precepts are more opposite to the lives of the men of this age than any
part of my discourse has been, but the preachers seem to have learned
that craft to which you advise me: for they, observing that the world
would not willingly suit their lives to the rules that Christ has given,
have fitted His doctrine, as if it had been a leaden rule, to their
lives, that so, some way or other, they might agree with one another. But
I see no other effect of this compliance except it be that men become
more secure in their wickedness by it; and this is all the success that I
can have in a court, for I must always differ from the rest, and then I
shall signify nothing; or, if I agree with them, I shall then only help
forward their madness. I do not comprehend what you mean by your
'casting about,' or by 'the bending and handling things so dexterously
that, if they go not well, they may go as little ill as may be;' for in
courts they will not bear with a man's holding his peace or conniving at
what others do: a man must barefacedly approve of the worst counsels and
consent to the blackest designs, so that he would pass for a spy, or,
possibly, for a traitor, that did but coldly approve of such wicked
practices; and therefore when a man is engaged in such a society, he will
be so far from being able to mend matters by his 'casting about,' as you
call it, that he will find no occasions of doing any good--the ill
company will sooner corrupt him than be the better for him; or if,
notwithstanding all their ill company, he still remains steady and
innocent, yet their follies and knavery will be imputed to him; and, by
mixing counsels with them, he must bear his share of all the blame that
belongs wholly to others.

"It was no ill simile by which Plato set forth the unreasonableness of a
philosopher's meddling with government. 'If a man,' says he, 'were to
see a great company run out every day into the rain and take delight in
being wet--if he knew that it would be to no purpose for him to go and