A plain discourse upon uprightness showing the properties and privileges of an upright man…A plain discourse upon uprightness shewing the properties and priviledges of an upright man…

1. An upright man is a greater hater of Flattery. He cannot abide to be either active or passive in it. He rather desires to know the worst of himself than to hear the best; for that open rebuke is better than secret love, and he knows that unjust praises are more dangerous than unjust slanders. And then for others, if he might get all the Town by it, he cannot give flattering Titles to any man, or extol any thing in any body, for his own ends. How fair an opportunity had Micaiah, to have gained his liberty, and the favour of two potent Kings, if he could have soothed Ahab in his vanity? but prison or no prison, he could not flatter. How easily might Paul have come off before Felix, with a smooth oration, if he had learned to have courted him and his Drusilla with a Panegyric of praise? but he rather chose to speak of Temperance, Righteousness and Judgment to come; so to save them, rather than sooth them in their sins.

1. An upright man is a greater hater of Flattery. He cannot abide to be either active or passive in it. He rather desires to know the worst of himself than to hear the best; for that open rebuke is better than secret love, and he knows that unjust praises are more dangerous than unjust slanders. And then for others, if he might get all the Town by it, he cannot give flattering Titles to any man, or extol any thing in any body, for his own ends. How fair an opportunity had Micaiah, to have gain'd his liberty, and the favour of two potent Kings, if he could have sooth'd Ahab in his vanity? but prison or no prison, he could not flatter. How easily might Paul have come off before Foelix, with a smooth oration, if he had learn'd to have courted him and his Drusilla with a Panegyrick of praise? but he rather chose to speak of Temperance, Righteousness and Judgment to come; so to save them, rather than sooth them in their sins.

'Tis true, he loses many an one by this plain dealing, whom he might have kept by his flattery; but these are better lost, ⟨p. 60⟩than kept,