis, if he does it heartily is himself but a transcript of Nero in his mind; and would, no doubt, gladly enough see such pranks, as he was famous for, acted again, though he dares not be the actor of them himself.

From whence we see the reason of some men's

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