an enormous man of dissolute and debauched manners hath been rarely known, who hath lived in frequent conversation with men of wisdom and unblameable lives. But it will be said, that such people will never like or endure that conversation. It may be, like ill physicians, we may too soon despair of the recovery of some patients, and therefore leave them to desperate experiments: we are too apt to look so superciliously upon the natural levities and excesses of youth, as if they were not worth the pains of conversion; or that it would be best wrought by necessities, contempt, or prisons: either of which are very ill schools to reduce them to virtue. Such men will never decline the conversation of their superiors if they may be admitted to it, though it may be they intend to laugh at it; but by this, in an instant, they depart from the pleasure of obscene and prophane discourses, and insensibly find an alteration in their nature, their humour, and their manners; there being a sovereign and a subtle spirit in the conversation of good and wise men, that insinuates itself into corrupt men, that though they know not how it comes about, they sensibly feel an amendment; Non deprehendent quemadmodum aut quando, profuisse deprehen dent; they cannot tell how or when, but they are sure they are restored. It is great pity that so

infallible a medicine should be locked up by preju

dice or morosity.

OF PROMISES.

Montpellier, 1670.

PROMISES was the ready money that was first coined, and made current by the law of nature, to support that society and commerce that was necessary for the comfort and security of mankind; and they who have adulterated this pure and legitimate metal with an allay of distinctions and subtle evasions, have introduced a counterfeit and pernicious coin, that destroys all the simplicity and integrity of human conversation. For what obligations can ever be the earnest of faith and truth, if promises may be violated? The superinduction of others for the corroboration and maintenance of government had been much less necessary, if promises had still preserved their primitive vigour and reputation; nor can any thing be said for the nonperformance of a promise, which may not as reasonably be applied to the not observation of an oath; and in truth, men have not been observed to be much restrained by their oaths, who have not been punctual in their promises, the same sincerity of nature being requisite to both. The philosopher went farther than his profession obliged

him, or in truth than it admitted, when he would not have the performance exacted, unless omnia essent eadem, quæ fuerint cum promitteres; and the distinction was necessary, when he thought it fit to avoid a promise he had made to a man that appears to be an ill man, who seemed a very good and worthy person when he made this promise: and a greater change could not be; yet he seemed not over pleased with his own distinction, and would rather comply with his promise, if it could be done without much inconvenience. But too many Christian casuists have gone much farther in finding out many inventions and devices to evade and elude the faith of promise, if there hath been force or fraud, or any other circumvention, in the contriving the promise and engagement; which must dissolve all the contracts and bargains which are commonly made among men, who still contend to be too hard for one another, that they may advance or lessen their commodity. And no doubt the forming and countenancing those dispensations hath introduced much improbity and tergiversation into the nature and minds of men, which they were not acquainted with whilst they had a due consideration of the sacredness of their word and promise. It is from the impiety of this doctrine, that we run with that precipitation into promises and oaths, and think it lawful to promise that which we

know to be unlawful to perform. What is this but to proclaim perjury to be lawful, at the committing whereof every Christian heart ought to tremble; or rather to declare that there is no such sin, no such thing as perjury? There is no question, no man ought to perform an unlawful much less a wicked oath or promise; but the wickedness of executing it doth not absolve any man from the guilt and wickedness of swearing that he would do it; he is perjured in not performing that which he would be more perjured in performing; and men who unwarily involve themselves in those labyrinths, cannot find the way out of them with innocence, and seldom chuse to do it with that which is next to it, hearty repentance; but devise new expedients, which usually increase their crime and their perplexity. Where nothing of the law of God or some manifest deduction from thence doth controul our promises, it is great pity that the mere human law and policy of government should absolve men from the performance; and a good conscience will compel him to do that whom the law will not compel, but suffer to evade for his own benefit. We have not that probity which nature stated us in, if we do not castigare promittendi temeritatem, redeem the rashness and incogitance of our promise, by submitting to the inconvenience and damage of performance.

It is one of the greatest arguments which makes Machiavel seem to prefer the government of a commonwealth before that of monarchy (for he doth but seem to do it, how great a republican soever he is thought to be,) because he says kings and princes are less direct in the observation of their promises and contracts than republics are; and that a little benefit and advantage disposes them to violate them, when no profit that can accrue prevails upon the other to recede from the obligation: which would be indeed an argument of weight and importance, if it were true. Nor does the instance he gives us in any degree prove his assertion; for it was not the justice of the senate of Athens that refused the proposition made by Themistocles, for the destruction of the whole fleet of the rest of Greece, to whom it was never made, but the particular exactness of Aristides, to whom it was discovered by order of the senate, that he might consider it; and he reported, that the proposition was indeed very profitable, but most dishonest, upon which the senate rejected it, without knowing more of it; which, if they had done, it is probable, by their other practices, that they might not so readily have declined it. Nor is the instance he gives of Philip of Macedon other than a general averment, without stating the case: as his adored republic of Rome never out