hat the loss was of less
importance to every particular man. He is now grown old, and rich for a
man of his condition, thanks to his trade, which he openly confesses to
every one. And to make his peace with God, he says, that he is daily
ready by good offices to make satisfaction to the successors of those he
has robbed, and if he do not finish (for to do it all at once he is not
able), he will then leave it in charge to his heirs to perform the rest,
proportionably to the wrong he himself only knows he has done to each.
By this description, true or false, this man looks upon theft as a
dishonest action, and hates it, but less than poverty, and simply
repents; but to the extent he has thus recompensed he repents not. This
is not that habit which incorporates us into vice, and conforms even our
understanding itself to it; nor is it that impetuous whirlwind that by
gusts troubles and blinds our souls, and for the time precipitates us,
judgment and all, into the power of vice.

I customarily do what I do thoroughly and make but one step on't; I have
rarely any movement that hides itself and steals away from my reason, and
that does not proceed in the matter by the consent of all my faculties,
without division or intestine sedition; my judgment is to have all the
blame or all the praise; and the blame it once has, it has always; for
almost from my infancy it has ever been one: the same inclination, the
same turn, the same force; and as to universal opinions, I fixed myself
from my childhood in the place where I resolved to stick. There are some
sins that are impetuous, prompt, and sudden; let us set them aside: but
in these other sins so often repeated, deliberated, and contrived,
whether sins of complexion or sins of profession and vocation, I cannot
conceive that they should have so long been settled in the same
resolution, unless the reason and conscience of him who has them, be
constant to have them; and the repentance he boasts to be inspired with
on a sudden, is very hard for me to imagine or form. I follow not the
opinion of the Pythagorean sect, "that men take up a new soul when they
repair to the images of the gods to receive their oracles," unless he
mean that it must needs be extrinsic, new, and lent for the time; our own
showing so little sign of purification and cleanness, fit for such an
office.

They act quite contrary to the stoical precepts, who do indeed command us
to correct the imperfections and vi