SECT. XI.
Speakers of bold Truths.
LVII. As there are many people who behave with ill-breeding, from being addicted to relate falsehoods, so there are many others, who offend against the laws of urbanity by speaking ill-timed and uncivil truths. I mean to hint at those, who under pretence of undeceiving people, and of being their friends, out of time, and contrary to all the rules of decency, take the liberty of pointing out all their faults, and of speaking their opinion, both of them and their conduct. This is an act of barbarism, disguised under the veil of honest sincerity.
LVIII. We shall describe these people, by giving the character and behaviour of Philotimus. Philotimus is a man, who at all times is dinning in people’s ears the professions of his ingenuousness, and declaiming till he is out of breath against adulation. He is ever dwelling upon his immutable love of truth, which he uses as a sort of coupling, to all the insinuations he throws out against this or that person. He rudely tells a man his faults to his face, and then shelters himself under the pretence, that when an occasion presents itself for his doing it, he cannot refrain from speaking the truth, for all the gratifications and indulgences the world can afford. If he hears any person praised, be he absent or present, in whose conduct he conceives there is something reprehensible, he immediately gives vent to his spleen, and tells all he knows or has ever heard to that person’s prejudice, and reproaches those who have spoke well of him, with having flattered or been partial to him; and then immediately pleads his great love of truth, as a justification for what he has done.
LIX. What shall we say of such a man? We may venture to pronounce, that there is much more stuff about him, than is necessary to form either a fool or a rustic; and that he is an extravagant babbler, who in his conversation observes no order or bounds; that he is a rude, yea a very rude unpolished man, who does not understand the difference between servile adulation, and bare-faced effrontery. He being such a sort of man, why should those who hear him regard any thing he says? Or who can believe that he is capable of forming a just opinion of matters or things, who is so far infatuated as to overlook, or not attend to the maxims, which natural reason has so clearly dictated and pointed out? But if we were to admit that he does not err in the conception he forms of things, we must at least grant, that he errs in his mode of advancing his opinions, if he prefers them out of time, inopportunely, and without method. Has he peradventure a royal licence or patent, for being the superintendent or corrector of other men’s manners and conduct? But admitting for argument’s sake, that he is a man of as great veracity as he pretends to be, which by the way is what I very much doubt of; for my experience has convinced me, that if it does not apply to every individual, that fine sentence is most true and applicable to the bulk of mankind, which I have read somewhere, although I can’t remember in what author, and is as follows: Veritatem nulli frequentius lædunt, quam qui frequentius jactant. There are no people lie more frequently, than those who are always boasting of their veracity. I say, admitting that they are as sincere as they pretend to be, does their being men of veracity give them a right to go about cudgeling, and breaking the heads of all the world? Truth, according to the doctrine of St. Paul, is the beloved companion of charity: Charitas congaudet veritati; and should it then be used in a gross manner, and so as to become offensive and disgusting? The truth of the Christians, according to the description given of it by St. Austin, is more beautiful than the Helen of the Greeks: Incomparabiliter pulchrior est veritas Christianorum, quam Helena Græcorum; and should it appear, or be characterised with so brasen a face, that it abashes and stares every body out of countenance?
LX. I confess that there are occasions, on which every man is obliged to speak the truth, although his doing it should offend, or be attended with the resentment of those who hear him; but this licence should only be taken in one of the three following instances, the vindication of divine honour, the defence of accused innocence, and the reforming or reclaiming your neighbour; and I suppose this last is the only motive, from which the speakers of bold truths we have just been describing pretend to act; but are they ignorant, that, although it will always be sure to give offence, their manner of attempting this, can never accomplish the reformation they affect to bring about? Nor can it be otherwise, for how can their sour, overbearing, and arrogant behaviour, produce so good an effect? Or how can they expect, according to the scripture phrase, that by sowing thorns, they should hereafter gather a harvest of grapes?