de se. Medicinal virtues are to be had without the expense and hazard of a dispensary: you may sleep without dreaming of bottles at your tail, and a looking glass shall not affright you: and, since the glass bubble proved as brittle as its ware, and broke, together with itself, the hopes of its proprietors, they may make themselves whole by subscribing to our new fund.
Here indeed may be made three very grave objections, by incredulous interested priests, ambitious citizens, and scrupulous statesmen. 1. The stocking manufactory gentlemen do not know how swearing can bring them to any probability of covering their legs anew, unless it be by the means of a pair of stocks. 2. That the hemp-snared men apprehend, that such an encouragement for oaths can tend to no other advancement, promotion, and exaltation, of their persons, than that of the gallows; the late old ordinary Paul[1], having grown gray in the habit of making this accurate observation in every month's Sessions paper, "That swearing had as great a hand in the suspension of every living soul under his cure, as sabbath-breaking itself." And, 3. That the glass-bubble-men cannot, for their lives, with the best pair of spectacles (which is the only thing left neat and whole out of all their ware), see how they shall make any thing out of this his oath-project, supposing he should even confirm by one its goodness; an oath being, as they say, as brittle as glass, and only made to be broken.
But those incredulous priests shall not go without an answer, that will, I am sure, induce them to
- ↑ Paul Lorraine, many years ordinary of Newgate. He died Oct. 7, 1719.
