So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it
enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind
to do.

Keimer and I liv'd on a pretty good familiar footing, and agreed
tolerably well, for he suspected nothing of my setting up.
He retained a great deal of his old enthusiasms and lov'd argumentation.
We therefore had many disputations. I used to work him so with my
Socratic method, and had trepann'd him so often by questions apparently
so distant from any point we had in hand, and yet by degrees lead
to the point, and brought him into difficulties and contradictions,
that at last he grew ridiculously cautious, and would hardly answer
me the most common question, without asking first, "What do you
intend to infer from that?" However, it gave him so high an opinion
of my abilities in the confuting way, that he seriously proposed my
being his colleague in a project he had of setting up a new sect.
He was to preach the doctrines, and I was to confound all opponents.
When he came to explain with me upon the doctrines, I found several
conundrums which I objected to, unless I might have my way a little too,
and introduce some of mine.

Keimer wore his beard at full length, because somewhere in the Mosaic
law it is said, "Thou shalt not mar the corners of thy beard."
He likewise kept the Seventh day, Sabbath; and these two points were
essentials with him. I dislik'd both; but agreed to admit them upon
condition of his adopting the doctrine of using no animal food.
"I doubt," said he, "my constitution will not bear that." I assur'd
him it would, and that he would be the better for it. He was usually a
great glutton, and I promised myself some diversion in half starving him.
He agreed to try the practice, if I would keep him company.