N01536:32
Fair dealing between debtor and creditor. A very brief essay upon the caution to…
Fair dealing between debtor and creditor. A very brief essay upon the caution to be used, about coming in to debt, and getting out of it. Offered at Boston-lecture; 5. d. XI. m. 1715/16. / By Cotton Mather, D.D. & F.R.S. ; [Two lines of quotation]
Boston: printed by B. Green for Samuel Gerrish, 1716
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
The Third MAXIM.
For a Man to run into Debt, when he has no Prospect, and perhaps no Purpose of ever getting out; This is a Dishonesty by no means to be Countenanced.
There are those who push themselves into Debt, when they know, 'tis utterly Improbable, they shall ever Pay what they Owe. Yea, with a Probability, there is also an Intention in them, never to Pay. In the mean time, how are the Creditors imposed upon! O Dishonest People, 'Tis one sort of Stealing, and a very gross one too, which is to be charged upon you. 'Tis as bad at Picking the Pockets of your Creditors! In this Tribe are to be ranked the Shameless Borrowers; I say, Shameless Borrowers; The Borrowers whom the Thirty Seventh Psalm and the Twenty first Verse, hath Stigmatized. A Sort ⟨p. 16⟩of Bold People, who carry on a down-right Beggary under the more Specious Form of Borrowing; —People, from whom you Save no less than Four Pounds in Five, by not Lending but Giving of One unto them, when they would have borrowed Five. What says the Word of God? Prov. XIX. 22. A Poor man is better than a Liar. It were better to be Poor, and Conflict with a very Straitening Poverty, than to run into Debt, with such Lies, as they who Promise to Pay at such a Time, and Pay at such a Time, and have no Faith in all their Promises; There is no Believing a Word they say!