The trades-man's calling being a discourse concerning the nature, necessity, choice, &c. of a…

5. This Veracity is to be showed by the Tradesman, In forbearing all Equivocations and disguises in his Transactions. For, as you have heard, the end of Speech is to notify your Minds to others; when therefore it is clouded with Ambiguities, purposely to deceive another, the end is frustrate, and your Neighbour unjustly imposed upon. 'Tis true, a Man, as above, is not bound always to impart all he knows; Prov. 29. 11. A Fool uttereth all his Mind: but a wise Man keepeth it in till afterwards: But he is never permitted to deal in mental Reservations and Equivocations, whereby to deceive his Neighbour, which are nothing else but painted Lies. Your ambiguous Words are in one Sense true, it may be, but in another, false; and you present them to him in one Sense, and keep them to your selves in other; or perhaps you will speak out so much as may deceive another, and reserve so much in you own Mind, as, were it added to the rest, would contradict what you have said. Now these, as they are equally injurious with downright Lies to them with whom you deal; so they are equally abhorred and avoided by the upright Tradesman. For as a Thief disguised, is fully as dangerous as bare-faced; so all such sophistical trafficking is as ⟨p. 151⟩destructive to Justice and Honesty, as plainer Falsehoods. The upright Tradesman, tho he should be a wise Man, yet he is a plain Man; he will speak as he thinks, and do as he speaks. It savours strong of Knavery, when a Man's Speech is like Apollo's Oracles, which may be understood either in a fair, or in a fatal Sense. Would any of you be so trapanned? or be pleased with such double-dealings? why then renounce such dealing your selves: Be Israelites indeed, in whom there is no guile.

5. This Veracity is to be shewed by the Tradesman, In forbearing all Equivocations and disguises in his Transactions. For, as you have heard, the end of Speech is to notify your Minds to others; when therefore it is clouded with Ambiguities, purposely to deceive another, the end is frustrate, and your Neighbour unjustly imposed upon. 'Tis true, a Man, as above, is not bound always to impart all he knows; Prov. 29. 11. A Fool uttereth all his Mind: but a wise Man keepeth it in till afterwards: But he is never permitted to deal in mental Reservations and Equivocations, whereby to deceive his Neighbour, which are nothing else but painted Lies. Your ambiguous Words are in one Sense true, it may be, but in another, false; and you present them to him in one Sense, and keep them to your selves in other; or perhaps you will speak out so much as may deceive another, and reserve so much in you own Mind, as, were it added to the rest, would contradict what you have said. Now these, as they are equally injurious with downright Lies to them with whom you deal; so they are equally abhorred and avoided by the upright Tradesman. For as a Thief disguis'd, is fully as dangerous as bare-fac'd; so all such sophistical trafficking is as