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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…
A plain discourse upon uprightness showing the properties and privileges of an upright man / by Richard Steele ...A plain discourse upon uprightness shewing the properties and priviledges of an upright man / by Richard Steele ...
London: printed for E. Calvert, 1672
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
2. This Reproves those that Distaste an upright man. He that is unlike God, cannot but dislike both him and his likeness. 1Wonder of wickedness, that ever any reasonable creature should hate his Makers ⟨p. 134⟩picture; dislike the men that are after Gods own heart, and the better the man, the worse to hate him. It was so in the beginning, is now, and will be world without end. 1 Sam. 29. 6. Surely (says Achish to David) as the Lord liveth, thou hast been upright; nevertheless the Lord favours thee not. Let a man be never so honest, charitable, unblameable, yet if he discover his integrity by reproving sin, by a strict watch over his words, by a peaceable demurring at a thing he is unsatisfied in: there's some of you though you never saw him, were never disobliged by him, yet out of an inveteracy against God (it can be nothing else) you dislike and declaim against him. If this man have an hundred excellent qualities, and but one defect or fault, all his good qualities are buried, and he goes with you under the notion of his single sin. But on the other hand, let a man be never so ignorant, unclean, swearer, drunkard, Atheistical; yet divers of you can embrace him, delight in his company, or at least he shall live quietly by you, and (if he do not personally affront you) no Magistrate shall ever be informed of him, that he might reform him. And (to see your equity) if this man have an hundred ill ⟨p. 135⟩conditions, and but some one good quality, as perhaps of an obliging carriage, all his faults are silenced, and he obtains a favourable character from this single virtue; which shows clearly, that your spite is at the good man, as he is good, or else you would cry down other mens faults as well as his, and lend to them a mantle as well as to others.
2. This Reproves those that Distast an upright man. He that is unlike God, cannot but dislike both him and his likeness. 1Wonder of wickedness, that ever any reasonable creature should hate his Makers ⟨p. 134⟩