AN HYPOCRITE
Is a saint that goes by clockwork, a machine made by the devil's geometry, which he winds and nicks to go as he pleases. He is the devil's finger-watch, that never goes true, but too fast or too slow as he sets him. His religion goes with wires, and he serves the devil for an idol to seduce the simple to worship and believe in him. He puts down the true saint with his copper-lace devotion, as ladies that use art paint fairer than the life. He is a great bustler in reformation, which is always most proper to his talent, especially if it be tumultuous; for pockets are nowhere so easily and safely picked as in jostling crowds. And as change and alterations are most agreeable to those who are tied to nothing, he appears more zealous and violent for the cause than such as are retarded by conscience or consideration. His religion is a mummery, and his Gospel-walkings nothing but dancing a masquerade. He never wears his own person, but assumes a shape, as his master, the devil, does when he appears. He wears counterfeit hands (as the Italian pickpocket did), which are fastened to his breast as if he held them up to heaven, while his natural fingers are in his neighbour's pocket. The whole scope of all his actions appears to be directed, like an archer's arrow, at heaven, while the clout he aims at sticks in the earth. The devil baits his hook with him when he fishes in troubled waters. He turns up his eyes to heaven like birds that have no upper lid. He is a weathercock upon the steeple of the church, that turns with every wind that blows from any point of the compass. He sets his words and actions like a printer's letters, and he that will understand him must read him backwards. He is much more to be suspected than one that is no professor, as a stone of any colour is easier counterfeited than a diamond that is of none. The inside of him tends quite cross to the outside, like a spring that runs upward within the earth and down without. He is an operator for the soul, and corrects other men's sins with greater of his own, as the Jews were punished for their idolatry by greater idolaters than themselves. He is a spiritual highwayman that robs on the road to heaven. His professions and his actions agree like a sweet voice and a stinking breath.