There is no vice that is absolutely a vice which does not offend, and that a sound judgment does not accuse; for there is in it so manifest a deformity and inconvenience, that peradventure they are in the right who say that it is chiefly begotten by stupidity and ignorance:  so hard is it to imagine that a man can know without abhorring it.  Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.  Vice leaves repentance in the soul, like an ulcer in the flesh, which is always scratching and lacerating itself:  for reason effaces all other grief and sorrows, but it begets that of repentance, which is so much the more grievous, by reason it springs within, as the cold and heat of fevers are more sharp than those that only strike upon the outward skin.  I hold for vices (but every one according to its proportion), not only those which reason and nature condemn, but those also which the opinion of men, though false and erroneous, have made such, if authorised by law and custom.

There is likewise no virtue which does not rejoice a well-descended nature:  there is a kind of, I know not what, congratulation in well-doing that gives us an inward satisfaction, and a generous boldness that accompanies a good conscience:  a soul daringly vicious may, peradventure, arm itself with security, but it cannot supply itself with this complacency and satisfaction.  ’Tis no little satisfaction to feel a man’s self preserved from the contagion of so depraved an age, and to say to himself:  “Whoever could penetrate into my soul would not there find me guilty either of the affliction or ruin of any one, or of revenge or envy, or any offence against the public laws, or of innovation or disturbance, or failure of my word; and though the licence of the time permits and teaches every one so to do, yet have I not plundered any Frenchman’s goods, or taken his money, and have lived upon what is my own, in war as well as in peace; neither have I set any man to work without paying him his hire.”  These testimonies of a good conscience please, and this natural rejoicing is very beneficial to us, and the only reward that we can never fail of.

To ground the recompense of virtuous actions upon the approbation of others is too uncertain and unsafe a foundation, especially in so corrupt and ignorant an age as this, wherein the good opinion of the vulgar is injurious:  upon whom do you rely to show you what is recommendable?  God defend me from being an honest man, according to the descriptions of honour I daily see every one make of himself: 

“Quae fuerant vitia, mores sunt.”

     ["What before had been vices are now manners.”—­Seneca, Ep., 39.]