own faults in horsemanship. If one of these uses can be made of him, let
him not long offend the stomach of your company; your best way is to
spue him out. That he is a disease in the body where he liveth were as
strange a thing to doubt as whether there be knavery in horse-coursers.
For if among sheep, the rot; amongst dogs, the mange; amongst horses,
the glanders; amongst men and women, the Northern itch and the French
ache, be diseases, an hypocrite cannot but be the like in all States and
societies that breed him. If he be a clergy hypocrite, then all manner
of vice is for the most part so proper to him as he will grudge any man
the practice of it but himself; like that grave burgess, who being
desired to lend his clothes to represent a part in a comedy, answered:
No, by his leave, he would have nobody play the fool in his clothes but
himself. Hence are his so austere reprehensions of drinking healths,
lascivious talk, usury, and unconscionable dealing; whenas himself,
hating the profane mixture of malt and water, will, by his good will,
let nothing come within him but the purity of the grape, when he can get
it of another's cost. But this must not be done neither without a
preface of seeming soothness, turning up the eyes, moving the head,
laying hand on the breast, and protesting that he would not do it but to
strengthen his body, being even consumed with dissembled zeal, and
tedious and thankless babbling to God and his auditors. And for the
other vices, do but venture the making yourself private with him or
trusting of him, and if you come off without a savour of the air which
his soul is infected with you have great fortune. The fardel of all this
ware that is in him you shall commonly see carried upon the back of
these two beasts that live within him, Ignorance and Imperiousness, and
they may well serve to carry other vices, for of themselves they are
insupportable. His Ignorance acquits him of all science, human or
divine, and of all language but his mother's; holding nothing pure,
holy, or sincere but the senseless recollections of his own crazed