A sickly, infirm look, is as disadvantageous in a physician, as that of
a rake in a clergyman, or a sheepish one in a soldier. If this moral
contains any thing further, it is, that we should not set up for
rectifying enormities in others, while we labour under the same
ourselves. Good advice ought always to be followed, without our being
prejudiced upon account of the person from whom it comes: but it is
seldom that men can be brought to think us worth minding, when we
prescribe cures for maladies with which ourselves are infected.
"Physician, heal thyself," is too scriptural not to be applied upon such
an occasion; and, if we would avoid being the jest of an audience, we
must be sound, and free from those diseases of which we would endeavour
to cure others. How shocked must people have been to hear a preacher,
for a whole hour, declaim against drunkenness, when his own infirmity
has been such, that he could neither bear nor forbear drinking; and,
perhaps, was the only person in the congregation who made the doctrine
at that time necessary! Others too have been very zealous in exploding
crimes, for which none were more suspected than themselves: but let such
silly hypocrites remember, that they whose eyes want couching, are the
most improper people in the world to set up for oculists.