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Is not Cupid, that first father of all religion, is not he stark blind, that he can not himself distinguish of colors, so he would make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely of all love concerns, and wheedle us into a thinking that we are always in the right? Thus every Jack sticks to his own Jill; every tinker esteems his own trull; and the hobnailed suitor prefers Joan the milkmaid before any of milady’s daughters. These things are true, and are ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous they seem, it is hence only that all societies receive their cement and consolidation.

Fortune we still find favoring the blunt, and flushing the forward; strokes smooth up fools, crowning all their undertakings with success; but wisdom makes her followers bashful, sneaking and timorous, and therefore you commonly see that they are reduced to hard shifts; must grapple with poverty, cold and hunger; must lie recluse, despised, and unregarded; while fools roll in money, are advanced to dignities and offices, and in a word have the whole world at command. If any one thinks it happy to be a favorite at court, and to manage the disposal of places and preferments, alas, this happiness is so far from being attainable by wisdom, that the very suspicion of it would put a stop to advancement. Has any man a mind to raise himself a good estate? Alas, what dealer in the world would ever get a farthing, if he be so wise as to scruple at perjury, blush at a lie, or stick at a fraud and overreaching?

It is the public charter of all divines, to mold and bend the sacred oracles till they comply with their own fancy, spreading them (as Heaven by its Creator) like a curtain, closing together, or drawing them back, as they please. Thus, indeed, Saint Paul himself minces and mangles some citations he makes use of, and seems to wrest them to a different sense from what they were first intended for, as is confessed by the great linguist, Saint Hieron. Thus when that apostle saw at Athens the inscription of the altar, he draws from it an argument for the proof of the Christian religion; but leaving out great parts of the sentence, which perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced his cause, he mentions only the last two words, namely, “To the Unknown God”; and this, too, not without alteration, for the whole inscription runs thus: “To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to all Foreign and Unknown Gods.”

‘T is an imitation of the same pattern, I will warrant you, that our young divines, by leaving out four or five words in a place and putting a false construction on the rest, can make any passage serviceable to their own purpose; though from the coherence of what went before, or follows after, the genuine meaning appears to be either wide enough, or perhaps quite contradictory to what they would thrust and impose upon it. In which knack the divines are grown now so expert that the lawyers themselves begin to be jealous of an encroachment on what was formerly their sole privilege and practise. And indeed what can they despair of proving, since the forementioned commentator did upon a text of Saint Luke put an interpretation no more agreeable to the meaning or the place than one contrary quality is to another.

But because it seemed expedient that man, who was born for the transaction of business, should have so much wisdom as should fit and capacitate him for the discharge of his duty herein, and yet lest such a measure as is requisite for this purpose might prove too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, and prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humor of man. Now that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex so unalterably simple that for any one of them to thrust forward and reach at the name of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools, such an endeavor being but a swimming against the stream, nay, the turning the course of Nature, the bare attempting whereof is as extravagant as the effecting of it is impossible: for as it is a trite proverb, that an ape will be an ape, though clad in purple, so a woman will be a woman, that is, a fool, whatever disguise she takes up. And yet there is no reason women should take it amiss to be thus charged, for if they do but rightly consider, they will find to Folly they are beholden for those endowments wherein they so far surpass and excel Man; as first for their unparalleled beauty, by the charm whereof they tyrannize over the greatest of tyrants; for what is it but too great a smatch of wisdom that makes men so tawny and thick-skinned, so rough and prickly-bearded, like an emblem of winter or old age, while women have such dainty, smooth cheeks, such a low, gentle voice, and so pure a complexion, as if Nature had drawn them for a standing pattern of all symmetry and comeliness? Besides, what greater or juster aim and ambition have they than to please their husbands? In order whereunto they garnish themselves with paint, washes, curls, perfumes, and all other mysteries of ornament; yet, after all, they become acceptable to them only for their Folly. Wives are always allowed their humor, yet it is only in exchange for titillation and pleasure, which indeed are but other names for Folly; as none can deny, who consider how a man must dandle, and kittle, and play a hundred little tricks for his helpmate.

But now some blood-chilled old men, that are more for wine than wenching, will pretend that in their opinion the greatest happiness consists in feasting and drinking. Grant it be so; yet certainly in the most luxurious entertainments it is Folly must give the sauce and relish to the daintiest delicacies; so that if there be no one of the guests naturally fool enough to be played upon by the rest, they must procure some comical buffoon, that by his jokes and flouts and blunders shall make the whole company split themselves with laughing; for to what purpose were it to be stuffed and crammed with so many dainty bits, savory dishes, and toothsome rarities, if after all this epicurism, the eyes, the ears, and the whole mind of man, were not so well foisted and relieved with laughing, jesting, and such like divertisements, which, like second courses, serve for the promoting of digestion? And as to all those shoeing-horns of drunkenness, the keeping every one his man, the throwing high jinks, the filling of bumpers, the drinking two in a hand, the beginning of mistresses’ healths; and then the roaring out of drunken catches, the calling in a fiddler, the leading out every one his lady to dance, and such like riotous pastimes–these were not taught or dictated by any of the wise men of Greece, but of Gotham rather, being my invention, and by me prescribed as the best preservative of health: each of which, the more ridiculous it is, the more welcome it finds. And indeed, to jog sleepingly through the world, in a dumpish, melancholy posture, can not properly be said to live.