["Thou must employ thy own judgment upon thyself; great is the
weight of thy own conscience in the discovery of virtues and vices:
which taken away, all things are lost."
--Cicero, De Nat. Dei, iii. 35; Tusc. Quaes., i. 25.]

But the saying that repentance immediately follows the sin seems not to
have respect to sin in its high estate, which is lodged in us as in its
own proper habitation. One may disown and retract the vices that
surprise us, and to which we are hurried by passions; but those which by
a long habit are rooted in a strong and vigorous will are not subject to
contradiction. Repentance is no other but a recanting of the will and an
opposition to our fancies, which lead us which way they please. It makes
this person disown his former virtue and continency:

"Quae mens est hodie, cur eadem non puero fait?
Vel cur his animis incolumes non redeunt genae?"

["What my mind is, why was it not the same, when I was a boy? or
why do not the cheeks return to these feelings?"
--Horace, Od., v. 10, 7.]

'Tis an exact life that maintains itself in due order in private. Every
one may juggle his part, and represent an honest man upon the stage: but
within, and in his own bosom, where all may do as they list, where all is
concealed, to be regular, there's the point. The next degree is to be so
in his house, and in his ordinary actions, for which we are accountable
to none, and where there is no study nor artifice. And therefore Bias,
setting forth the excellent state of a private family, says: "of which a
the master is the same within, by his own virtue and temper, that he is
abroad, for fear of the laws and report of men." And it was a worthy