Worthy. I hope you believe in Jesus Christ. I hope you believe that creed of yours, which you also boasted of repeating so regularly.
Bragwell. Well, well, I'll believe any thing you say, rather than stand quarreling with you.
Worthy. I hope then, you will allow, that since it is adultery to look at a woman with even an irregular thought, it follows from the same rule, that all immodest dress in your daughters, or indecent jests and double meanings in yourself; all loose songs or novels; and all diversions also which have a like dangerous tendency, are forbidden by the seventh commandment; for it is most plain from what Christ has said, that it takes in not only the act, but the inclination, the desire, the indulged imagination; the act is only the last and highest degree of any sin; the topmost round, as it were, of a ladder, to which all the lower rounds are only as so many steps and stages.
Bragwell. Strict indeed! Mr. Worthy; but let us go on to the next; you won't pretend to say I steal; Mr. Bragwell, I trust, was never known to rob on the highway, to break open his neighbor's house, or to use false weights or measures.
Worthy. No, nor have you ever been under any temptation to do it, and yet there are a thousand ways of breaking the eighth commandment besides actual stealing. For instance do you never hide the faults of the goods you sell, and heighten the faults of those you buy? Do you never take advantage of an ignorant dealer, and ask more for a thing than it is worth? Do you never turn the distressed circumstances of a man who has something to sell, to your unfair benefit; and thus act as unjustly by him as if you had stolen? Do you never cut off a shilling from a workman's wages, under the pretense which your conscience can't justify? Do you never pass off an unsound horse for a sound one? Do you never conceal the real rent of your estate from the overseers, and thereby rob the poor-rates of their legal due?
Bragwell. Pooh! these things are done every day. I sha'n't go to set up for being better than my neighbors in these sort of things; these little matters will pass muster—I don't set up for a reformer—if I am as good as the rest of my neighbors, no man can call me to account: I am not worse, I trust, and don't pretend to be better.
Worthy. You must be tried hereafter at the bar of God, and not by a jury of your fellow-creatures; and the Scriptures are given us, in order to show by what rule we shall be judged. How many or how few do as you do, is quite aside from the question; Jesus Christ has even told us to strive to enter in at the strait gate; so we ought rather to take fright, from our being like the common run of people, than to take comfort from our being so.
Bragwell. Come, I don't like all this close work—it makes a man feel I don't know how—I don't find myself so happy as I did—I don't like this fishing in troubled waters; I'm as merry as the day is long when I let these things alone. I'm glad we are got to the ninth. But I suppose I shall be lugged in there too, head and shoulders. Any one now who did not know me, would really think I was a great sinner, by your way of putting things; I don't bear false witness, however.
Worthy. You mean, I suppose, you would not swear away any man's life falsely before a magistrate, but do you take equal care not to slander or backbite him? Do you never represent a good action of a man you have quarreled with, as if it were a bad one? or do you never make a bad one worse than it is, by your manner of telling it? Even when you invent no false circumstances, do you never give such a color to those you relate, as to leave a false impression on the mind of the hearers? Do you never twist a story so as to make it tell a little better for yourself, and a little worse for your neighbor, than truth and justice warrant?
Bragwell. Why, as to that matter, all this is only natural.