He sees faults where there are
none, and, if there be a few things amiss, he makes every mouse into an
elephant. Although you might put all his wit into an egg-shell, he
weighs the sermon in the balances of his conceit, with all the airs of a
bred-and-born Solomon, and if it be up to his standard, he lays on his
praise with a trowel; but, if it be not to his taste, he growls and
barks and snaps at it like a dog at a hedgehog. Wise men in this world
are like trees in a hedge, there is only here and there one; and when
these rare men talk together upon a discourse, it is good for the ears
to hear them; but the bragging wiseacres I am speaking of are vainly
puffed up by their fleshly minds, and their quibbling is as senseless as
the cackle of geese on a common. Nothing comes out of a sack but what
was in it, and, as their bag is empty, they shake nothing but wind out
of it. It is very likely that neither ministers nor their sermons are
perfect--the best garden may have a few weeds in it, the cleanest corn
may have some chaff--but cavilers cavil at any thing or nothing, and
find fault for the sake of showing off their deep knowledge; sooner than
let their tongues have a holiday, they would complain that the grass is
not a nice shade of blue, and say that the sky would have looked neater
if it had been whitewashed.
GOOD-NATURE AND FIRMNESS.
Do not be all sugar, or the world will suck you down; but do not be all
vinegar, or the world will spit you out.
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