Page:Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists.djvu/104

50  a Previous Malice, and it may be Hazardous to Yield, even where the Propoal is wholly Innocent. There may be other Propoitions again, that were Originally Deign'd for Snares, to the Short-ighted and Credulous, Now 'tis the Art of Life, Critically to Dicern the One Cae from, the Other.

There needs Little more to be aid to the Emblems of the Eagle and the Thruh, than to oberve, that both by Chance, and by Nature, we are made Acceary to our Own Ruines: and That's enough to Trouble a Body, though not to Condemn him.

HE Commoners of Rome were gon off once into a Direct Faction againt the Senate. They'd pay no Taxes, nor be forc'd to bear Arms, they aid, and 'twas againt the Liberty of the Subject to pretend to Compel them to't. The Sedition, in hort, ran o High, that there was no Hope of Reclaiming them, till Menenius Agrippa brought them to their Wits again by This Apologue:

The Hands and the Feet were in a Deperate Mutiny once againt the Belly. They knew No Reaon, they aid, why the One hould lye Lazying, and Pampering it elf with the Fruit of the Others Labour; and if the Body would not Work for Company, they'd be no longer at the Charge of Maintaining it. Upon This Mutiny, they kept the Body o long without Nourihment, that All the Parts Suffer'd for't: Inomuch that the Hands and Feet came in the Concluion to find their Mitake, and would have been willing Then to have Done their Office; but it was now too Late, for the Body was o Pin'd with Over-Fating, that it was wholly out of Condition to receive the Benefit of a Relief: which gave them to Undertand, that Body and Members are to Live and Die together.

AllegotyAllegory [sic] is a Political Reading upon the State and Condition of Civil Communities, where the Members have their Several Offices, and Every Part Contributes repectively to the Preervation and Service