Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 12.djvu/179

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DR. SWIFT.
167

For as Don Quixote said to Sancho, what business had you to speak of a halter in a family, where one of it was hanged? And your innocence is a protection, that wise men are ashamed to rely on, farther than with God. It is indeed against common sense to think, that you should choose such a time, when you had received a favour from the lord lieutenant, and had reason to expect more, to discover your disloyalty in the pulpit. But what will that avail? Therefore sit down and be quiet, and mind your business as you should do, and contract your friendships, and expect no more from man than such an animal is capable of, and you will every day find my description of Yahoes more resembling. You should think and deal with every man as a villain, without calling him so, or flying from him, or valuing him less. This is an old true lesson. You believe, every one will acquit you of any regard to temporal interest; and how came you to claim an exception fron all mankind? I believe you value your temporal interest as much as any body, but you have not the arts of pursuing it. You are mistaken. Domestick evils are no more within a man than others; and he who cannot bear up against the first, will sink under the second, and in my conscience I believe this is your case; for being of a weak constitution, in an employment precarious and tiresome, loaden with children, a man of intent and abstracted thinking, enslaved by mathematicks, and complaint of the world, this new weight of party malice hath struck you down, like a feather on a horse's back already loaden as far as he is able to bear. You ought to change the apostle's expres-

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