ming to us; we hate a precocious
child. So women owe their charm, and hence their power, to their
"folley," that is, to their obedience to the impulse. But if,
perchance, a woman wants to be thought wise, she only succeeds in
being doubly a fool, as if one should train a cow for the
prize-ring, a thing wholly against Nature. A woman will be a woman,
no matter what mask she wear, and she ought to be proud of her
folly and make the most of it.

Is not Cupid, that first father of all religion, is not he stark
blind, that he can not himself distinguish of colors, so he would
make us as mope-eyed in judging falsely of all love concerns, and
wheedle us into a thinking that we are always in the right? Thus
every Jack sticks to his own Jill; every tinker esteems his own
trull; and the hobnailed suitor prefers Joan the milkmaid before
any of milady's daughters. These things are true, and are
ordinarily laughed at, and yet, however ridiculous they seem, it is
hence only that all societies receive their cement and
consolidation.

Fortune we still find favoring the blunt, and flushing the forward;
strokes smooth up fools, crowning all their undertakings with
success; but wisdom makes her followers bashful, sneaking and
timorous, and therefore you commonly see that they are reduced to
hard shifts; must grapple with poverty, cold and hunger; must lie
recluse, despised, and unregarded; while fools roll in money, are
advanced to dignities and offices, and in a word have the whole
world at command. If any one thinks it happy to be a favorite at
court, and to manage the disposal of places and preferments, alas,
this happiness is so far from being attainable by wisdom, that the
very suspicion of it would put a stop to advancement. Has any man a
mind to raise himself a good estate? Alas, what dealer in the world
would ever get a farthing, if he be so wise as to scruple at
perjury, blush at a lie, or stick at a fraud and overreaching?

It is the public charter of all divines, to mold and bend the
sacred oracles till they comply with their own fancy, spreading
them (as Heaven by its Creator) like a curtain, closing together,
or drawing them back, as they please. Thus, indeed, Saint Paul
himself minces and mangles some citations he makes use of, and
seems to