A sickly and infirm look is as disadvantageous in a physician, as a
rakish one in a clergyman, or a sheepish one in a soldier. We should
not set up for correctors of the faults of others, whilst 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 we ourselves
are afflicted. 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 weaknesses have 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 censuring crimes, of which none were suspected more 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.
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