'Tis a great deal for me to have my judgment regular and just, if the
effects cannot be so, and to maintain this sovereign part, at least, free
from corruption; 'tis something to have my will right and good where my
legs fail me. This age wherein we live, in our part of the world at
least, is grown so stupid, that not only the exercise, but the very
imagination of virtue is defective, and seems to be no other but college
jargon:

"Virtutem verba putant, ut
Lucum ligna:"

["They think words virtue, as they think mere wood a sacred grove."
--Horace, Ep., i. 6, 31.]

"Quam vereri deberent, etiam si percipere non possent."

["Which they ought to reverence, though they cannot comprehend."
--Cicero, Tusc. Quas., v. 2.]

'Tis a gewgaw to hang in a cabinet or at the end of the tongue, as on the
tip of the ear, for ornament only. There are no longer virtuous actions
extant; those actions that carry a show of virtue have yet nothing of its
essence; by reason that profit, glory, fear, custom, and other suchlike
foreign causes, put us on the way to produce them. Our justice also,
valour, courtesy, may be called so too, in respect to others and
according to the face they appear with to the public; but in the doer it
can by no means be virtue, because there is another end proposed, another
moving cause. Now virtue owns nothing to be hers, but what is done by
herself and for herself alone.