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committed them by animadversions and reprehensions. The malignity of man's nature is not so violent and impetuous, as to hurry them at first, and at once, into any supreme and incorrigible love of wickedness: poor people begin first to be idle, which brings want upon them, before they arrive at the impudence of stealing; and if they were at first brought to be in love with industry, which is as easily learned, and it may be in itself as easy as idleness, the other mischief would be never thought of. The first ingredients into the most enormous crimes, are ignorance, incogitance, or some sudden violent passion; which a little care in a charitable neighbour might easily inform and reform, before it grows up into rebellion, or contempt of religion. Every man ought to be a physician to him for whose malady he hath a certain cure; and there is scarce a more infallible cure than counsel and conversation, which hath often recovered the most profligate persons; and hath so seldom failed, that an enormous man of dissolute and debauched manners hath been rarely known, who hath lived in frequent conversation with men of wisdom and unblameable lives. But it will be said, that such people will never like or endure that conversation. It may be, like ill physicians, we may too soon despair of the recovery of some patients, and therefore leave them to desperate experiments: we are too apt to look so superciliously upon the natural levities and excesses of youth, as if they were not worth the pains of conversion; or that it would be best wrought by necessities, contempt, or prisons : either of which are very ill schools to reduce them to virtue. Such men will never decline the con

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versation of their superiors, if they may be admitted to it, though it may be they intend to laugh at it; but by this, in an instant, they depart from the pleasure of obscene and profane discourses, and insensibly find an alteration in their nature, their humour, and their manners; there being a sovereign and a subtle spirit in the conversation of good and wise men, that insinuates itself into corrupt men, that though they know not how it comes about, they sensibly feel an amendment: "Non deprehendent quemadmodum aut quando, profuisse deprehendent," they cannot tell how or when, but they are sure they are restored. It is great pity that so infallible a medicine should be locked up by prejudice or morosity.

XIII. OF PROMISES.

Montpellier, 1670.

PROMISES was the ready money that was first coined, and made current by the law of nature, to support that society and commerce that was necessary for the comfort and security of mankind; and they who have adulterated this pure and legitimate metal with an allay of distinctions and subtle evasions, have introduced a counterfeit and pernicious coin, that destroys all the simplicity and integrity of human conversation. For what obligations can ever be the earnest of faith and truth, if promises may be violated? The superinduction of others for the corroboration and maintenance of government had been much less necessary, if promises had still preserved their primitive vigour and reputation; nor can any thing be said for the non

performance of a promise, which may not as reasonably be applied to the non-observation of an oath; and in truth, men have not been observed to be much restrained by their oaths, who have not been punctual in their promises, the same sincerity of nature being requisite to both. The philosopher went farther than his profession obliged him, or in truth than it admitted, when he would not have the performance exacted, unless " omnia essent eadem, quæ fuerint cum promitteres ;" and the distinction was necessary, when he thought it fit to avoid a promise he had made to a man that appears to be an ill man, who seemed a very good and worthy person when he made this promise : and a greater change could not be: yet he seemed not over pleased with his own distinction, and would rather comply with his promise, if it could be done without much inconvenience. But too

many Christian casuists have gone much farther in finding out many inventions and devices to evade and elude the faith of promise, if there hath been force or fraud, or any other circumvention, in the contriving the promise and engagement; which must dissolve all the contracts and bargains which are commonly made among men, who still contend to be too hard for one another, that they may advance or lessen their commodity. And no doubt the forming and countenancing those dispensations hath introduced much improbity and tergiversation into the nature and minds of men, which they were not acquainted with whilst they had a due consideration of the sacredness of their word and promise. It is from the impiety of this doctrine, that we run with that precipitation into promises and

oaths, and think it lawful to promise that which we know to be unlawful to perform. What is this but to proclaim perjury to be lawful, at the committing whereof every Christian heart ought to tremble; or rather to declare that there is no such sin, no such thing as perjury? There is no question, no man ought to perform an unlawful, much less a wicked oath or promise; but the wickedness of executing it doth not absolve any man from the guilt and wickedness of swearing that he would, do it; he is perjured in not performing that which he would be more perjured in performing; and: men who unwarily involve themselves in those labyrinths, cannot find the way out of them with innocence, and seldom choose to do it with that which is next to it, hearty repentance; but devise new expedients, which usually increase their crime and their perplexity. Where nothing of the law of God or some manifest deduction from thence doth controul our promises, it is great pity that the mere human law and policy of government should absolve men from the performance; and a good conscience will compel him to do that whom the law. will not compel, but suffer to evade for his own benefit. We have not that probity which nature stated us in, if we do not "castigare promittendi temeritatem," redeem the rashness and incogitance of our promise, by submitting to the inconvenience and damage of performance.

It is one of the greatest arguments which makes Machiavel seem to prefer the government of a commonwealth before that of monarchy (for he. doth but seem to do it, how. great a republican soever he is thought to be,) because he says kings

and princes are less direct in the observation of their promises and contracts than republics are; and that a little benefit and advantage disposes them to violate them, when no profit that can accrue prevails upon the other to recede from the obligation: which would be indeed an argument of weight and importance, if it were true. Nor does the instance he gives us in any degree prove his assertion; for it was not the justice of the senate of Athens that refused the proposition made by Themistocles, for the destruction of the whole fleet of the rest of Greece, to whom it was never made, but the particular exactness of Aristides, to whom it was discovered by order of the senate, that he might consider it; and he reported, that the proposition was indeed very profitable, but most dishonest, upon which the senate rejected it, without knowing more of it; which, if they had done, it is probable, by their other practices, that they might not so readily have declined it. Nor is the instance he gives of Philip of Macedon other than a general averment, without stating the case: as his adored republic of Rome never outlived that infamous judgment, that, when a difference between two of their neighbours was by a joint consent referred to their arbitrement, to whom a piece of land in difference and dispute between them should belong, determined that it should belong to neither of them, but that they the republic of Rome should enjoy it themselves, because it lay very convenient for them; so that form of government hath never since raised any monuments of their truth and justice, in the observation of the promises and contracts which they have made. But though his

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