Complete. From “Resolves, Divine, Moral, and Political.”

CERTAINLY if there be any Delilah under heaven, it is to be found in bad society. This will bind us, betray us, blind us, undo us. Many a man had been good, who is not, if he had but kept good company. When the Achates of thy life shall be ill, will not thy life be so too? Even waters change their qualities, by running through a different vein of earth. No man but hath good and bad in his nature, either of which gain strength, as they meet with their like, or decline, as they find their opposite. When vice runs in a single stream, it is then a passable shallow; but when many streams shall fall into one, they swell into a deeper channel, and we are drowned in them. Good and wise associates are like princes in defensive leagues; one defends the other against the devices of the common foe. Vicious ones are like the treacherous lantern in 1688, which, under pretense of guiding us, will draw us into danger, and betray us into the hands of our enemies. The fiction of the sirens, may, in its moral, be considered as meant to show the blandishing arts by which sinful men entice others to destruction. I know physicians may converse with sick persons and themselves remain uninfected, but then they must have stronger antidotes than their own nature gives them. One rotten apple will infect the store; the putrid grape corrupts the whole sound cluster. Though I am no hermit, and desire not to sit away my days in a dull cell, yet I would rather choose to have no companion than a bad one. If I have found any good ones, I will cherish them as the choicest of men, or as angels, which are sent as guardians to me; if I have any bad ones I will study to lose them, lest by keeping them I lose myself in the end.