wrest them to a different sense from what they were first
intended for, as is confessed by the great linguist, Saint Hieron.
Thus when that apostle saw at Athens the inscription of the altar,
he draws from it an argument for the proof of the Christian
religion; but leaving out great parts of the sentence, which
perhaps if fully recited might have prejudiced his cause, he
mentions only the last two words, namely, "To the Unknown God"; and
this, too, not without alteration, for the whole inscription runs
thus: "To the Gods of Asia, Europe, and Africa, to all Foreign and
Unknown Gods."

'T is an imitation of the same pattern, I will warrant you, that
our young divines, by leaving out four or five words in a place and
putting a false construction on the rest, can make any passage
serviceable to their own purpose; though from the coherence of what
went before, or follows after, the genuine meaning appears to be
either wide enough, or perhaps quite contradictory to what they
would thrust and impose upon it. In which knack the divines are
grown now so expert that the lawyers themselves begin to be jealous
of an encroachment on what was formerly their sole privilege and
practise. And indeed what can they despair of proving, since the
forementioned commentator did upon a text of Saint Luke put an
interpretation no more agreeable to the meaning or the place than
one contrary quality is to another.

But because it seemed expedient that man, who was born for the
transaction of business, should have so much wisdom as should fit
and capacitate him for the discharge of his duty herein, and yet
lest such a measure as is requisite for this purpose might prove
too dangerous and fatal, I was advised with for an antidote, and
prescribed this infallible receipt of taking a wife, a creature so
harmless and silly, and yet so useful and convenient, as might
mollify and make pliable the stiffness and morose humor of man. Now
that which made Plato doubt under what genus to rank woman, whether
among brutes or rational creatures, was only meant to denote the
extreme stupidness and Folly of that sex, a sex so unalterably
simple that for any one of them to thrust forward and reach at the
name of wise, is but to make themselves the more remarkable fools,
such an endeavor