CHANGING SIDES
’TIS the trial of a man to see if he will change his side; and if he be so weak as to change once, he will change again. Your country fellows have a way to try if a man be weak in the hams, by coming behind him and giving him a blow unawares; if he bend once, he will bend again.
The lords that fall from the king after they have got estates by base flattery at court and now pretend conscience, do as a vintner, that when he first sets up, you may go to his house, and carouse there; but when he grows rich, he turns conscientious, and will sell no wine upon the Sabbath Day.
Col. Goring, serving first the one side and then the other, did like a good miller that knows how to grind which way soever the wind sits.
After Luther had made a combustion in Germany about religion, he was sent to by the Pope, to be taken off, and offered any preferment in the Church that he would make choice of: Luther answered, if he had offered half as much at first, he would have accepted it; but now he had gone so far, he could not come back. In truth, he had made himself a greater thing than they could make him; the German princes courted him, he was become the author of a sect ever after to be called Lutherans. So have our preachers done that are against the bishops; they have made themselves greater with the people than they can be made the other way; and, therefore, there is the less probability of bringing them off.
IF our fathers have lost their liberty, why may not we labor to regain it? Answer: We must look to the contract; if that be rightly made, we must stand to it; if we once grant we may recede from contracts upon any inconveniency that may afterwards happen, we shall have no bargain kept. If I sell you a horse and do not like my bargain, I will have my horse again.
Keep your contracts—so far a divine goes; but how to make our contracts is left to ourselves; and as we agree upon the conveying of this house or that land, so it must be. If you offer me a hundred pounds for my glove, I tell you what my glove is, a plain glove, pretend no virtue in it, the glove is my own, I profess not to sell gloves, and we agree for a hundred pounds, I do not know why I may not with a safe conscience take it. The want of that common obvious distinction of jus præceptivum and jus permissivum does much trouble men.
Lady Kent articled with Sir Edward Herbert that he should come to her when she sent for him, and stay with her as long as she would have him, to which he set his hand; then he articled with her that he should go away when he pleased, and stay away as long as he pleased, to which she set her hand. This is the epitome of all the contracts in the world betwixt man and man, betwixt prince and subject; they keep them as long as they like them, and no longer.
HE that speaks ill of another, commonly before he is aware, makes himself such a one as he speaks against: for if he had civility or breeding, he would forbear such kind of language.
A gallant man is above ill words; an example we have in the old Lord of Salisbury, who was a great wise man. Stone had called some lord about court, “Fool”: the lord complains and has Stone whipped; Stone cries, “I might have called my Lord of Salisbury ‘fool’ often enough before he would have had me whipped.”
Speak not ill of a great enemy, but rather give him good words, that he may use you the better if you chance to fall into his hands. The Spaniard did this when he was dying. His confessor told him (to work him to repentance) how the devil tormented the wicked that went to hell: the Spaniard, replying, called the devil “my lord”: “I hope my lord the devil is not so cruel.” His confessor reproved him. “Excuse me,” said the Don, “for calling him so; I know not into what hands I may fall, and if I happen into his I hope he will use me the better for giving him good words.”
WE measure from ourselves; and as things are for our use and purpose, so we approve them. Bring a pear to the table that is rotten, we cry it down, “’Tis naught”; but bring a medlar that is rotten, and “’Tis a fine thing”: and yet I’ll warrant you the pear thinks as well of itself as the medlar does.
We measure the excellency of other men by some excellency we conceive to be in ourselves. Nash, a poet, poor enough (as poets used to be), seeing an alderman with his gold chain, upon his great horse, by way of scorn said to one of his companions, “Do you see yon fellow, how goodly, how big he looks? Why, that fellow cannot make a blank verse!”
Nay, we measure the goodness of God from ourselves; we measure his goodness, his justice, his wisdom, by something we call just, good, or wise in ourselves; and in so doing we judge proportionally to the country fellow in the play, who said if he were a king he would live like a lord, and have peas and bacon every day, and a whip that cried, “Slash!”
A WISE man should never resolve upon anything, at least never let the world know his resolution, for if he cannot arrive at that he is ashamed. How many things did the king resolve in his declaration concerning Scotland never to do, and yet did them all! A man must do according to accidents and emergencies.
Never tell your resolution beforehand; but when the cast is thrown play it as well as you can to win the game you are at. ’Tis but folly to study how to play size-ace when you know not whether you shall throw it or no.
Wise men say nothing in dangerous times. The lion, you know, called the sheep to ask her if his breath smelt: she said, “Aye”; he bit off her head for a fool. He called the wolf and asked him: he said “No”; he tore him in pieces for a flatterer. At last he called the fox and asked him: truly he had got a cold and could not smell.
WIT and wisdom differ; wit is upon the sudden turn, wisdom is in bringing about ends.
Nature must be the groundwork of wit and art; otherwise whatever is done will prove but jack-pudding’s work.
Wit must grow like fingers. If it be taken from others ’tis like plums stuck upon blackthorns; there they are for a while, but they come to nothing.
He that will give himself to all manner of ways to get money may be rich; so he that lets fly all he knows or thinks may by chance be satirically witty. Honesty sometimes keeps a man from growing rich, and civility from being witty.
Women ought not to know their own wit, because they will still be showing it, and so spoil it; like a child that will continually be showing its fine new coat, till at length it all bedaubs it with its pah hands.
Fine wits destroy themselves with their own plots, in meddling with great affairs of state. They commonly do as the ape that saw the gunner put bullets in the cannon, and was pleased with it, and he would be doing so too: at last he puts himself into the piece, and so both ape and bullet were shot away together.
“LET the women have power of their heads, because of the angels.” The reason of the words, “because of the angels,” is this: The Greek Church held an opinion that the angels fell in love with women; an opinion grounded upon that, Genesis vi. “The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.” This fancy St. Paul discreetly catches, and uses it as an argument to persuade them to modesty.
The grant of a place is not good, by the canon law, before a man be dead: upon this ground some mischief might be plotted against him in present possession, by poisoning, or some other way. Upon the same reason a contract made with a woman, during her husband’s life, was not valid.
Men are not troubled to hear a man dispraised, because they know, though he be naught, there’s worth in others; but women are mightily troubled to hear any of them spoken against, as if the sex itself were guilty of some unworthiness.
Women and princes must both trust somebody; and they are happy or unhappy according to the desert of those under whose hands they fall. If a man knows how to manage the favor of a lady, her honor is safe, and so is a prince’s.
