There is nothing so delicate as your moral character, and nothing
that it is your interest so much to preserve pure. Should you be
suspected of injustice, malignity, perfidy, lying, &c., all the parts
and knowledge in the world will never procure you esteem, friendship,
or respect. A strange concurrence of circumstances has sometimes
raised very bad men to high stations; but they have been raised, like
criminals to a pillory, where their persons and their crimes, by
being more conspicuous, are only the more known, the more pelted and
insulted. If in any case whatsoever, dissimulation were pardonable, it
would be in the case of morality; though, even then, a Pharasaical
pomp of virtue would not be advisable. But I will recommend to you a
most scrupulous tenderness for your moral character, and the utmost
care not to do or say anything that may ever so slightly taint it. Show
yourself, upon all occasions, the advocate, the friend, but not the
bully, of virtue.