The same thing which recommends us to the esteem of good people, will
make those that are bad have nothing but hatred and ill-will towards
us; for every man who has engaged himself in a vicious or wicked
course of life, fiend-like, makes himself, as it were, the natural
adversary of virtue. It is in vain for innocent men, under oppression,
to complain to those who are the occasion of it: all they can urge
will but make against them; and even their very innocence, though
they should say nothing, would render them sufficiently suspected.
The moral, therefore, that this Fable brings along with it, is to
inform us that there is no trusting, nor any hopes of living well,
with wicked unjust men; for their disposition is such, that they will
do mischief to others as soon as they have the opportunity. When vice
flourishes, and is in power, were it possible for a good man to live
quietly in its neighbourhood, and preserve his integrity, it might be
sometimes perhaps convenient for him to do so, rather than quarrel
with and provoke it against him. But as it is certain that rogues are
irreconcileable enemies to men of worth, if the latter would be secure,
they must take methods to free themselves from the power and society of
the former.
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